Week 6 Ong ch 4-7 and Helvetica

Continuing on with Ong we talked about technology and grammar.  I found it interesting that Ong brought up the point that an abundance of books makes men less studious.  I actually think this is true.  As an English major I am constantly surrounded by books and the only daily assignments I have to do are reading books.  But because I am bombarded with books every day I find I want to read them less.  I feel like all I do is read and therefore the thing I really don’t want to do is read.  When I was younger reading was fun and I liked to do it in my spare time (which I don’t have any of now) and it was a rare treat.  Now when my friend says you should read this book I say Nah I think I’d rather do something else.

Another point that made me think was that grammar rules are in your subconscious and that you can’t teach them to other people.  This is because there is a disconnect between what’s in your mind and what you put on paper. I had edit a document in my technical editing class and fixing grammatical errors was the hardest part.  I knew things sounded wrong but I didn’t know why.  Even after I read a chapter about grammar in our textbook I still felt lost.  This also reminded me of trying to learn grammar rules in Spanish.  I’ve been taking it for years but still have to think of a sentence in English and conjugate it in my head.

This week we also watched the documentary Helvetica.  I had no idea that there was so much history behind a single font.  I also didn’t realize there was such a thing as typeographers and type designers who devote their lives to inventing new typefaces.  I don’t know where I thought they came from I guess just sprouted out of the ground somewhere? 

It was pretty cool too that the Swiss have their own typeface (you need to get on that America!) .

It was also interesting that at first Helvetica was popular and modern and stood for a sense of openness and transparency, but in the 70s came to stand for the people supporting the Vietnam War and big bad corporate America.  And then came back through the grunge movement of all things.  Now it stands for clean lines and minimalism.