Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

A thump indicated the arrival of The High Technology Editorial Guide
and Stylebook on the desk. This is an American publication, the work of
Lewis Perdue, who, bemused by the different conventions used by technical
publications for such things as abbreviations, acronyms and so on, decided
to try to bring order into chaos. In the introduction to the work, he says
that the proliferation of technology in our daily lives ‘means that this
isn’t just a problem for writers of technical manuals and reporters for
computer trade publications . . . This book is for everyone; we are surrounded
by technology.’

At this point, a certain doubt sneaked its way in. I don’t know if contemporary
press conferences about scientific or technological matters are enlivened
by a voice from the back asking ‘What’s in it for the housewife?’, but they
were once. Perhaps things have become more sophisticated since then but
I could not see many people whose connection with technology was limited
to the ownership of a dishwasher or a CD player nipping out to buy a copy
of the book.

So I looked up CD in it. It isn’t there, but CDC is, standing for Control
Data Corporation. So are ‘CDR: call-detail recording’ and (aha!) ‘CD-ROM:
compact disk, read-only memory’. My attention was caught by other entries
in the section, for instance, ‘Caught in a squeeze, caught between a rock
and a hard place: cliche, avoid’, and ‘Cause an uproar: cliche, avoid’.
This was more like it, I thought, falling into avoidable cliche at once.

Random diving into the pages began to change my opinion of the stylebook’s
value. It could help to improve the language in technical publications all
right. ‘On . . . separate occasions: wordy when used as in ‘the machine
failed on three separate occasions’. A better sentence would read, ‘the
machine failed three times’.’ The problem with this is that anyone writing
about separate occasions is not going to look up the phrase to see if it
can be bettered. Similarly, it is probably no use to include an entry for
‘friendly’ which says, ‘This is jargon. Do not use it to describe products.’

The book is not, whatever the author claims, for everyone, but it could
be valuable to many people all the same. It reminded me of a grinding hour
or two in the New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ offices. It was necessary to think of trade
names or marks that had become words in common use. The only two that surfaced
were ‘Hoover’, a name that is now a universal term for any vacuum cleaner
and its action, and ‘Perspex’, loosely used for any rigid, transparent plastic.
Days too late, someone thought of ‘Thermos’. Perdue’s examples are ‘aspirin’,
‘Mimeograph’ and ‘dry ice’, two of them a surprise to me.

The book is published by Richard D. Irwin, Inc. It comes with a disc,
described as user-friendly. ‘Er, Mr Irwin, just a moment – Mr Irwin!’

* * *

An expression of confident expectation lit up my undeniably homely visage
after I brought up the subject of mnemonics to help in remembering the order
of the planets. The expected letters duly arrived, some writers marvelling
at my ignorance and supplying mnemonics they had invented, some recollecting
ones they learnt in school and passing them on. Alleged to be appealing
to children was ‘My Very Early Mumbo Jumbo Started Under Nicholas Plonk’.
One for the Greens was ‘Motor Vehicles Eat Money, Jamming Streets, Upsetting
Nature’s Plans’, and the same ingenious reader sent a mnemonic for the order
of the planets from the opposite direction, ‘Politicians Never Upset Å®ÉúСÊÓƵs,
Just Make Every Voter Mad’.

Jam sandwiches were popular, as in ‘Many Volcanoes Erupt Mulberry Jam
Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure’, and ‘Mother Very Easily Made (a) Jam
Sandwich Using No Peanut-butter’. A much shorter aid for the forgetful was
‘Move my sun, Pluto’. Though you have to remember to drop the first ‘o’
and change the ‘y’ to ‘j’. That is no great feat, so it probably cannot
be beaten. But my own favourite is ‘Merchant Venturers Explore Mainland
Japan. Samurai Under New Pressure’ because of its sense of headline quality
– no volcanoes firing jam sandwiches here.

* * *

The end of January saw what was, according to some commentators, a dramatic
move or bold initiative by John Major. It was to offer jobs to Russian nuclear
scientists and technologists who otherwise might be looking for work with
dictators in the Middle East. Its drama or boldness was perhaps a little
diminished by the fact that George Bush had already had the same idea and
offered the Russians jobs in the US.

Major was reported to be suggesting the plan to Yeltsin on his visit
to London, but as far as I know there was no further news about it. The
interesting point to me was that at the drop of a hat or of a regime, money
can be found to pay such valuable people on such a scale. The minimum mentioned
was £35 000. That must have caused a few wry smiles in British laboratories
and scientific circles, still soldiering on in their campaigns for greater
recognition and more money, although I should probably call it better funding.

* * *

Less familiar than the Northwest Passage, at least to me, is the Northeast
one to Japan. It goes to Japan around Europe and Asia and might eventually
become commercially important for ships because it cuts down the journey
time. I see that a French ship, Astrolabe, has done the trip from Le Havre
to Hakodate in 34 days, instead of the usual 40 to 50, guided through the
drift ice that makes the route so dangerous by the European satellite ERS-1.
Its radar scanned the sea ahead of Astrolabe for the whole voyage, and navigational
data were faxed to the ship after analysis. Future possibilities depend
on speeding up the process. Delivery to the ship could take two days, but
ice conditions can change in hours. The aim is to shorten the time taken
to three or four hours.

* * *

In a store I came across a man staring at a row of kitchen knives and
laughing. ‘Read that,’ he said. One knife had a swivelling metal eye fixed
to the end of its handle. The legend said, ‘With hanging facility’.