Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 501.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2024-03-20 07:15:42+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: skills of communication

As I prepared messages for Humanist this morning, a memory from long ago
and a question came to mind.

The question was this: what has happened to the precious resource of
human attention to explain the outbreak of asterisk disease? Asterisk
disease is the apparently uncontrollable desire to use this typographic
device in multiple clusters to draw attention to words and phrases
regarded as worth the reader's attention. (The cluttering of messages
with asterisks has to my eye the opposite effect.) Are we to conclude
that our readers have forgotten how to read, or that our writers have
forgotten how to communicate effectively?

The memory that came to me, partly as a result of the foregoing
pathology, was standing with the printer of my high-school newspaper
over an edition of it and being taught how to design a page to attract
and hold the attention of readers. Yes, this was a long time ago. The
man (in this case) had printer's ink on his hands. I was editor of this
newspaper. I learned a lot from him, principally how to make sure the
newspaper communicated effectively.

I would that some such thoughts were more often thought.

Comments?

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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