Fieldnotes From History (5)—Utensils and Greasy Fingers

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Fieldnotes From History."

[a] 筷子 RF

Part of an occasional “Round and Square” series that follows the blog’s main theme (east meets west, round meets square, and past meets present), these snippets from my early fieldnotes are reproduced as they were written by hand—and then revised on an ancient desktop computer—during my first fieldwork stay in Taiwan (1985-1987).  All entries are the way that I left them when I returned to the United States in 1987 (some nicely-stated and some embarrassing). I will allow myself an occasional comment when something makes me wince after a quarter century.

[b] Chopsticks RF

Comment
Twenty-five years has taught me that American and Chinese ways with "finger-food" are separated in profound ways. On a recent domestic airline flight in China, I watched a young Western woman as she slowly peeled bread chunks from her sandwich, held them between her fingers, and methodically ate them in so many strips of gluten. Later, she peeled the meat and vegetables and ate them in hand-cut pieces, licking her fingers during pauses. Then I looked around. My fellow travelers were transfixed—absolutely aghast at the fingery-awfulness of it all. The finger-food issue has not gone away, and I will have more to say about it on Round and Square at a future date. Many people have talked with me about it over the years (and can't believe that Westerners can feel comfortable touching food).

10 May 1985

Taipei

Most people in Taiwan just don’t like finger food. They also seem very uncomfortable with Western-style utensils. The normal way of preparing Chinese food is to do all the cutting and preparation in the kitchen. When a plate is on the table it is ready to eat. It doesn’t need to be cut or separated. Everything is nicely diced, chopped, or sliced. All you need are chopsticks. For this reason, people sometimes have difficulty in Western restaurants.  I was having a cup of coffee in Foremost (and ice cream and sandwich restaurant) the other day. It is right next to my Chinese school, and I often go there if I am early for class. A man at the table next to me stabbed his sandwich with his fork and began chewing around it in a counter-clockwise motion. He looked like he was chewing the meat off a chicken bone while he held it securely with his chopsticks (a much easier operation for people who grow up in a Chinese setting).  In McDonalds (don’t get the wrong idea now; I only went there for a Coke) I saw a woman holding her McChicken container under her chin and scooping the lettuce and mayonnaise refuse into her mouth, rice bowl style, with a straw. I have caught myself doing both of these things in recent days, a possible hint that perhaps I am becoming used to "native" utensils.  I just don’t like greasy fingers anymore.

Fieldnotes From History (4)—Cuisine

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "Fieldnotes From History."

[a] Oil RF

Part of an occasional “Round and Square” series that follows the blog’s main theme (east meets west, round meets square, and past meets present), these snippets from my early fieldnotes are reproduced as they were written by hand—and then revised on an ancient desktop computer—during my first fieldwork stay in Taiwan (1985-1987).  All entries are the way that I left them when I returned to the United States in 1987 (some nicely-stated and some embarrassing). I will allow myself an occasional comment when something makes me wince after a quarter century.

[b] Green RF

Comment
I am struck by two matters in these notes, both of which startle me (somewhat) after twenty-five years. First, I can't get over the utter banality of these observations. While they are not particularly embarrassing, I wonder why I was trying to explain some of it. Remember (from the introduction to this series) that these were small parts of "fieldletters," as I call them, meant to be read by others. It seems that I was trying to explain things more clearly to an audience that did not have many Chinese culinary sources in the United States then. Second, and most importantly, I am bothered by my own breeziness in the final paragraph. Cruelty bothers me much more as I have gotten older, and I don't find such anecdotes remotely humorous. I am not sure that I found it "funny" back then (I recall being perplexed by the story. Still, I am surprised by what at least appears in rhetorical terms as youthful callousness.

7 May 1985

Taipei

The food here deserves a paragraph or two (actually a library) of its own. I have worked three restaurant outings a week into my budget, but have been known to double that figure. Sunday a small group of us ate Beijing (Northern, Mandarin) cuisine at a place called the Celestial Kitchen. The meal began with appetizers: cabbage and carrot slices in a sour sauce, peanuts, and a hot, spicy dish of whole sardines and bamboo shoots. The main courses consisted of steamed mushrooms and little cabbages, mutton and green onions, and diced chicken in bean sauce. Northern cooking uses many varieties of bean sauces. After tasting what they do for Chinese food, I don’t want to limit myself to soy sauce again.

