Is the postscript obsolete?

I was reading the Letters to the Editor in a magazine this morning (The Rotarian, if you must know), and one of them included a P.S. That got me to thinking, not for the first time, about the logic of postscripts in today’s world of electronic communication.

A postscript (P.S. = post scriptum) is something added as an afterthought after you’ve written and signed a letter. In a handwritten letter, it is easy to understand. Even in a typed letter, it is not unreasonable: an executive might dictate a letter, which his secretary laboriously typed (perhaps more than once to get it letter-perfect), and when he read it over before signing, he thought of something else he wanted to add. He might write it in by hand, or he might ask the secretary to run it back through her typewriter and tack it onto the end.

In dealing with word processors, however, where additional material can easily be added to the body of the letter and a new copy printed (and it would actually be a challenge to run an existing letter back through the printer to tack on a postscript), do postscripts make any sense?

Well, no, they don’t. Not in terms of logic and logistics, anyway. So why do we still see them?

Because material added as a postscript invariably catches the reader’s eye. Marketing materials (“junk mail” letters printed in the tens or hundreds of thousands) frequently make use of them. And while we may not be deceived by the use of Courier New to give the impression of typed material (is any office still using Courier for letters, anyway?), we can’t help being drawn to that P.S. It seems to say, “But wait! There’s more!” And even if we didn’t read the rest of the letter, there’s that one last chance that we’ll be drawn in by the clincher reserved for the last possible minute.

Another use is to add a handwritten personal note to a form letter sent to multiple recipients. But does that really dull the blow of realizing that you didn’t rate a personal letter?

It could therefore be argued that a postscript has no place in a sensible business letter. When you have received (or thought of) new or additional information, it may color or change what you have already written, and you owe it to your reader to incorporate that new information in what you have already presented, so as not to waste the reader’s time.

So save that “P.S. I love you” for your handwritten note, where it will certainly be appreciated.

Not Idling

As you can see, the subtitle of this blog is “Idle thoughts while walking.” In my first post, I established that I’d record any interesting or compelling thoughts I had while taking my daily constitutional. The blog has expanded to reportage of things I’ve seen, weather phenomena, and a number of other totally unrelated subjects, but I try not to stray too far from the initial concept.

When I am walking around the neighborhood, there are a good many things to be seen: houses being torn down, new houses being built (a particular favorite of mine), changing vegetation, and so on. My thoughts range freely and more or less uninterruptedly, and I frequently find myself mentally composing letters, blog posts, technical articles, book reviews, and the like.

During these torrid days of summer, however, I have relied more and more on “the gym” for my exercise, and my thoughts while on the elliptical machine tend to run along the lines of “Will this never end?” And while I am walking on the treadmill, I read. What I mostly read is Newsweek, and, when I am not concentrating on the article I’m ostensibly reading, I am checking the time, distance, and calories burned and wondering if I will be able to finish the current article before I reach the point at which I usually stop.

Not a lot of blog fodder there. When not exercising, though, I have recently been reading Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth. Although I’d always been aware that there was such a novel, I’d never felt any pressing desire to read it until my husband and I visited Kenilworth Castle (or what remains of it) this summer, and our curiosity was piqued. He inquired in the gift shop and learned that of course they sold copies, but the Penguin edition they offered seemed to him to have very small type, so he passed on that. Returning home, we found that the single copy in our library (one of only two in the entire county library system) is a Large Print edition!

This should have been ideal, and indeed it was easy on the eyes. But the book is not exactly beach reading, and I frequently had cause to wish we’d gotten the Penguin edition, which includes historical essays, notes, and a glossary. That last would have been the most useful feature. My husband ended up ordering The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on CD because he was looking up so many words (and not finding all of them). I found that The Free Dictionary was usually helpful; failing that, Google searches turned up most of the rest.

Scott uses an archaic vocabulary (including words that were archaic even in his own time) that can pose a challenge to the most educated reader, though in most cases the words are for atmosphere only, and their meaning is not critical to understanding or can be deduced from the context. In some cases, Scott seems to have actually made words up. For example, judging from online discussions, the word ferrateen is unknown; speculation is that Scott may have meant ferrandine (a fabric made of silk and wool), or that he had formed the word based on ferret (another fabric) by analogy with velveteen. In other cases he uses a variant spelling (chopin for chopine,
peacod for peascod, puckfoist for puckfist). He uses ingle in a context that suggests that it means “neighbor” or “chum,” but there seems to be no dictionary support for this use. Since one of the characters is a mercer and another masquerading as a peddler, there are many words for various kinds of fabrics; other words describe period clothing or armor. Many of the words are insults. I learned that bots is a disease of cattle, that watchet is pale blue, that a brulziement is a lively argument and a wittol a cuckold, that chough (a kind of bird) is used as an insulting term for a Welshman, and that a stithy is the same as a smithy.

