1. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  2. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  3. Abo, Akinori 9
  4. aesthetics 19
  5. agile 30
  6. Albers, Josef 17
  7. Alexander, Christopher 135
  8. Alexander, Scott 5
  9. Allsopp, John 4
  10. Ammer, Ralph 6
  11. Anderson, Gretchen 7
  12. anxiety 9
  13. Appleton, Maggie 5
  14. Aptekar-Cassels, Wesley 5
  15. Arango, Jorge 4
  16. architecture 110
  17. art 86
  18. Asimov, Isaac 5
  19. attention 17
  20. Auping, Michael 6
  21. Aurelius, Marcus 14
  22. Bachelard, Gaston 12
  23. Baker, Nicholson 10
  24. beauty 58
  25. Behrensmeyer, Anna K. 7
  26. Bell, Larry 3
  27. Bjarnason, Baldur 5
  28. Blake, William 5
  29. blogging 21
  30. body 11
  31. Boeing, Geoff 7
  32. boredom 9
  33. Botton, Alain de 38
  34. Brand, Stewart 4
  35. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  36. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  37. Broskoski, Charles 6
  38. brutalism 7
  39. building 16
  40. bureaucracy 12
  41. Burnham, Bo 9
  42. business 15
  43. Byron, Lord 14
  44. Cagan, Marty 6
  45. Calvino, Italo 21
  46. Camus, Albert 13
  47. care 6
  48. Carruth, Shane 15
  49. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
  50. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  51. chance 11
  52. change 16
  53. Chiang, Ted 4
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Clark, Robin 3
  58. Cleary, Thomas 8
  59. Cleary, J.C. 8
  60. code 20
  61. collaboration 16
  62. collections 31
  63. Collison, Simon 3
  64. color 23
  65. commonplace 10
  66. communication 31
  67. community 7
  68. complexity 11
  69. connection 24
  70. constraints 25
  71. construction 9
  72. content 9
  73. Corbusier, Le 13
  74. Coyier, Chris 4
  75. craft 65
  76. creativity 58
  77. crime 9
  78. Critchlow, Tom 5
  79. critique 10
  80. Cross, Nigel 12
  81. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
  82. css 11
  83. culture 13
  84. curiosity 11
  85. cycles 7
  86. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  87. darkness 28
  88. Darwin, Will 10
  89. data 8
  90. death 38
  91. Debord, Guy 6
  92. decisions 9
  93. design 131
  94. details 30
  95. Dickinson, Emily 9
  96. Dieste, Eladio 4
  97. discovery 9
  98. doors 7
  99. Dorn, Brandon 11
  100. drawing 23
  101. Drucker, Peter F. 15
  102. Duany, Andres 18
  103. Eatock, Daniel 4
  104. economics 13
  105. efficiency 7
  106. Eisenman, Peter 8
  107. Eliot, T.S. 14
  108. emotion 8
  109. ending 14
  110. engineering 11
  111. Eno, Brian 4
  112. ethics 14
  113. euphony 38
  114. Evans, Benedict 4
  115. evolution 9
  116. experience 14
  117. farming 8
  118. fashion 11
  119. features 25
  120. feedback 6
  121. flaws 10
  122. Flexner, Abraham 8
  123. food 16
  124. form 18
  125. Fowler, Martin 4
  126. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  127. friendship 6
  128. fun 7
  129. function 31
  130. games 13
  131. gardens 26
  132. Garfield, Emily 4
  133. Garfunkel, Art 6
  134. geography 8
  135. geometry 18
  136. goals 9
  137. Gombrich, E. H. 4
  138. goodness 12
  139. Graham, Paul 37
  140. graphics 13
  141. Greene, Erick 6
  142. Hamming, Richard 45
  143. happiness 17
  144. Harford, Tim 4
  145. Harper, Thomas J. 15
  146. Hayes, Brian 28
  147. heat 7
  148. Heinrich, Bernd 7
  149. Herbert, Frank 4
  150. Heschong, Lisa 27
  151. Hesse, Herman 6
  152. history 13
  153. Hoffman, Yoel 10
  154. Hofstadter, Douglas 6
  155. home 15
  156. Hoy, Amy 4
  157. Hoyt, Ben 5
  158. html 11
  159. Hudlow, Gandalf 4
  160. humanity 16
  161. humor 6
  162. Huxley, Aldous 7
  163. hypermedia 22
  164. i 18
  165. ideas 19
  166. identity 33
  167. images 10
  168. industry 9
  169. information 42
  170. infrastructure 17
  171. innovation 14
  172. interaction 10
  173. interest 10
  174. interfaces 36
  175. intuition 8
  176. invention 10
  177. Irwin, Robert 65
  178. Isaacson, Walter 28
  179. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  180. iteration 13
  181. Ive, Jonathan 6
  182. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  183. Jacobs, Jane 54
  184. Jacobs, Alan 5
  185. Jobs, Steve 20
  186. Jones, Nick 5
  187. Kahn, Louis 4
  188. Kakuzō, Okakura 23
  189. Kaufman, Kenn 4
  190. Keith, Jeremy 6
  191. Keller, Jenny 10
  192. Kelly, Kevin 3
  193. Keqin, Yuanwu 8
  194. Ketheswaran, Pirijan 6
  195. Kingdon, Jonathan 5
  196. Kitching, Roger 7
  197. Klein, Laura 4
  198. Kleon, Austin 13
  199. Klinkenborg, Verlyn 24
  200. Klyn, Dan 20
  201. knowledge 28
  202. Kohlstedt, Kurt 11