Thursday night I had a Sichuan meal. Sichuan cuisine specializes in, among other things, little marble-sized dumplings in a thick, hot sauce. There was an excellent noodle dish, burnt green beans (a Sichuan specialty all the Chinese rave over, but I’m not too crazy about), and a wonderful little dish made from the lining of a goat’s stomach. Sichuan food is hot, Chinese say, because Sichuan province is cold and damp in the winter. The spice takes the chill out of your bones.

A week ago I had Shanghai cuisine, which is characterized by its oleaginous quality and its seafoods. There were appetizers, shrimp with pea pods, chicken with cashew nuts, pork cabbage soup, and fried rolls. The rolls here are great. You can order them steamed or fried; they have a wonderful doughy taste that is hard to describe. I first tried them at a few restaurants in Vancouver, but had no idea of their diversity until I came here.

I have sampled all the major cuisines of China so far (Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghai—the “a” in Shanghai is soft, like the “a” in father—Sichuan, Hunan) and a few of the minor ones, too. Now, I am spreading out and finding the best restaurants which serve each. I have found that those bigger restaurants with atmosphere (the ones foreign guidebooks recommend) are, not surprisingly, not usually those with the best food. I have had some of the best meals with small groups in tiny little restaurants where no one speaks English. All the cuisines are very different, and it’s hard to pick a single favorite, although, if pressed, I might choose Sichuan. The only problem with eating Chinese food here is that there are usually only a handful of us; it is difficult to sample a wide array of dishes. The ideal number of people for eating Chinese food is six to twelve. That way you can order one dish per person, and share them all.

I have enjoyed the wonderful Chinese food here, although I have stuck to “traditional” cuisine. Usually in the winter, Chinese “exotic” cuisine specializes in cooking tigers, snakes, puppies, and small rodents. Dog meat is called [香肉] “fragrant meat.”  At some restaurants they boil it in a fire pot with cabbage, beancurd, and noodles. It is supposed to warm your bones in the cold weather. I haven’t been that cold yet. Maybe cooking puppies is the culinary line, beyond which my ethnocentrism takes over. There is another dish that everyone knows about, but no one seems actually to have eaten, that is made of live, newborn mice. It is called a “three squeal meal,” a name worthy of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The newborns can’t see, so they lie squirming on the plate above a bed of spinach. When you pinch one between your chopsticks, you hear squeal number one. When you dip them in the hot sauce, you hear squeal number two. Finally, when you pop them into your mouth and bite down, you hear the third, and final, squeal.      

Comment (just in case you missed it above...since the last paragraph bothers me a great deal now):
I am struck by two matters in these notes, both of which startle me (somewhat) after twenty-five years. First, I can't get over the utter banality of these observations. While they are not particularly embarrassing, I wonder why I was trying to explain some of it. Remember (from the introduction to this series) that these were small parts of "fieldletters," as I call them, meant to be read by others. It seems that I was trying to explain things more clearly to an audience that did not have many Chinese culinary sources in the United States then. Second, and most importantly, I am bothered by my own breeziness in the final paragraph. Cruelty bothers me much more as I have gotten older, and I don't find such anecdotes remotely humorous. I am not sure that I found it "funny" back then (I recall being perplexed by the story.) Still, I am surprised by what at least appears in rhetorical terms as youthful callousness.

Seinfeld Ethnography (27)—The Alliance

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.
Click below for all "Seinfeld Ethnography" posts: 

George Eats Trash     No Soup for You     Elaine Exclaims    The Puffy Shirt    Poppie's Pizza     Mr. Bookman

Marine Biologist         The Doorman          Opposite George   Newman's Mail   The Bootleg         Marriage
Just Dessert               Sleep Desk             Late Coffee            High Stakes        Motor Oil              Downtown 
Code Cracking           Nonfat Yogurt          Bad Boy                 It's Not You         I Can't Be...          Exploding Wallet
Elaine Flies Coach    The Close Talker     The Alliance           Broccoli               Coated Culture    Dinner Party

[a] Allied RF

Click here for the reference to the "Argonauts" title, below.

Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific

Newman's dream is to leave the apartment building in which he lives. Jerry shares that dream, and is determined to do whatever he can to make bring the dream to fruition. Take a look at this brief scene.

