Tag Archives: New York Times

Doubling Down on Print, for Better or Worse

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Photo of book sculpture. Image: Robert Burdock, Flickr

A nice specimen. Photo by Robert Burdock/Flickr

Over the weekend, New York Times reporter Julie Bosman described how book publishers have begun putting extra effort into making their print products more physically and esthetically engaging. Their rationale, says Bosman, is that if “e-books are about ease and expedience,” then print books should “be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning.” The strategy, they hope, will “increase the value of print books and build a healthy, diverse marketplace that includes brick-and-mortar bookstores and is not dominated by Amazon and e-books.”

As a book collector, I’m pleased that books will be more beautiful. As a lover of bookstores, I’m happy for anything that might help preserve them. But as a reader and writer, I’m quite indifferent.

The problem with the strategy is that it won’t, as hoped, “cut into e-book sales” in a significant way. Most readers aren’t antiquarians and don’t value the physical esthetics of the container. They just want the content.

In the same way, unlike book designers, most writers don’t care in a meaningful way about the physical presence of a book. They just want to tell a story, or convey information, or to create works of art out of their words. The physical format is not essential.

There are a few books for which the physical medium of print matters in an essential way. House of Leaves, for instance, just wouldn’t be so mind-blowing in a leafless e-book. And is there any effective e-equivalent of a pop-up book? Moreover, could anyone do this with an e-book?

But these instances and their like are minor eddies of activity that briefly pull print defenders upstream before they are hurtled back down, inevitably, towards the fatal digital waterfall.

The effect is simply amplified when it comes to magazines (and turned up to 11 for newspapers). The physical aspects of magazines can be nice indeed, but they are rarely treasured objects. Inveterate collector though I am, I have gradually whittled down even my set of classic Wired issues from several shelves to one shelf—and only the Neal Stephenson issue is safe.

I’m all for more beautiful books, but let’s be realistic. Like taxidermy, printing beautiful books may preserve glorious specimens, but it does nothing to save the species.

Goodbye, Newspapers; Good Riddance, Serial-Comma Killers

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The mighty comma will rise again.Though for me there is little schadenfreude in witnessing the decline and fall of newspapers, I do find one small cause for cheer in this otherwise unsettling spectacle: the potential resurgence of the serial comma.

The serial comma is that final one in a series of three or more items, as in the phrase “red, white, and blue.” (It is sometimes known by its detractors as the “Oxford” or “Harvard” comma, as if to imply that a preference for clarity is somehow elitist or purely academic.)

Most newspapers and their style guides have steadfastly resisted the serial comma. They prefer instead “red, white and blue.”

It’s often suggested that this resistance arose from a desire for typesetting efficiency, as New York Times editor Philip B. Corbett has said:

“I suspect that journalists’ aversion to the additional comma arose in the old days when setting type was laborious and expensive. If you already have an “and,” why bother with a comma, too? The practice persists, from habit and perhaps from the sense that fewer commas make prose seem more direct and rapid—qualities we journalists prize in our writing.”

As Corbett indicates, the argument against the serial comma boils down to this: You don’t need it, and it sounds fussy and ponderous.

Although I find that the serial comma sounds more natural, I can buy the argument that it often isn’t necessary for clarity. But even opponents of serialism recognize that, at times, the additional comma is essential.

And therein lies the problem. Many writers will fail to recognize those times, and clarity will suffer. Although the use of a serial comma can lead to ambiguity too, as Wikipedia evenhandedly points out,  I’ve found that ambiguities are more likely in its absence. So for me, consistent use of serial commas is the wiser policy. (For a longer and more convincing version of this argument, may I suggest the Grammar Girl?)

Opposition to the serial comma will not die out any time soon. Many newspaper writers and editor will hold on to their old habits, even as they exchange new media and venues for old. But the decline of newspapers as an institutional influence on writing gives me hope that the serial comma will make slow but steady gains in the new-media world.