June 12, 2009
N.Y. Times mines its data to identify words that readers find abstruse
Zachary M. Seward in Nieman Journalism Lab:
If The New York Times ever strikes you as an abstruse glut of antediluvian perorations, if the newspaper’s profligacy of neologisms and shibboleths ever set off apoplectic paroxysms in you, if it all seems a bit recondite, here’s a reason to be sanguine:The Times has great data on the words that send readers in search of a dictionary.
As you may know, highlighting a word or passage on the Times website calls up a question mark that users can click for a definition and other reference material. (Though the feature was recently improved, it remains a mild annoyance for myself andmanyotherswho nervously click and highlight text on webpages.) Anyway, it turns out the Times tracks usage of that feature, and yesterday, deputy news editorPhilip Corbett, who oversees the Timesstyle manual, offered reporters a fascinating glimpse into the 50 most frequently looked-up words on nytimes.com in 2009. We obtained the memo and accompanying chart, which offer a nice lesson in how news sites can improve their journalism by studying user behavior.
More here.
Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 08:41 AM | Permalink
Comments
Too bad the software didn't indicate whether readers were annoyed to have to look up these words, instead of content to. That they looked them up at all suggests it was something they opted for. Consider the times one passes up such an option because the forfeit of one word's precise meaning doesn't seem more destructive to an understanding of the gist of the matter than a few missing vowels to the sense of a sequence of words.
A perfectly organic way to acquire a vocabulary is to read words you don't quite understand until you, too, can use them in ways that are vague, at times you suspect are appropriate. Writers who labor to be clearer than that risk writing prose that sounds like instructions for assembling a wine rack that was made in Romania.
Is an extensive vocabulary just a catching set of tics? Writing clear prose for a wide audience is extremely time-consuming. Paradoxically, the use of big words is often a sign the writer is in a hurry.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 12, 2009 9:38:44 AM
Wow, that lede has gelastic panache! I must be a wordnerd...unfortunately, I use words on the list, and I blame Scrabble for it.
Posted by: missvolare | Jun 12, 2009 9:44:44 AM
I feel nothing but shadenfreude when I read that many writers, employing the shibboleth "make the reader work", are so penurious due to using such enervated, abstruse and parlous language that you know that they must have adopted a louche, laconic solipsism, combined with a saturnine tone as their epistomology, which they flatter themelves is sui generis, but which in fact is antidiluvian, and which explains their impoverished, peripatetic existence, forever exempt from all sumptuary laws.
Posted by: J. Hawkins | Jun 12, 2009 10:43:08 AM
Is there such a thing as schadenfreudianism?
Posted by: Robin | Jun 12, 2009 11:07:50 AM
Robin, the delight taken in another's humiliation -- most especially if that humiliation can be seen to expose the sexual etiology of those problems afflicting the other -- is a Schadenfreudian matter. The lipsmacking readiness to impute sexual causes to every kind of public distress = schadenfreudianism.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 12, 2009 5:31:26 PM
If those are "big words" we're in trouble. I had to look up "Trophonian" the other day (Nicholson Baker)... it took me 20 seconds; I have to mourn the loss of a culture that valued/enjoyed learning for its own sake.
("Gelastic" is a new one on me... nice.)
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Jun 12, 2009 5:45:04 PM
Justin Smith used "gelastic" here in a recent column. J Hawkins pointed out a much (centuries...) earlier usage of the term, spelled "gelastick," in the comments section of that column.
I think the hardest words are the 2-syllable words. They tend to be the oldest and to have taken on contradictory meanings -- even opposite meanings -- over time. "Livid" is an example. Depending on a lot of things, it can mean either "white" or "dark." Often it is used to paint a picture of what kind of rage a person is in -- "livid with rage." The difference is important: a person who is empurpled with rage is indeed angry, his countenance dark. But to be sufficiently enraged that the blood has drained from your face and you are white with rage is to be in a resolved, killing rage. The dictionary-permissable use of "livid" to mean either thing can be a serious miscue.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 12, 2009 6:13:36 PM
"Justin Smith used 'gelastic' here in a recent column."
Unfortunately, I wasn't notified! (laugh)
"The dictionary-permissable use of 'livid' to mean either thing can be a serious miscue."
Only if someone from another century/planet relies on the word to describe coloring, as opposed to degree of agitation, no?
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Jun 12, 2009 6:35:35 PM
Steven, it's not coloring -- as if that were in itself a miscue. It's a matter of blood circulation, as when blood rushes to the face or drains away from it. Different states of agitation are thereby denoted, although there are other metrics. For elucidation, please displace this idea downwards - slightly. What else you got that turns "darker" in a certain state? This is not about pigment, and it is not unique to our species: squid turn purple at the moment of mating.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 12, 2009 7:29:36 PM
Elatia:
I'm reliably caramel-colored all year round, whatever my mood (or the conditions of my humors). I neither pale nor blush but have, at times, been accurately described as "livid". Anyone who finds that word "hard" to use, for the reason you cite, is either clinically pedantic or (at the risk of stooping to pleonasm) silly.
PS Thanks for the chuckle-extorting micro-seminar on the difference between facial-coloring-due-to-blood-flow and skin pigment; ditto the Cousteau-era squid factoid; I assumed it was common knowledge that these things are common knowledge, but: you learn something new every day!
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Jun 12, 2009 8:07:19 PM
And as long as we're being scientific: *this* lingam groweth a shade or two *lighter* when Venus bids Ithyphallus to romp. I'm sure the other darkies reading this will concur.
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Jun 12, 2009 8:16:16 PM
It's late in Germany, I know, Steven. But we were talking about word derivations? And words that are old enough to have multiple and even contrasting meanings? Can I not even refer to your feet without your thinking of TV, skin color, and engorgement? Yes, yes...at 3:00 a.m., everyone's frame of reference narrows to what's really important. But tomorrow is another day.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jun 12, 2009 8:40:23 PM
"What else you got that turns 'darker' in a certain state?"
Didn't you mean to end that with a "chile"?
Re: 3am: that's Berlin, doll. It ain't Podunk. My Dah-link walked in from a gig about 15 minutes ago. Life in the big city!
Posted by: Steven Augustine | Jun 12, 2009 9:07:35 PM
Nice to find some coherent and explorative chit-chat happening on such a casual basis.
Dah-link is pure Au.
lovely bubbly,
I've come through quite the viscous swamp of utter smudge, smut, senselessness& shamelessness to find a smidge of mental O2ygen... not that you'd need to breath it everyday, but its sure good to know it's out there.
Posted by: Sprawling Mag | Jun 13, 2009 7:39:53 PM
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