You’ll sometimes hear a poorly functioning tablet computer criticized as nothing more than a “glorified Etch A Sketch.” But that does a disservice to the classic toy. With more than 100 million of the silver-screen drawing devices sold since its introduction in 1960, it must be doing something right. I owned an Etch A Sketch as a child, and if I were to pick one up right now, I’d happily resume exactly where I left off— with a lot of hilarious squiggles and an occasional shape that sort of looks like something.
I’ve been reading One Summer: America 1927, the new book by Bill Bryson with a wonderful message. A lot of big things happened that year, from Charles Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight to Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs to the first dynamite blasts carving Mount Rushmore. People went crazy for these feats. Lindbergh could barely go out in public for the adoring crowds.
Then, as now, media was also one of the big things.
It’s fairly common to shorten names. We watch “TV” these days, rather than “television.” We call our Williams “Bill” and our Katherines “Kat.” We can dial up AAA for roadside assistance, withdraw funds from an ATM, stop by an HEB on our way home, and cook our dinner with PAM. If something amuses us, perhaps we LOL or even LMAO. We might tell our BFFs we’ll see them L8R or sign off with TTYL.
A recent online article noting that the BBC television show Sherlock, now airing on PBS, “is not a detective show, but rather a show about a detective” reminded me of the writing we do here at DeLaune and Associates. Because in our work for technology companies, we’re not producing technical writing, but rather writing about technology.
Now, Sherlock Holmes certainly does his detecting and we’ve certainly done technical writing.
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