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Quote of the Day: ‘All Emphasis Is No Emphasis’
The most important rule about emphasis is that all emphasis is no emphasis. Separate elements should not compete for primary attention. Where several items get equal billing, emphasis is cancelled out. In a poorly designed layout, the elements fight for attention–Google it
Almost five decades ago, the future Mr. She and I embarked on a friendly relationship. At the time, I was a graduate student in the MA program in Duquesne University’s English Department. He was a Professor. (I’m still trying to figure out how I can sue for, and make millions off, his privileged, patriarchal, power-imbalanced, and oppressive victimization of yours truly, while still managing to finesse the reality of our forty-year ensuing happy marriage. Stay tuned.)
We bonded over a mutual interest in, and love of, print production. I’d been the editor of both my high school yearbook and magazine. He’d been the same, through both high school and college. And we were both rather good at what we loved to do.
Over the couple of years of our collegial collaboration, we produced many groundbreaking brochures, flyers, mailings, and other pieces of propaganda that directly led to increased interest and enrollment in departmental programs, and registration for outside seminars and conferences. We did well, under pretty straitened circumstances and with what would now be regarded as laughably inadequate technology but which was, thanks to Mr. She’s efforts in securing funding for same, pretty edgy for the time.
It’s an interest I’ve maintained through the ensuing decades, both in professional terms, and voluntary ways. And I’m proud of the results.
One of the things Mr. She taught me, many years ago–perhaps during an effusion on my part of the phenomenon I’ve since criticized, even here, as “Fonts Gone Mad,”–is that “all emphasis is no emphasis.” Thus:
I don’t think this phenomenon is limited to the visual. It also happens with the auditory–what we hear in our heads as we read. Thus, when we on Ricochet read one post after another by certain authors, all delivered at the same volume, all–no matter the subject–shouted at DEFCON 1, eventually we just give up and start to disregard them as a whole and in their entirety.
This result–which often relates to a matter of presentation rather than one of content–is a pity. I don’t like it, but–tired of the din in my ears–I accept it. And I ignore it and move on.
And I just want to say how very much I appreciate the vast majority of my fellow members who temper and adjust the volume as is necessary and appropriate to their post and the content therein. I like nothing more than to be kept guessing as to the author (yeah, I rarely look at “who wrote it” before I start to read, because I don’t care to block on that basis. But–by gum–it gets pretty tiresome, when I’m only one or two sentences in, and I can already tell whose ax is on the grindstone. To my mind, that’s not a feature, that’s a substantial bug. One which speaks to the author’s lack of interest in, and even contempt for, conversation with those who might disagree.)
The late, great, Boss Mongo used to say, “are you picking up what I’m putting down?”
Well?
Indeed. There’s the feeling of being yelled at and it’s quite unpleasant. I find all I “hear” is the din and disregard the content. Most unfortunate.
No emphasis is also no emphasis. I often pass on the ramblers who write in a way that makes me feel like one must have an “in” to understand what they are writing about. Sometimes when I have time I come back to them. I suppose that is my problem, not theirs.
The example of fonts gone mad seems to be espescially common among self- annointed fundamentalist religious types that I have run across on internet searches on Bible topics. They are purveyors of the real truth. Billy Graham wasn’t good enough for them because he talked to certain world leaders they don’t like and handed out modern translations at his crusade. Everybody but themselves and three or four followers is a cultist in their view. Sometimes I read their pages for a good healthy eye roll.
Years ago I used to listen to the Glenn Beck Show very regularly. Now I catch a few minutes here and there, but not for very long. I wish it were funnier and less . . . whatever it is now. If every week there is some new prediction of impending doom that I am supposed to panic over, I’m just not going to listen.
Yes!
I had the good fortune to be mentored by an extremely talented photographer before the digital age. He taught me the processes that produce a good photograph.
Perhaps the most useful was how important it was to crop a photograph. Anything extraneous simply needs to be cut out, until the only things that remain focus on the subject.
Many times people will trim a photo to fit an 8 x 10 frame. I was taught to crop mercilessly and then fit the matte or frame around what remained. It’s more work. And the end product is non-standard – which is a good thing if one wants to do art.
I try to edit (crop) my writing the same way. And my speech. I’m often unsuccessful but I try.
Talking to people who ramble really reinforces my introversion..
Yes, Glenn Beck is a good example. I like him as the human being he’s become over the past few decades, and he’s often on the right track, but his declamatory outbursts and projections of Armageddon are just exhausting, in the manner of the asteroidal catastrophists who are always predicting the end of the world and then revising themselves the day after it didn’t happen.
I stuck with Rush (another who was almost always correct) until the end because he could always make me laugh, and because he generally induced a sense of proportion, or at least self-awareness, into his ramblings.
I wanted to pick up this book back when I was doing desktop publishing but somehow I never did. I just really like the title.
https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Stealing-Sheep-find-works/dp/3949164030
What would we do without your words of wisdom coupled almost always with a delightful sense of humor? Thank you for reminding us of that wonderfully talented fellow member Boss Mongo.