  203. Kramer, Karen L. 10
  204. Krishna, Golden 10
  205. Kuma, Kengo 18
  206. language 20
  207. learning 29
  208. life 59
  209. light 31
  210. loneliness 12
  211. love 25
  212. Lovell, Sophie 16
  213. Lupton, Ellen 11
  214. Luu, Dan 8
  215. Lynch, Kevin 12
  216. MacIver, David R. 8
  217. MacWright, Tom 5
  218. Magnus, Margaret 12
  219. making 77
  220. management 14
  221. Manaugh, Geoff 27
  222. Markson, David 16
  223. Mars, Roman 13
  224. material 39
  225. math 16
  226. McCarter, Robert 21
  227. meaning 33
  228. media 16
  229. melancholy 51
  230. memory 28
  231. metaphor 10
  232. metrics 19
  233. microsites 49
  234. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  235. Mills, C. Wright 9
  236. minimalism 10
  237. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  238. Mod, Craig 15
  239. modularity 6
  240. Mollison, Bill 31
  241. morality 8
  242. Murakami, Haruki 21
  243. music 16
  244. Müller, Boris 7
  245. Naka, Toshiharu 8
  246. names 11
  247. Naskrecki, Piotr 5
  248. nature 51
  249. networks 15
  250. Noessel, Christopher 7
  251. notetaking 34
  252. novelty 10
  253. objects 15
  254. order 10
  255. ornament 9
  256. Orwell, George 7
  257. Ott, Matthias 4
  258. ownership 6
  259. Pallasmaa, Juhani 41
  260. Palmer, John 8
  261. patterns 11
  262. Patton, James L. 9
  263. Pawson, John 21
  264. perception 22
  265. perfection 7
  266. performance 17
  267. Perrine, John D. 9
  268. Petroski, Henry 24
  269. philosophy 6
  270. photography 20
  271. physics 6
  272. Pinker, Steven 8
  273. place 14
  274. planning 15
  275. Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth 18
  276. poetry 13
  277. politics 9
  278. Pollan, Michael 6
  279. practice 10
  280. problems 31
  281. process 22
  282. production 7
  283. productivity 12
  284. products 20
  285. programming 9
  286. progress 16
  287. Pye, David 42
  288. quality 25
  289. questions 8
  290. Radić, Smiljan 20
  291. Rams, Dieter 16
  292. Rao, Venkatesh 14
  293. reading 16
  294. reality 13
  295. Reichenstein, Oliver 5
  296. religion 11
  297. Rendle, Robin 12
  298. repair 28
  299. research 17
  300. Reveal, James L. 4
  301. Richards, Melanie 3
  302. Richie, Donald 10
  303. Rougeux, Nicholas 4
  304. Rowe, Peter G. 10
  305. Rupert, Dave 4
  306. Ruskin, John 5
  307. Satyal, Parimal 9
  308. Saval, Nikil 13
  309. Sayers, Dorothy 32
  310. Schaller, George B. 7
  311. Schwulst, Laurel 5
  312. science 17
  313. seeing 36
  314. Sennett, Richard 45
  315. senses 11
  316. Seuss, Dr. 14
  317. Shakespeare, William 4
  318. Shorin, Toby 8
  319. silence 9
  320. Silverstein, Murray 33
  321. Simms, Matthew 19
  322. Simon, Paul 6
  323. simplicity 14
  324. Singer, Ryan 12
  325. skill 17
  326. Sloan, Robin 5
  327. Smith, Cyril Stanley 29
  328. Smith, Justin E. H. 6
  329. Smith, Rach 4
  330. socializing 7
  331. society 23
  332. software 66
  333. solitude 12
  334. Somers, James 8
  335. Sorkin, Michael 56
  336. sound 14
  337. space 20
  338. Speck, Jeff 18
  339. speech 6
  340. spirit 10
  341. streets 10
  342. structure 13
  343. Strunk, William 15
  344. Ström, Matthew 13
  345. style 30
  346. Sun, Chuánqí 15
  347. symbols 12
  348. systems 18
  349. Sōetsu, Yanagi 34
  350. Sōseki, Natsume 8
  351. Tanaka, Tomoyuki 9
  352. Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō 15
  353. taste 10
  354. Taylor, Dorian 16
  355. teaching 21
  356. teamwork 16
  357. technology 41
  358. texture 7
  359. thinking 30
  360. Thoreau, Henry David 8
  361. time 54
  362. Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
  363. tools 32
  364. touch 8
  365. transportation 16
  366. Trombley, Nick 44
  367. truth 15
  368. Tufte, Edward 31
  369. Turrell, James 6
  370. typography 25
  371. understanding 32
  372. urbanism 68
  373. ux 100
  374. Victor, Bret 9
  375. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 4
  376. vision 7
  377. visualization 34
  378. Voltaire 4
  379. wabi-sabi 8
  380. walking 23
  381. Wallace, David Foster 33
  382. Wang, Shawn 6
  383. war 7
  384. waste 12
  385. Watterson, Bill 4
  386. Webb, Matt 14
  387. Wechler, Lawrence 37
  388. whimsy 11
  389. White, E.B. 15
  390. Wirth, Niklaus 6
  391. wisdom 20
  392. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 7
  393. Woolf, Virginia 11
  394. words 35
  395. work 80
  396. writing 55
  397. Wurman, Richard Saul 18
  398. www 88
  399. Yamada, Kōun 5
  400. Yamashita, Yuhki 4
  401. Yudkowsky, Eliezer 17
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language