The Alliance 0:55

It is an alliance, and shared dreams sometimes make for, well, strange bedfellows. Recently, on Capitol Hill, conservative and liberal members of the House of Representatives banded together on a vote in which their various "intents" were at either end of the ideological spectrum. They were united, nonetheless, by a shared "nay" dream, at least for that hour on a late-September afternoon. They would soon be back to partisan bickering. It doesn't only happen in politics, either. Have you ever found yourself cheering for a team you would ordinarily dismiss (at best), in hopes that it might crush your rival when you didn't make it to the playoffs? Well, I am a Detroit Tigers fan this week (only), hoping that they will defeat the New York Yankees, who have spoiled the postseason for my Minnesota Twins seemingly every year this half-decade.

Alliances are not always friendly, but sometimes they are necessary—practically, psychologically, or both. This leads us to an illuminating array of readings this week. They range from Claude Lévi-Strauss's classic, The Elementary Structures of Kinship to Paul Riesman's nuanced ethnography Freedom in Fulani Social Life, before leaping the decades back to the 1930s for E.E. Evans-Pritchard's elegant portrayal of the way that the Nuer band together and disperse in reaction to outside threats to their livelihood. Remember that the readings are meant to touch upon and juxtapose themes brought up in the Seinfeld clip, and these selections do just that.

[b] Alimentary structures

Claude Lévi-Strauss
The Principle of Reciprocity (1949)
But the ritual of exchange does not take place only at ceremonial meals. Politeness requires that the dish, salt, butter and bread be offered to one's neighbour before serving oneself. We have often observed the ceremonial aspect of the meal in the lower-priced restaurants in the south of France, especially in those regions where wine is the principal industry and is surrounded by a sort of mystical respect which makes it 'rich food' par excellence. In small restaurants where wine is included in the price of the meal, each customer finds in front of his plate a modest bottle of wine, more often than not very bad. The bottle is similar to his neighbour's bottle, as are the portions of meat and vegetables which a waitress passes around. Nevertheless, a remarkable difference in attitude towards the wine and the food is immediately manifested. Food serves the body's needs and wine its taste for luxury, the first serving to nourish, the second to honour. Each person at the table eats, so to speak, for himself, and the noting of a trifling slight in the way he has been served arouses bitterness towards the more favoured, and a jealous complaint to the proprietor. But it is entirely different with the wine. If a bottle should be insufficiently filled, its owner will good-humouredly appeal to his neighbour's judgment. And the proprietor will face, not the demand of an individual victim, but a group complaint. In other words, wine is a social commodity, while the plat du jour is a personal commodity. The little bottle may contain exactly one glassful, yet the contents will be poured out, not into the owner's glass, but into his neighbour's. And his neighbour will immediately make a corresponding gesture of reciprocity.

What has happened? The two bottles are identical in volume, and their contents similar in quality. Each person in this revealing scene has, in the final analysis, received no more than if he had consumed his own wine. From an economic viewpoint, no one has gained and no one has lost. but the point is that there is much more in the exchange itself than in the things exchanged.[1]

Paul Riesman
Greetings (1974)

[c] Greetings

It is now about 7:30 or 8:00. Everyone is up, except for very sick people and some adolescents who have returned in the early morning from their search for women. The children begin to play, while the mature men and women go to greet the occupants of neighboring huts. Indeed, from this moment onward, one greets everyone one meets, whether passerby met by chance or people whom one intended to see. In the course of our stay among the Jelegobe it appeared to us that greeting people is the most fundamental act for the day-by-day maintenance of the social fabric. Western authors, when they describe the greetings, speak in an amused tone of "interminable African greetings." In fact, greetings may be long or short, and the adjective "interminable" only shows the impatience of the European, who does not understand their importance. Let us look more closely at this phenomenon.

Greetings seem to exist in all human societies. In general, they consist in an exchange between two people, for if there is no response we feel that a greeting has not been completed. Their content may vary perceptively: on eh on e hand there are words which have no meaning for the users (such as "Hi!" in English), and on the other, there are words which express specific ideas, but always indicating the general notion of "all is well." In Fula, all greetings have a meaning. They vary according to the time of the day, the situation in which the people meet, and the lapse of time between this occasion and the last time they saw each other. Here are some examples. The first one is a morning greeting, between people who see each other every day:

     A. Jam waali (Night of peace! lit: Peace has spent the night)
     B. Jam tan kor jam waali? (Peace only; I hope it was a peaceful night?)
     A. Alhamdulillaahi! (Praise God!) A daanike na? (Did you sleep?)
     B. Mi daanike, alhamdulillaahi! (I slept, praise God!)
     A. Kori on pinii e jam (Did you awaken in peace?)
     B. Alhamdulillaahi, baasi fuu walaa e amin. (Praise God, there is nothing wrong 
         in our house).
     A. Alla suuran en baasi! (May God preserve us from evil!)
     B. Aamin! (Amen!).
     A. Jam nyallen en! (May peace spend the day with us!)
     B. Aamin! Nyallen e jam! (Amen! Let us spend the day in peace!)
     A. Aamin! (Amen!)  

