{"id":18213,"date":"2020-04-27T23:02:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T06:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=18213"},"modified":"2020-04-27T23:05:59","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T06:05:59","slug":"the-mac-is-definitely-not-a-typewriter-no-really-i-mean-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2020\/04\/27\/the-mac-is-definitely-not-a-typewriter-no-really-i-mean-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mac is DEFINITELY not a typewriter!!! No, really, I mean it!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>I\u2019ve been hearing about <cite>The Mac Is Not a Typewriter<\/cite>, by Robin Williams (no, not that Robin Williams), more or less since it came out in 1990, but I never got around to reading it until now. A quick look at the table of contents makes clear that I probably already know everything in it, but I figured it was worth a look anyway.<\/p>\r\n<p>Somehow I was expecting that it would be sort of comforting and empowering in tone. I was not expecting it to be as, um, firmly opinionated as it is.<\/p>\r\n<p>For example, the second section is about quotation marks. It starts out thusly:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>Use real quotation marks\u2014never those grotesque generic marks that actually symbolize inch or foot marks[\u2026].<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p>Grotesque! I never knew until now that straight-up-and-down quotation marks are grotesque!<\/p>\r\n<p>And then Williams goes on to refer to<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>[\u2026] the revolting \" key [\u2026]<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n<p>So not only is the mark itself grotesque, but the key that produces that mark is revolting! My goodness.<\/p>\r\n<p>She later uses three exclamation marks and the word \u201c<strong>always<\/strong>\u201d in bold to inform readers about the dangers of putting an apostrophe in possessive <cite>its<\/cite>.<\/p>\r\n<p>Anyway. I\u2019m finding the <strong>strong prescriptivist absolutism<\/strong> kind of entertaining, but the book is not nearly as soothing as I was expecting.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prescriptivism","category-typography"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18213"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18217,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18213\/revisions\/18217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}