Gosh, I miss him. I’m sorry for those who never knew him. But grateful that I did.
I’m pretty sure Boss Mongo would have been ranked as the #1 person members wanted to meet, if we had an official vote.
LOL. Speaking of Amazon and sheep:
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Bags-Full-Sheep-Detective/dp/0767927052
I was just thinking the same thing about members who joined after his death.
This is all about me, isn’t it?
(I may ramble, but I keep it brief.)
I’m sure on the left there are people who have a new reason every week for believing that total environmental collapse is at hand. This week it might be fear of nuclear power gaining acceptance, next week it’s some new finding about diesel particulates, the next week it’s the strangulation of sea turtles, and underlying it all is the every day terror of catastrophic global warming. We warned you it was bad before, but this time it’s really really the end! And now a word from our sponsor.
So you better send money!
Thanks,
DNC (or SPLC, PETA, ASPCA, etc..)
Hmm. Looks like how I feel when I try to read a post that has all different fonts — standard, and bolded and italicized — and left-hand margined paragraphs alternating with centered paragraphs. And with variously-sized fonts as underlined headings to quoted paragraphs with the body in italics and bolded phrases within it.
Spot on.
This is standard human factors engineering – if every warning light is glaring bright red & accompanied by a blaring klaxon, the signal will fade into the noise.
Save the lights & siren for when you are prompt critical with no coolant pressure or you are reading high enough CO to exceed the lower explosive limit. In other words, the excrement has impacted the air handler
When I read of Boss Mongo’s passing I decided, what I had put off for a couple of years, to join Ricochet. A minuscule tribute, I know, but a sincere one.
I have a suggestion, though I am not the person to put it into action. Would someone who knew him well start a short series on Boss Mongo quotes?
Indeed. My mother had an inexhaustible supply of creative vulgarisms and imaginative swear words, but she was (usually) sparing in her use of them, saying that if she brought them out at every possible opportunity, she’d have nothing “saved up for special occasions.”
I didn’t know him well. But I think he knew me.
I do know that he was “there” for any Ricochet member in trouble, or any who asked for help, just as he was there, lifelong, for his brothers in the service.
His profile, and list of posts is here. Many could do worse than peruse them.
@dajoho
That. Two places I see this in the external word is
I remember potassium permanganate fondly, as some sort of catalyst which could be added to puddle, or pond, or sewage water to make it (reasonably) safe for drinking. (Also, that whole bubbly purple thing was exciting when I was a child.) We also used to use it by adding a few crystals to tap water, to render greens from the (Nigerian) garden safe for eating.
Am I dreaming? Were we wrong?
Probably not. The stuff I’m thinking was used to etch chrome, which means I’ve probably got the chemical name wrong. I tended to avoid it when I could get away with it.
You’re both right. It’s used for both things, though in the case of water it doesn’t purify from bacteria (bleach is better for that), but is used to remove minerals and nasty smelly stuff (like sulfur). It will definitely make the water taste better.
As far as etching metal (bleach is used in the glass etching process, too) vs using in drinking, there’s an old adage that’s very operative here: The dose makes the poison.
Cropping is very important in artwork, as well as signs. The “negative space” (background) has an effect on the “positive space” (the main subject).
A friend of mine who was a sign painter gave me a very instructive book about making signs. In the figure below, the author demonstrates nearly exactly what @She indicates in the post about all emphasis leading to no emphasis:
The sign on the left is “shouting” at you equally throughout and becomes chaos. The one at right has prioritized which words or symbols are more important and attention-getting. I do the same exact thing in my paintings – organizing which elements are to be featured and which elements are relegated to secondary status. There may even be half-a-dozen or more such levels throughout a painting. It is much easier for the viewer’s brain to absorb such images.
The one on the right is clearly better. I am not a fan of thick squat arrows.
I like your example.
And I get your point.
But after living in the San Francisco Bay area for decades, both those signs are fine by me.
Because in that area, both signs would be printed up in Mandarin, Spanish, Korean, Thai, Tagalog, French, Spanish, Mongoose, Trapeze Artist and more.
In fact, every single language and then some.
Every language but English. (Never English. Why? In California, we strive to be diverse!)
Yes, a perfect example.
I’ve been scouring the Internet for a shot of a van from the local area which advertised a small business specializing in custom graphics and printing. I can’t find one, and I haven’t seen the van on the road for a while. Perhaps it was a casualty of Covid, or perhaps it was laid waste due to general incoherence.
I recognize that there are (rarely) outbreaks of genius which render unusual and challenging graphics worth the effort. This wasn’t one of them. Just about every line, including the one giving the phone number, and the one giving the website address, and the one giving the actual business name, and the one with the physical address, was rendered in a difficult-to -read and weirdly colored (some with every letter in a different one) typeface or font.
It was infuriating, to say the least.