...[This example] could have been much longer, for one often repeats the same phrases (or quite similar phrases, like ada selli and ada jamoo), and one may enter into a great deal of detail in asking for information about the different members of the family. But even such samples can enlighten us as to the meaning an function of greetings among the Jelegobe. In the first place, the fact that we can give a sample of them is significant, for it suggests that their content is predetermined by the situation. That is true; if we know the hour of the day and the circumstances, we know in advance almost precisely what people will say to each other. But if we know in advance what people are going to say, where is the "information" in these formulas? May we even speak of information? After all, when someone says that all is well, that does not necessarily mean that all is indeed well. People repeat the same words whatever their true situation; it is only after the stage of formalities has been passed that there is really an exchange of news.[2]

E.E. Evans-Pritchard
Blood Feuds Among the Nuer (1940)

[d] In-feud-ation

The likelihood of a homicide developing into a blood-feud, its force, and its chances of settlement are thus dependent on the structural interrelations of the persons concerned. Moreover, the blood-feud may be viewed as a structural movement between political segments by which the form of the Nuer political system, as we know it, is maintained. It is true that only close agnatic kin of both sides are immediately and directly involved, but feuds between persons belonging to different tribal sections sooner or later influence the interrelations of the whole communities to which they belong...

A feud has little significance unless there are social relations of some kind which can be broken off and resumed, and, at the same time, these relations necessitate eventual settlement if there is not to be complete cleavage. The function of the feud, viewed in this way, is, therefore, to maintain the structural equilibrium between opposed tribal segments which are, nevertheless, politically fused in relation to larger units.

Through the feud whole sections are left in a state of hostility towards one another, without the hostility leading to frequent warfare, for the scope of direct vengeance is limited to small kinship groups and their efforts to exact it are not incessant...The feud is a political institution, being an approved and regulated mode of behaviour between communities within a tribe. The balanced opposition between tribal segments and their complementary tendencies towards fission and fusion, which we have seen to be a structural principle, is evident in the institution of the feud which, on the one hand, gives expression to the hostility by occasional and violent action that serves to keep the sections apart, and, on the other hand, by the means provided for settlement, prevents opposition from developing into complete fission. The tribal constitution requires both elements of a feud, the need for vengeance and the need for settlement...We therefore regard the feud as essential to the political system as it exists at present...[3]

[1] Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship [Translated by James Harle Bell and Richard von Sturmer] (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 58-59. Italics mine.
[2] Paul Riesman, Freedom in Fulani Social Life [Translated by Martha Fuller] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977),169-171.
[3] E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 158-161.

Bibliography
Evans-Pritchard, E.E. The Nuer. London: Oxford University Press, 1940.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. [Translated by James Harle Bell and Richard von Sturmer] Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.
Riesman, Paul. Freedom in Fulani Social Life [Translated by Martha Fuller]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.

NEXT
Wednesday, October 5th
Broccoli...Vile Weed
Newman has a taste of Jerry's broccoli and struggles to regain composure and dignity.

Styling Culture (9)—Titles, Foreign Terms, and Emphasis

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Styling Culture." 
In the next few weeks I will be posting the text for a "volume" that I have been distributing for the last fifteen years. Back in 1997, I handed out a two-page set of instructions that I called "Rob's Style Sheet." I quickly learned that it could be a useful teaching tool, allowing me to describe the practicalities and esoterica surrounding grammar and style in the higher education classroom (and beyond). It also became apparent that it could be a useful tool for writing comments on student papers. Instead of trying to explain in the margins of a paper that s/he was using "number" in problematic ways (we'll get to that), I could write "#19," and have her know exactly what I mean. The most impressive students learned the material very well, and some of them have already gone on to be successful writers—in and beyond academia and the corporate world.

