Tag Archives: Communication

Have you tried the new reduced whiches and thats diet?

Posted on 8 January 2013 by Propagandum

You don’t have to be a professional writer to benefit from making your writing sound more natural. The words which or that are often stodgy and unnecessary. Following Strunk and White’s helpful suggestion – under their banner ‘Omit needless words’ – … Continue reading →

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Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomist (exhibition review) #1

Posted on 17 September 2012 by Propagandum

This is an unusual start to any review, but the gallery’s beautifully panelled and French-polished rosewood doors and postmodern urinal dividers in the spotless toilets were so unusual in their generosity to the possibility of civilized public behaviour that I … Continue reading →

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What is synaesthesia? Why is it important?

Posted on 6 August 2012 by Propagandum

Crikey – the online Random House dictionary says synaesthesia (synesthesia in more search-friendly US English) ‘is a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization … Continue reading →

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Gramophone, Film, Typewriter by Friedrich Kittler (book review)

Posted on 10 May 2012 by Propagandum

Friedrich Kittler’s spiky and complex masterpiece of multimodal media archaeology (published by Stanford University Press in 1986) was our first book for the Cambridge books-about-books group. Not an obvious choice: it’s not about books, but there again, books aren’t necessarily codexes any more. … Continue reading →

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A shout out for The Scream

Posted on 3 May 2012 by Propagandum

‘Why is The Scream so iconic?’ a BBC webpage asks about what, as of Tuesday 2 May, is the world’s most expensive picture. It continues: ‘Professor Martin Kemp, emeritus professor of the History of Art at Oxford University … said it is … Continue reading →

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16 things about white space

Posted on 3 April 2012 by Propagandum

1. White space is the name typesetters, typographers and type designers – artists of the black – give to a presence where we might expect an absence. We can, if we choose, see a shape where the mark has not been … Continue reading →

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A post about books about books

Posted on 1 March 2012 by Propagandum

27 February was the first meeting of our Cambridge books-about-books book group. It has been a pet project I have been looking to get off the ground for a couple of years. It is in the semi-public domain under the aegis … Continue reading →

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Ordinary is beautiful, beautiful is ordinary

Posted on 20 February 2012 by Propagandum

I hope this selection doesn’t seem too random; we all collect texts, images and things people say, don’t we? The justification, if I need one, is that I am trying to reflect, in this tiny collection, something of the ordinariness … Continue reading →

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‘A page of good prose remains invincible’ 2

Posted on 8 December 2011 by Propagandum

Craig Raine’s title poem ‘A Martian Sends a Postcard Home’ (Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 1) is an attempt at ‘making strange’ the old-known so it becomes the new-known. We look at the world through the eyes of an alien. If … Continue reading →

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Page against the machine 1 – Derrida and the great CD-ROM disaster

Posted on 21 November 2011 by Propagandum

While the form of the ‘book’ is now going through a period of general upheaval, and while that form now appears less natural, and its history less transparent than ever, and while one cannot tamper with it without disturbing everything … Continue reading →

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