The Joss Group

The Print Book Won: Another Example of the Value of Print

HBO was having a free preview week-end this past week-end, and I am getting over a sinus infection. Perfect combination since the channel was showing a bunch of films I had somehow missed. One of them, Too Big to Fail, was a little too detailed for my currently virus addled and stuffed up mind to parse completely, so today I looked for the book in my local library.

The print book was checked out, but they had the 17-disc book on CD, or I could download a library copy of the e-book.  Hmmm...I thought a bit and went for--the print book! Even though I had to ask the library to ship in a copy from another library in the system, I can pick it up when I take back the DVDs (more movies) and the books I checked out today. Why the print book instead of the digital audio and digital text versions? The main reasons are 1) I can navigate much more easily in the ink-on-paper version than I can in the digital versions and 2) I can also zero in on material I want to read more about and re-read it much more easily. The print book has got to have an index, something I haven't found in a single e-book I have read or book on CD. Having the index is going to help me a lot as I consume the content I missed in the move and to compare the movie to the book.

No surprise to me. Print has continuing, sustainable value. And Google should stop dissing it. After all, Google does a fair amount of print advertising. Take a look at what the Printing Industries of America is doing to combat the erroneous notion paper and print are eco-hogs by checking out the Value of Print campaign.

From the organization's Web site:

"Printing is the only medium with a one-time carbon footprint—all other media require energy every time they are viewed. Electronic devices, which Google produces, for example, require the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals, as well as the use of plastics, hydrocarbon solvents, and other non-renewable resources. Moreover 50–80% of electronic waste collected for recycling is shipped overseas and is often unsafely dismantled. For Google to call for a paperless world is hypocritical to say the least."

I agree.

If I Could Change the World: No One Would Use the Word "Exploding" Again...

Except when referring to a bomb or some other real-world, real life, explosion. You know the kind of thing I mean--stuff gets ripped apart by force, blown to bits, strewn all about. When that kind of thing happens, it is fine to say "explode" and any grammatical tense version or part of speech version of that word.

But other than that--please, do not use it. I saw it again in a listserve post, a woman was saying a online bulletin board was exploding with posts from parents. Really? What she was trying to convey was that many parents had posted about a particular topic. Obviously, it was a controversial topic, otherwise she would have chosen a gentler, kinder way of recording her observation about the number of posts.

And you see the word everywhere, once you begin to look. I have to edit it out of articles writers turn in for the Seybold Report. Paid, published writers who have written for publication for years are using it, including some I pay.

Sad, really, when you think about it. What does it say about our video game-obsessed, 24/7 news cycle culture when we use such a powerful word to convey trivialties.

So, now you know why I remove it and rewrite the sentence to convey the real thought behind the word.