[a] Emphatic RF

I will be posting the manuscript that I have provisionally entitled Styling Culture on Round and Square during August and September. As you will quickly see, it is meant to be a grammar book for the anthropologist of American English. It has its prescriptive elements, to be sure (this is all explained in the introduction to the series), but it is meant far more powerfully to be a genuinely useful guide to the culture wars surrounding grammar and usage. In particular, I have great venom for both the annoying critics who always seem to be correcting people and (this is important) for the "good guys" who tell you that it doesn't matter. They're both wrong, and they will hurt you if you listen to them. I'm here to help you, so read on.

9. Titles, Foreign Terms, and Emphasis

Italicize book titles, foreign terms, and points of emphasis—and I mean it. Do not underline these. When composing her drafts, Virginia Woolf (and everyone else writing before the computer era) used underlining for emphasis because typewriters do not easily create italics, and handwriting leaves too much room for ambiguity. She sent her manuscripts to printers, and they changed underlined items to italics when the text went to press. You are not Virginia Woolf (and probably aren’t afraid of her either). You are also not working on a typewriter. Use italics, and go clean that room of your own while you're at it.

     a. Italicize foreign terms (bon mots, joie de vivre, kawaii, Schadenfreude).

     b. Italicize book titles (Les Misérables, The Iliad, Zizhi tongjian).

     c. Do not italicize the titles of chapters, essays, or articles (e.g. “Groundnut 

         Farming on the Gambia River,” “Differential Equations and You”).

     d. Italicize key points of emphasis (She invoked the quintessential Boasian 

         argument).

     e. Do not over-italicize points of emphasis, or your text will be cluttered. (She 

         invoked the quintessential Boasian argument).

     f.  Capital letters are not a substitute for proper italicization. DO NOT use caps to 

         "scream" your point at your reader (this is just a little misuse of the rule to see if you 

         are paying attention).

***  ***

This is not earth-shaking (think of our last entry) stuff, but it is still worth knowing and following. Like dashes and hyphens, the art lies in figuring out how to use them (in this case italics) effectively. Every writer has had the experience of discovering how useful it can be to emphasize this or to highlight that. Every good writer has fairly quickly come to the realization that too many italics can become tiresome for both readers and writers. Finding the path between the mountains of overuse and too-little-use is the key. It will take experimentation and a little bit of overdoing...and underdoing. 

The examples above will give you a useful road map for the journey.

NEXT

Page Numbers

Don't ever turn in a paper without them. Few things annoy editors, agents, publishers, and professors as much as papers without page numbers. It is important enough that we will devote an entire entry to them.

Hurtin', Leavin' and Longin' (21)—She Thinks I Still Care

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin'..."

[a] dulcim-care

George Jones lays on the irony in big glops of covered-up self-reference with "She Thinks I Still Care." He sets the tone with a series of "just because x" lines, and dips ever deeper into the waters of missin' with each new image. Yup, just because you rang her number "by mistake" today...you probably do still care.

It is a relatively lighthearted misery we study today. As heartaches go, this one is easier to handle than, say, "I'd Be Better Off in a Pine Box." Still, country music as a genre seems to do this sort of thing better than many others. Perhaps it is from an awareness of being made fun of by music aficionados with other tastes (how could anyone ever come up with the setting for George's song in the YouTube video, below, without it?)... Add to that awareness the equally vibrant theme of the clueless male that we have already encountered in several Hurtin', Leavin', and Longin' posts, and you have a kind of macho-innoncent lost in the jungles of emotional pain.

Take a listen (see the "advice" below), but do check out the video itself after you have been through the lyrics.

She Thinks I Still Care 2:43 
For advice on how best to "engage" the lyrics, click here.

       She Thinks I Still Care

          Artist: George Jones

          Songwriters: Steve Duffy, Dicky Lee Lipscomb

          Just because I ask a friend about her
          Just because I spoke her name somewhere
          Just because I rang her number by mistake today
          She thinks I still care

          Just because I haunt the same old places
          Where the memory of her lingers everywhere
          Just because I'm not the happy guy I used to be
          She thinks I still care

          But if she's happy thinkin' I still need her
          Then let that silly notion bring her cheer
          But how could she ever be so foolish
          Oh where would she get such an idea

          Just because I ask a friend about her
          And just because I spoke her name somewhere
          Just because I saw her then went all to pieces
          She thinks I still care
          She thinks I still care

[b] Iconic; ironic RF

There are many angles we could pursue with our East Asian poem today. We are not trying to replicate themes, of course, but I was surprised by the number of shi 詩 ("poem") and ci 詞 ("lyric") texts that were relevant. I am just going to dive into one of my favorite oddities in the rich Tang dynasty (618-906) poetic tradition. George Jones is a long way from these sentiments, at least on the surface, but that is the whole point of what we do every week on Hurtin', Leavin, and Longin.

