Coming over all boustrophedon

Awful cover - I much prefer
the older one

I was reading an old Morse book at the weekend to have a break from science. Specifically Service of All the Dead. This is not my favourite of Colin Dexter's novels. The plot is ridiculously unlikely. And the attitude to homosexuality (pretty well equated with paedophilia) and women ('You're a pretty little thing,' being a commonplace and inoffensive sort of comment) seems more 1960s than 1979 when the book was written. But it did get me thinking.

Specifically, at one point Morse is searching a church and Dexter says he does this boustrophedon. My immediate reaction was to think he was showing off, and this was a classic example of using a word many people didn't know just for the sake of it. As it happens I did know what it meant. It was originally a form of writing where, having reached the end of the line, the writer starts the next line at the same end, writing the next line backwards. Then starts at the usual end again and writes forwards. And so on. The term comes from the way parallel furrows are ploughed (by an ox).

Thinking Dexter was showing off, I thought 'Why didn't he just say that Morse zig-zagged up and down the pews?' This would certainly be easier to understand. But on giving it a bit more thought, to be fair to Dexter, it's not quite the same thing. A zig-zag should be like the letter Z, with the connecting back movement at an angle. You don't do that with ploughing or writing, and you can't do that if, like Morse, you are constrained by church pews. Technically you have to go boustrophedon.

So here's the dilemma. I still think Dexter was showing off, and I still think that it's not a good idea to use words most people don't understand (and all but a tiny fraction won't bother to look up). This reduces your ability as a writer to communicate. Yet at the same time, it was, without doubt, the right word. I think maybe I would have engineered some way for Lewis to calling it zig-zagging, so Morse could correct him and introduce the proper term. But I can't really falt Colin Dexter for using the word that does the job best.

See Service of All the Dead at Amazon.co.uk and at Amazon.com

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense

Search This Blog