Serious reading, after all, should be active, focused, engaged—and Cooper suggested some ways to make it so.
First, read aloud—at least some of the time. “Every line of Shakespeare, every line of Milton, is meant to be pronounced, cannot be duly appreciated until it is pronounced.”
Second, read slowly. “Take ample time. Pause where the punctuation bids one pause; note each and every comma; wait a moment between a period and the next capital letter. And pause when common sense bids you pause, that is, when you have not understood.”
This led to the third dictum: “Read suspiciously. Reread. What a busy man has time to read at all, he has time to read more than once.”
Elsewhere, he added another piece of advice: Learn by heart at least a few poems and passages of prose.
A word fraught with meaning
I like embroidering my plainspoken, earthy, everyday, quotidian speech with particularly Victorianesque embellishments and verbally diabolic adornments that I dredge up from profligate readings of literature, ephemera, and old Monty Python sketches. Or maybe I just like words with lots of syllables.
To that end, I sometimes clot my electro-mails and casual conversation with antique or rarely heard (among my peers, anyway) vocabulary.
Clifton StrengthsFinder
In December, following up on an offer by coach Dave Kaiser, I took the Clifton StrengthsFinder online test. Dave recommended the $9.99 version that gives you your top 5 strengths out of a menu of 34.
The StrengthsFinder is a 100+ item test that purportedly feeds back those parts of your personality that most dominate your outlook and behavior.
In life, as in technical writing: you have to choose
One of the chief rules of tech writing -- or at least one of my chief rules -- is to not dump into the manual every scrap of information I have on hand.
The tech writer's job is to present, to select, to shape. As with art, it's not just about what you put in, it's about what you leave out.
DOOMSDAY IS ... Friday (for 2014)
Which means that Friday falls on:
- the last day of February (this is the key fact if you remember nothing else. Doomsday is always the last day in February for every year.)
- 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12
- 5/9 and 9/5
- 7/11 and 11/7
- March 7 (7 days after the last day of February)
- January 3, except for leap years (years divisible by 4), when it's January 4
It's easy to remember Doomsday for the even months. To remember the day for the odd months, use the mnemonic, "I work 9-to-5 at the 7-11."
I Should Be / I Am