Close
  • Spike and spon

    Using an older, pointed knife and spoon, a "spike and spon," to keep the fingers from touching food may have given us the phrase "spic and span" to connote a high standard of cleanliness.

    Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things
    • language
  • The pernicious issue with pangrams

    Screenshot of www.typography.com on 2020-05-26 at 10.49.18 AM.png

    The far more pernicious issue with pangrams, as a means for evaluating typefaces, is how poorly they portray what text actually looks like. Every language has a natural distribution of letters, from most to least common, English famously beginning with the E that accounts for one eighth of what we read, and ending with the Z that appears just once every 1,111 letters. Letter frequencies differ by language and by era — the J is ten times more popular in Dutch than English; biblical English unduly favors the H thanks to archaisms like thou and sayeth — but no language behaves the way pangrams do, with their forced distribution of exotics. Seven of the most visually awkward letters, the W, Y, V, K, X, J, and Z, are among the nine rarest in English, but pangrams force them into every sentence, guaranteeing that every paragraph will be riddled with holes. A typeface designer certainly can’t avoid accounting for these unruly characters, but there’s no reason that they should be disproportionately represented when evaluating how a typeface will perform.

    Jonathan Hoefler, Text for Proofing Fonts
    www.typography.com
    1. ​​Embracing Asymmetrical Design​​
    • typography
    • language
    • design
  • The language itself has been weaponized

    It’s quite difficult, to fight back against the seeming wisdom of axiomatic “truths,” when the language itself has been weaponized through the power of pattern. Through rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, and consonance.

    The last time I was in England was at the invitation of Nomensa, to give a talk at a conference wherein I encouraged the audience to discard an axiom that I feel has done users of the English language more harm than good through endless and glib repetitions.

    Like “Curiosity Killed The Cat,” “You Are Not Your User” sounds so good that we keep on saying it, without appreciating what we’re reifying through repetition. The pleasure of repetition, the pleasure of pattern matching, the pleasingness of Kuh Kuh Kuh consonants on the one hand, and of the round vowelly Yuh Yuh Yuh on the other make these things we say seem true because they sound and feel so good to say.

    Dan Klyn, Sermon for WIAD Bristol 2021
    understandinggroup.com
    • repetition
    • truth
    • language
    • cliché
  • The fire of oak logs

    The fire of oak logs which burned day and night for six months became the focal point of our family life.

    ...It is inevitable that the English word "home" cannot be translated directly into French. The nearest equivalent in French is the word foyer, the hearth.

    Lawrence Wylie, Village in the Vaucluse
    1. ​​Thermal Delight in Architecture​​
    • home
    • fire
    • family
    • language
  • Nominalization

    The English language provides bad writers with a dangerous weapon called nominalization: making something into a noun.

    Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affirmation; rather than postponing something, you implement a postponement.

    "Comprehension checks were used as exclusion criteria” would be better said as “we excluded people who failed to understand the instructions.”

    “There is not any anticipation there will be a cancellation” would be better as “I don’t anticipate that I will have to cancel.”

    Zombie sounds, unlike the verbs whose bodies they snatched, can shamble around without subjects. That is what they have in common with the passive constructions that also bog down these examples.

    Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style
    • language
  • The arbitrariness of the sign

    A key difference between verbal language and the modernist ideal of a visual “language” is the arbitrariness of a verbal sign, which has no natural, inherent relationship to the concept it represents. The sound of the word “horse”, for example, does not innately resemble the concept of a horse. Ferdinand de Saussure called this arbitrariness the fundamental feature of the verbal sign. The meaning of a sign is generated by its relationship to other signs in the language: the sign’s legibility lies in its difference from other signs.

    Ellen Lupton & J. Abbott Miller, The ABC's of ▲■●: The Bauhaus and Design Theory
    1. ​​Gods of the Word​​
    • sound
    • meaning
    • language

    In Gods of the Word, Margaret Magnus suggests that verbal language is not arbitrary – that sounds do have inherent meaning.

  • The demand of a new word

    Why are these phonosemantic classes enough, and we need neither more nor less? Why are these consonants enough, and we need neither more nor less? What determines the need for a new word? How is this demand ‘felt’ by a language? How did the metabolic pathways of American English recognize that ‘jerk’ and ‘twerp’ and ‘punk’ and ‘nitwit’ and ‘dork’ and ‘ass’ and ‘goon’ and ‘twit’ and ‘dodo’ and ‘bum’ and ‘nerd’ and ‘dunce’ and ‘turd’ and ‘boob’ and ‘chump’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘bastard’ and ‘prude’ and so on and so forth simply were not equal to the task? We had to add ‘turkey’ and ‘squirrel’ as well?

    Margaret Magnus, Gods of the Word
    • words
    • language
    • meaning
  • Scooting over

    There is at this point no evidence that acquired characteristics can be inherited. It is held that all changes to a genome are random, and cannot be subject to any higher principle. However, when a word is used in a new context, as it is whenever we say something new, a new sense is permitted. This does affect the phonosemantic structure, the linguistic DNA. Words in the vicinity of this word ‘scoot over’ to make room and allow themselves to be influenced by its philosophy. The language itself is now different.

    Margaret Magnus, Gods of the Word
    • language
  • We must go with them

    "You cannot make what you want to make, but what the material permits you to make. You cannot make out of marble what you would make out of wood, or out of wood what you would make out of stone. Each material has its own life, and one cannot without punishment destroy a living material to make a dumb senseless thing. That is, we must not try to make our materials speak our language, we must go with them to the point where others will understand their language."

    — Constantin Brancusi

    Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture
    • material
    • language
    • communication
  • The receiving end

    At times it helps to rephrase an observation in line with a perspective from the receiving end of technology. When my colleagues in the field of cold-water engineering speak of "ice-infested waters", I am tempted to think of "rig-infested oceans". Language is a fine barometer of values and priorities. As such it deserves careful attention.

    Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology
    • values
    • environment
    • language
  • The language of art

    Everything points to the conclusion that the phrase 'the language of art' is more than a loose metaphor, that even to describe the visible world in images we need a developed system of schemata.

    E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion
    • language
    • art
    • images
  • You're Probably Using the Wrong Dictionary

    An Essay by James Somers
    jsomers.net
    1. ​​As if a word were no more than coordinates​​
    2. ​​Another mind as alive as yours​​
    3. ​​A soft and fitful luster​​
    4. ​​Pathos​​
    5. ​​An affection for words​​
    1. ​​Webster's Dictionary, 1913 Edition​​
    • language
    • writing
  • Book from the Ground: From Point to Point

    A Novel by Bing Xu
    mitpress.mit.edu
    1. ​​z-z-z​​
    • language
    • symbols
    • words
  • In Defense of Browsing

    An Essay by Leanne Shapton
    www.curbed.com

    The feeling of fortuitous gratitude at coming across unexpected information is something most of us who’ve done any research, have experienced — that kismet of finding the perfect book, one spine away from the one that was sought. In the field of art and image research, this sparking of transmission, of sequence and connection, happens on a subconscious level.