While it cannot be denied that Scott knows how to spin a gripping yarn, I found myself increasingly aware of how much he had twisted and distorted history to his own purposes. The “Historical inaccuracies” section of the Wikipedia article on Kenilworth points out even more discrepancies than I had recognized. In the end, this tainted for me what would otherwise have been a quite satisfying story, told with verve and considerable humor.

Much more to my liking are Susan Wittig Albert’s “Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter,” which are carefully researched and well written and, with a minimum of historical license, present a picture of Beatrix Potter that is quite charming, together with gentle, extremely “cozy” mysteries, suitable for children or adults. I read The Tale of Hobby How while traveling this summer and was so taken with it that, immediately upon my return, I ran to my library for all the rest, and it didn’t take me long to decide that they would be a good topic for a presentation in the library’s Book Review & Lecture Series, of which I am program chairman. Since I was having trouble filling all the slots for the Fall series, I was pleased to be able to slot myself into one of them! Against this presentation, I’ve been reading biographies of Potter and even Albert’s previous novel featuring her, Death at Gallows Green (written with her husband, Bill) under the pen name of Robin Paige. It is proving to be very enjoyable research!

Another One Bites the Dust

One drawback to walking outside only once a week is that I lose track of what’s going on in my neighborhood. Today I was alarmed to see an excavator in the front yard of the little pink stucco cottage around the corner from me on Summit Street. As I approached, I could see that the house appeared to have been gutted, and there was a building permit staked in the yard.

When we moved to this neighborhood in 1980, our house (by virtue of having already been built onto) was the largest one on the block, with the possible exception of the two corner houses that face on Bayview Street, which runs along the bluff overlooking the bay. Since then our next-door neighbors on both sides have essentially doubled the size of their houses with additions, as have other neighbors down the street in both directions. Of the thirteen houses on the street, five are new construction, made possible by demolition of existing houses. Needless to say, each new house is larger than the former one.

The case of the little pink house will be no different, I’m sure. It sits on one side of a double lot, so its replacement will doubtless spread out to fill the allowable area and will almost certainly be two stories high. The existing single-story house has just two small bedrooms and one bath, a modest living/dining room, and a combined kitchen and breakfast room, plus a small screened front porch. A pull-down stair once provided access to an attic that appears to be standing height at the center. The house also boasts a daylight basement (rare in this area), but today there was water standing in it from yesterday’s rain, and it smelled dank and unusable.

Probably no one will really mourn the loss of this house. Much of its flooring has been removed, exposing rotting subfloor. Paneling in the bedrooms has likewise been removed to reveal faded and mildewed wallpaper. The breakfast room, with windows on three sides, must have been very pleasant, and what was left of the kitchen looked promising. It may well have been a cozy abode. Still, the owners’ attempts to sell or even rent it had not met with much success of late, and it had stood empty for many months.

It will be interesting to see what takes its place.

Another Milestone

My brother in Japan called last night (already today for him) to be the first to wish me happy birthday. He commented that now I would be able to go and get a free flu shot. This was a reference to the fact that I am now eligible for Medicare. My “Medicare-approved PPO plan” (Blue Advantage) has been inundating me with mail, including a reminder that among the preventive services I can get for free are not only pneumonia, Hepatitis B, and flu shots, but also bone mass measurement and colorectal screening. How’s that for depressing?

At this point I guess I’m ready to admit to being “middle-aged,” but I am not yet ready to be considered elderly. My grocery store has parking spaces (next to the handicapped spaces) reserved for Senior Citizens. I have yet to use one. Some years ago I saw a woman of my acquaintance, youthful, fit, and dark-haired (the last perhaps artificially) getting out of her car parked in one of these spaces. I remarked on her choice, and she said indignantly, “Well, I am 65 years old!”

I was actually rather surprised, since I hadn’t thought of her as “old,” and I hope that people would feel the same in my case, but I am not about to throw in the towel yet. Yes, I’m a bit arthritic, but walking is good for me; it certainly won’t hurt me to walk a few feet farther. When you see me parking in a Senior Citizen space, you will know I have one foot in the grave.