       Poem on Losing One's Teeth
       Han Yu (768-824)

          Last year I lost an incisor
          and this year a molar, and now
          half a dozen more teeth fall out
          all at once—and that's
          not the end of it either.
          The rest are all loose, and I know 
          there's no end till they're all gone.
          The first one, I thought
          what a shame for that obscene gap!
          Two or three, and I thought
          I was falling apart, almost
          at death's door. Before, when one
          loosened, I quaked and hoped
          wildly it "wouldn't." The 
          gaps made it hard to chew
          and with a loose tooth I'd
          rinse my mouth gingerly.
          Then when at last it fell out
          it felt like a mountain collapsing.
          But now I've got used to this
          Nothing earthshaking. I've
          still twenty left, though I know
          one by one they'll all go.
          But at one tooth per year it will
          take me two decades, and gone,
          all gone, will it matter
          they went one by one

[c] Toothless RF

          and not all at the same time?
          People say when your teeth go
          it's certain the end's near.
          But seems to me life has
          its limits, you die when you die
          either with or without teeth.
          They also say gaps scare 
          The people who see you. Well
          to views to everything
          as Chuang Tzu noted: A blasted 
          tree need not necessarily
          be cut down, though geese
          that don't hiss be slaughtered.
          For the toothless who mumble
          silence has its advantage, and 
          those who can't chew will find 
          soft food tastes better. This is a poem
          I chanted and wrote
          to startle my wife and children.[1]
                           —Translated by Kenneth O. Hanson

[1]  Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo, Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974), 172-173.

Bibliography
Liu Wu-chi and Irving Yucheng Lo. Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1974.

NEXT
Sunday, October 2nd
Untangling My Mind
Clint Black and Merle Haggard teamed up to write one of the deepest ballads to mental confusion and loss ever envisioned.

Styling Culture (8)—Dashes and Hyphens

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Styling Culture." 
In the next few weeks I will be posting the text for a "volume" that I have been distributing for the last fifteen years. Back in 1997, I handed out a two-page set of instructions that I called "Rob's Style Sheet." I quickly learned that it could be a useful teaching tool, allowing me to describe the practicalities and esoterica surrounding grammar and style in the higher education classroom (and beyond). It also became apparent that it could be a useful tool for writing comments on student papers. Instead of trying to explain in the margins of a paper that s/he was using "number" in problematic ways (we'll get to that), I could write "#19," and have her know exactly what I mean. The most impressive students learned the material very well, and some of them have already gone on to be successful writers—in and beyond academia and the corporate world.

[a] Dashes and Hyphens RF

I will be posting the manuscript that I have provisionally entitled Styling Culture on Round and Square during August and September. As you will quickly see, it is meant to be a grammar book for the anthropologist of American English. It has its prescriptive elements, to be sure (this is all explained in the introduction to the series), but it is meant far more powerfully to be a genuinely useful guide to the culture wars surrounding grammar and usage. In particular, I have great venom for both the annoying critics who always seem to be correcting people and (this is important) for the "good guys" who tell you that it doesn't matter. They're both wrong, and they will hurt you if you listen to them. I'm here to help you, so read on.

8. Dashes and Hyphens

a. Use a hyphen (-) to form compound adjectives or compound nouns, to create some prefixes, and to prevent the misreading of awkward constructions. For reasons of clarity and style, it is important not to overuse hyphens.
           Examples:

           scholar-official

           daughter-in-law

           a re-covered book

           step-by-step

           all-inclusive

           short-lived (learn to pronounce this correctly and wow your friends)

           warrior-monk

          News-Free Press

b. For dashes, choose one of the following (and be consistent). I far prefer the latter (#2, below), but the only thing that everyone (at least those who care about these matters) dislikes is the use of a hyphen (-) for a dash. It goes beyond aesthetics; it confuses an otherwise natural and fluid cosmic pattern. Don’t do it—ever!