    …Why is the vernacular image still being dismissed as ephemera? Why is its study not being prioritized? All languages are alive, but visual language is galactic. Keywords are not eyeballs, and creating rutted pathways to follow is the antithesis of study. A century of visual language, knowledge, and connectivity is marching toward a narrow, parsimonious basement of nomenclature. The NYPL takes a step backward if it models its shelves and research on a search engine. Spontaneity is learning. Browsing is research.

    1. ​​The art of finding what you didn’t know you were looking for​​
    2. ​​Marginalia Search​​
    • connection
    • research
    • language
    • serendipity
    • chance
  • There Is No Word

    A Poem by Tony Hoagland
    www.poetryfoundation.org

    what I already am thinking about
    is my gratitude for language—
    how it will stretch just so much and no farther;

    how there are some holes it will not cover up;
    how it will move, if not inside, then
    around the circumference of almost anything—

    how, over the years, it has given me
    back all the hours and days, all the
    plodding love and faith, all the

    misunderstandings and secrets
    I have willingly poured into it.

    • language
    • words
  • Idiolect

    A Definition
    en.wikipedia.org

    Idiolect is an individual's unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.

    An idiolect is the variety of language unique to an individual. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among a group of people.

    1. ​​Things you didn't know you can be bad at​​
    • language
    • personality
    • identity
    • expression
    • speech
  • Tortured phrases

    An Article by Holly Else
    www.nature.com

    In April 2021, a series of strange phrases in journal articles piqued the interest of a group of computer scientists. The researchers could not understand why researchers would use the terms ‘counterfeit consciousness’, ‘profound neural organization’ and ‘colossal information’ in place of the more widely recognized terms ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘deep neural network’ and ‘big data’.

    Further investigation revealed that these strange terms — which they dub “tortured phrases” — are probably the result of automated translation or software that attempts to disguise plagiarism. And they seem to be rife in computer-science papers.

    • language
    • science

    Via Language Log.

  • Poison sniffers

    An Article by Austin Kleon
    austinkleon.com

    Christopher Johnson says “prescriptivists” or “Cute Curmudgeons” — people who are interested in only policing usage and grammar rules — are “linguistic poison sniffers.” They turn language into “a source of potential embarrassment rather than pleasure.”

    Johnson sees his job as getting people to love and appreciate language by being curious about and paying attention to “what makes language delicious.”

    This reminded of Olivia Laing’s distinction between identifying poison and finding nourishment.

    Everywhere you look these days, there are lots of poison sniffers, but very few cooking a delicious meal…

    1. ​​Finding nourishment vs. identifying poison​​
    • writing
    • language
  • What happened when I stopped using Emojis

    An Article by Clo S.
    thistooshallgrow.com
    Image from thistooshallgrow.com on 2021-06-15 at 1.51.36 PM.png

    In March 2021, I went through a fun self-imposed experiment: no emoji for 2 weeks. Not on social media, not in private messages, not even as Slack or Discord reactions. No emoticon either: the goal was to communicate without illustrations, only with words. I did a semi-rigorous (a.k.a. half-assed) diary study, taking notes on my feelings and behaviour.

    • iconography
    • communication
    • language

    Clo's essay also contains a number of interesting observations on the history and design of emoji.

  • What 80% Comprehension Feels Like

    An Article
    www.sinosplice.com

    One of the major principles of extensive reading is that if a learner can comprehend material at 98% comprehension, she will acquire new words in context, in a painless, enjoyable way. But what is 98% comprehension?

    1. ​​98% comprehension​​
    2. ​​95% comprehension​​
    3. ​​80% comprehension​​
    • reading
    • learning
    • language
    • understanding

See also:
  1. words
  2. communication
  3. meaning
  4. writing
  5. material
  6. values
  7. environment
  8. typography
  9. design
  10. art
  11. images
  12. symbols
  13. sound
  14. reading
  15. learning
  16. understanding
  17. repetition
  18. truth
  19. cliché
  20. iconography
  21. home
  22. fire
  23. family
  24. connection
  25. research
  26. serendipity
  27. chance
  28. science
  29. personality
  30. identity
  31. expression
  32. speech
  1. Margaret Magnus
  2. Robert McCarter
  3. Juhani Pallasmaa
  4. Ursula M. Franklin
  5. Jonathan Hoefler
  6. E. H. Gombrich
  7. Bing Xu
  8. James Somers
  9. Tony Hoagland
  10. Ellen Lupton
  11. J. Abbott Miller
  12. Steven Pinker
  13. Dan Klyn
  14. Clo S.
  15. Lawrence Wylie
  16. Austin Kleon
  17. Leanne Shapton
  18. Henry Petroski
  19. Holly Else