Re: injecting a little whimsy into grey text

["Downing, David" <DavidDowning -at- users -dot- com>]

From: "Mitchell Maltenfort" <mmalten -at- gmail -dot- com>
Subject: Re: injecting a little whimsy into grey text

I was once writing a journal article on spinal motor control.
Describing why one type of circuit was in the frog but not in the cat,
I wrote "cats do not swim voluntarily."  I was told to take it out.

--------------------------------------------------

I had a similar experience e when I was working on that cataloging
textbook I co-authored. I wrote a proposal to sell the idea and
suggested spicing the book up with some more colorful examples. For
example, I suggested illustrating the use of parenthetical qualifiers in
subject headings with the example "Strippers (Chemical technology)." The
editor replied, somewhat apologetically, that humor like that was
"anathema" to a text book. What I found interesting, though, was that he
did suggest a condition under which an example like that would be
acceptable -- if it was part of a whole "basket" of light examples. I've
always wondered why that would be okay.

BTW, I included one example in the book that wasn't meant to be funny,
but which someone else found funny. I was trying to illustrate the fact
that subject headings need to be neutral, and used as an example the
subject heading "Alcoholics," saying that you would use it instead of
"Drunks" or "Drunkards."
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