The IT department at the State University of New York College of Technology at Delhi has come up with a nice idea: Staff members have built a group blog that aims to put the department in close contact with the campus community.
The blog has already touched on a number of issues that might be of interest to students and professors — like the college’s domain name, its helpdesk, and its plans (or lack thereof) to migrate to Microsoft’s Vista operating system. “There’s a fair bit of ‘thinking out loud’ here, too,” writes Michael Feldstein of e-Literate, “which is…well…not the sort of bravery one expects from campus bureaucracy.”
All in all, this seems like a good public-relations move and a potential boon to Delhi’s IT policy makers. Does anyone know of other IT offices that have taken on similar outreach projects? —Brock Read
10 Responses to A Campus IT Department Reaches Out
msumenglish - April 4, 2012 at 7:47 am
I wonder if Fowler considered the word “and” an elegant variation of his fondness for the ampersand?
lowenstm - April 4, 2012 at 10:28 am
Fresh from a month of total immersion in college basketball broadcasts I have to say the worst offenders are not sports writers but sportscasters. Never say “use” if you can substitute “utilize.” Never say “refer” if you can (incorrectly) say “allude.” I bet everyone has some others.
Actually this kind of pseudo-elegant variation is a bit different from the proliferation of metaphors and synonyms described in the article so maybe I’m just venting a pet peeve here.
jamesebryan - April 4, 2012 at 12:36 pm
Perhaps this is the reason I love to watch football but can’t stand to listen to post-game shows or read written accounts of the games. I always thought it was just that I hated the seriousness with which sports analysts scrutinize a pastime as if it were a matter of consequence rather than just a way to pass the time, but now that you point it out, it seems that the form is as tiresome as the content.
On the other hand, I would only agree with Fowler when the variety is stilted or forced. Nothing is more tedious than reading the exact same word or its derivatives dozens of times or more in the same piece, as if the author is completely unaware of the existence of synonyms. Since I teach art history to aspiring designers, one that always strikes me as tiresome goes along the lines of “Designers design designs for their clients.” I realize I just did more or less just that in my first paragraph, but there is a difference between using the same word or its variants to make a point, and using it over and over because your vocabulary is limited.
vitupera - April 4, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Baseball, like any other profession, has its terms of art. It is also, and more importantly, entertainment. Baseball writers use the the jargon of the players and, since most players are not the linguistic equals of Satchel Paige or Yogi Berra, invent much more themselves. Nicknaming is an honored tradition in all sports and even the fans are allowed and encouraged to take part. Using baseball jargon among and for the fans helps connect younger generations to the history of the game just as much as the record books. It is from the countless historical examples passed down by players, coaches, writers, and announcers that Little Leaguers learn how to to “look” a potential base-stealer back to first base while hoping they can make the batter ” walk the dog” (cause him to strike out on a low outside pitch).
N.B.
Academic disparagement of such literary flourishes will show up at the next MLA conference at the panel discussion, “Southpaw Studies: Cant and Idiom vs. Pedantic Tedium.
maxq nz - April 4, 2012 at 10:41 pm
I think this problem is so endemic in sports media as to suggest a genetic cause, the same gene that predisposes one to work in sports media also responsible for generating “arc frays”. THat said, The antithesis of this can be heard in radio commentary of Test cricket matches, whose unique 5-day length allows time for exchanges of an urbanity and wit not heard elsewhere.
lazybones - April 5, 2012 at 10:27 am
Elegant variation has become standardised in much quest-based fantasy fiction, for me reaching its “height” in the writing of David Eddings (eg The Belgariad). In such books, each of the cast of main characters tends to have, in addition to their name, an ethnicity (dwarf, elf), a place of origin, an occupation, and sundry other unique distinguishing features (lad, greybeard, giant). I found the endless cycling through the variations initially annoying as I backtracked to discover who was from where and so on, and, later, tedious. I am certain that these texts would read more smoothly if just names were used except when a particular attribute was relevant.
(I felt maybe I should be ashamed at admitting to reading quest fantasy fiction, then I recalled that Tolkien’s LOTR was voted Britain’s favourite book a few years ago!)
pianiste - April 5, 2012 at 4:52 pm
Years back, Heywood Hale Broun, Jr., said in recounting on network camera a World Series game, said that the effect of a home run the team leading at the time, “drove an icicle into their fires of fun.”
The college-paper sportswriters of my undergraduate days were, albeit
naively, the worst offenders, e.g., referring to the track team as the
“thinclads.”
And either Dan Patrick or Ketih Olbermann on ESPN would go in the opposite rhetorical direction, saying over the highlight of a home run, “And he hit the ball real hard.”
dank48 - April 10, 2012 at 5:05 pm
Howard Cosell cured me of leaving the sound on while watching a baseball game, when he used “ribbies” for “RBIs” or “runs batted in” for perhaps the thousandth time. My wife sensibly interrupted my frothing to suggest turning the sound off. It was an amazing improvement. It was much later than that that I realized I didn’t (and don’t) enjoy watching millionaires play games.
From the standpoint of a former sports fan, i.e. one who no longer watches any organized sport on television, much less listen to it on the radio, may I suggest that the principal reason for the “elegant variation” is not just the limited vocabulary. It’s also a reaction against the excruciatingly repetitious and ultimately tedious nature of the sports themselves.
Abandoning televised sports is like quitting any other pernicious habit: hard at first, gets easier later, and very rewarding indeed in the long run, as one realizes how much more interesting real life is than the stupor. And after a while, hearing some fragment of the jargon is just a reminder of how lucky one is to have escaped.
Maverick Goodson - April 16, 2012 at 5:52 pm
@Ben Yagoda: Henry Watson Fowler…(just wondering if the middle initial F. was a typo). The interesting thing about “elegant variation” is that it has become a kind of intentional “tongue in cheek” humor for a whole new generation trying to amuse themselves and their friends with obvious verbosity.
satris - May 26, 2012 at 9:43 pm
I don’t think the sports reporters are engaged in “elegant variations.” I think that they are using lots of standard variations and lots of jargon. Since there’s a difference between an inside-the-park home run and a home run in which the ball is hit out of the park, we have here a case of jargon. When football announcers speak of a “lot of real estate,” we all know what they mean: talk of “real estate” is pretty standard. In fact, if you’re listening to two guys doing the play-by-play, and one guy uses a strange or unusual phrase that isn’t jargon or a standard phrase – the other guy might call him on it or make a joke out of it. Also, the announcers want to show that they are real insiders and that they can use the same jargon and standard phrases that players, or coaches, or fans, or other announcers use.