(1) Use double dashes (--) with no spaces between words, e.g:

           Example:

This helps to account for the dissonance found in the novel--the combined effect of the narrative proper, the poems, and moral statements in the text.

(2) Use a long dash (—) with no space between words. Create this in Microsoft Word by pressing “shift/option” and dash at the same time, e.g:

           Example:

This helps to account for the dissonance found in the novel—the combined effect of the narrative

proper, the poems, and moral statements in the text.

c. AutoCorrect^® will, if properly set, do this for you if you type in the two dashes noted in (1), above. It will make two hyphens automatically into a refined dash, and will insulate you from professorial criticism, even if you have not had time to think clearly about the points above.

***  ***

[b] Lightly(-)salted RF

This is not earth(-)shaking stuff, but if you read many hundreds of chaotic pages a year, little things like hyphens and dashes start to matter. If you have never given much thought to matters such as this, it might seem as though your professor (or editor) just needs to get out more and ingest a chill(-)pill or two. Here again, though, I am trying to teach my students the expectations of the American publishing industry. Funny thing, that publishing industry. Hyphens and dashes seem to matter a great deal to people at all levels of it (from typesetters in an earlier era to editors with grease(-)pencils.

Dashes and hyphens did not get lost in the shuffle when big ink(-)blotched irons slammed into newsprint (not news-print) to create, say, Baltimore's evening newspaper in the, say, the 1940s. The Baltimore Evening Sun (not Evening-Sun) cranked away until it went the way of just about every other evening newspaper (not news-paper) in the United States (not United-States). 

Hyphens and dashes are still here, and they still matter. Just look at the two paragraphs above and think it over. Develop an ear and an eye for them, and start to notice how much useful work they can do, as well as how much annoyance they can cause if left to the winds of chance.

NEXT

Titles, Foreign Terms, and Points of Emphasis

Learn to use italics. Your underline key is next to worthless, and I urge you to stop using it for anything!

Styling Culture (7)—Quotations and Captions

Click here to read the introduction to the Round and Square series "Styling Culture." 
In the next few weeks I will be posting the text for a "volume" that I have been distributing for the last fifteen years. Back in 1997, I handed out a two-page set of instructions that I called "Rob's Style Sheet." I quickly learned that it could be a useful teaching tool, allowing me to describe the practicalities and esoterica surrounding grammar and style in the higher education classroom (and beyond). It also became apparent that it could be a useful tool for writing comments on student papers. Instead of trying to explain in the margins of a paper that s/he was using "number" in problematic ways (we'll get to that), I could write "#19," and have her know exactly what I mean. The most impressive students learned the material very well, and some of them have already gone on to be successful writers—in and beyond academia and the corporate world.

[a] Emphasis RF

I will be posting the manuscript that I have provisionally entitled Styling Culture on Round and Square during August and September. As you will quickly see, it is meant to be a grammar book for the anthropologist of American English. It has its prescriptive elements, to be sure (this is all explained in the introduction to the series), but it is meant far more powerfully to be a genuinely useful guide to the culture wars surrounding grammar and usage. In particular, I have great venom for both the annoying critics who always seem to be correcting people and (this is important) for the "good guys" who tell you that it doesn't matter. They're both wrong, and they will hurt you if you listen to them. I'm here to help you, so read on.

7. Quotations and Captions

This is one of the most important things you will learn to do in academic writing, so pay attention. Engaging authors, their opinions, and the range of their research findings lies near the center of academic life. You read, you reflect, and then you write about it. More often than not, you are going to want the words of the authors who led to your stimulating new thoughts...on the page, right there with you. And that is a good thing.

The hard part is getting it just right. The first thing you may want to consider is the word "quotation." Most people say "quote," as in "I put the quote from Edmund Spenser on the third page." Nope, you "...put the quotation from Edmund Spenser on the third page." There are stock quotes and price quotes, but the thing you put in your paper is a quotation. Look it up. If that sounds a little too prescriptive, think rather how you'll wow your friends with the consistently accurate use of the term. They will puzzle in wonderment at your linguistic control, and you will have to do your best to feign humility. It'll be fun.

But learning to quote (this is the "unsplit" infinitive) is not all play. There are a great number of details to consider, the most important of which is to set off quotations of more than three lines. We begin with that one, below, and work our way through the hanging vines of quotation procedure, before coming to the calm waters of italics and emphasis in our next post.

a. Short quotations of fewer than three lines can be set off in the main double-spaced text with quotation marks. “I would like you to get that straight,” Rob muttered, “or it could be a very long semester.”  

b. Please remember that proper quotation form requires proper use of (“) and (‘). (‘) should only be used for a quotation within a quotation—never “independently.” By the way, the Norwegian bachelor farmer said, “My daddy always told me to milk the cows first and socialize later, if time permits. ‘And that is why I have spent all of my time with cows,’ he reminded me.”

c. Quotations longer than three lines should be set off from the text by an extra .5” on each side, and should be single-spaced. Learn to make a “quotation style” for your software that will do this automatically (see #3—Styles, above). This is my personal preference.

d. Quotations should remain in the same twelve-point font used in the body of your paper. Do not use a different (or smaller) font for quotations, even if you have seen beautiful examples of it in published works. Publishers (usually) use higher quality equipment for their printing than do college libraries or computer rooms.

e. Do not italicize or use bold face fonts in quoted texts. (Italics for emphasis—yours or the author’s—is acceptable). If you italicize a portion of the text you have quoted (for emphasis or clarity), you must make a note of this in your citation (see below).

          Example

               2John Gardner, The Art of Fiction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 55–56. 

           Italics mine.

              3Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (New York: Cambridge University

          Press, 2002), 20. Author’s italics.

[b] Painted-in RF

f. Single-spaced quotations are my preference, even though many publishers prefer that everything be double-spaced. I am reading for the quality of your prose and your argumentation, and do not need extra spaces to critique the writers you quote.

g. Longer quotations should be inset by a half-inch on both the left and right margins (this is my personal preference, since it is helpful for making comments—see 7c, above).

h. Please be aware that you should not place quotation marks around inset quotations. They should only be used in brief quotations within the body of your text. Rob said one more time, for all to hear: “You need to get this straight!”

i. Do not “center” quotations. This just makes your text “messy.”

j. All quotations should have an unjustified right margin (see 4g).

     Example:

     … a complex rhetorical strategy, as we shall see. Others, such as the entry below, 

     are brief, and comment quite directly on a preceding textual entry:

            Left Margin Justified                                                                           Right Margin Unjustified

          Eighth month. Sun Quan sent an envoy to declare himself subject [to Wei], his

          memorial worded in humble language. He also returned Yu Jin and others [who 

          were prisoners in Wu]...Yu Jin’s mustache and hair were white, his appearance

          disheveled. Before the sovereign, he wept and knocked his head against the 

          ground. The sovereign consoled him, relating the stories of Xun Linfu and Meng

          Mingshi. He appointed him anyuan jiangjun, ordering him north to Ye, and to visit

          Gaoling. The sovereign then had images of Guan Yu’s victory, Pang De’s rage, 

          and Yu Jin’s surrender painted on the Gaoling mausoleum walls. Seeing this, Jin 

          was ashamed, grew ill, and died.1

     Before proceeding to a more general discussion of commentarial themes in the Zizhi

     tongjian, it is important to point out that the vast majority of commentaries do not deal

     directly with the rhetorical issues surrounding SimaGuang’s use of source materials.

k. There should be one “clean” space between double-spaced text and quotations. Delete extra spaces, but make sure that you do leave a space before and after the quotation. The example directly above is correct.

     Example (Incorrect—insufficient spacing between text and quotation):

     … a complex rhetorical strategy, as we shall see. Others, such as the entry below, are

     brief, and comment quite directly on a preceding textual entry:

          Eighth month. Sun Quan sent an envoy to declare himself subject [to Wei], his

          memorial worded in humble language. He also returned Yu Jin and others [who 

          were prisoners in Wu].

     Example (Incorrect—too much spacing between text and quotation):

     … a complex rhetorical strategy, as we shall see. Others, such as the entry below, are

     brief, and comment quite directly on a preceding textual entry:

           (delete this space)

          Eighth month. Sun Quan sent an envoy to declare himself subject [to Wei], his

          memorial worded in humble language. He also returned Yu Jin and others [who 

          were prisoners in Wu].

NEXT

Dashes and Hyphens

This should be easy, but it's not. Just ask the journalists at the consolidated newspaper (this happened many years ago in Chattanooga) when the News and the Free Press were combined with a dangling and problematic hyphen. Think about it.