Monthly Archives: February 2016

From Galateo: The Rules of Polite Behavior by Giovanni Della Casa (1558), translated by Robert Peterson as Treatise of Manners and Behaviours (sixteenth century). The author warns against, well, Facebook:

And they doe asmuche amisse too, that never have other thing in their mouthe, then their children, their wife, and their nourse. “My litle boy, made mee so laughe yesterday: heare you: you never sawe a sweeter babe in your life: my wife is such a one, Cecchina told mee : of troth you would not beleeve what a wit shee hath:” There is none so idle a body, that will either intend to answer, or abide to heare suche foolishe prittle prattle. For it ircks a mans eares to harken unto it.

And he’s apparently spent some time in the business meetings of corporate America, too:

[And t]hey must not shewe them selves so afraide and fearefull to speake their mindes, when a man dothe aske their advise. For, it is a deadly paine to here them, & specialy if they be men, in ye Judgement of ye world, of good understanding and wisedome. What a fetching about is this, ere they come to ye mater? “Sir I beseche you pardon mee, if I doe not say well. I will speake like a gros man as I am: & grosly according to my pore skil. And Sir, I am sure you will but mocke me for it. But yet, to obey you…”

Quotes discovered via Charles Kightly’s wonderful book The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore (1987).

Saying I’m “not really into” sports is like saying Pope Francis is “not really into” strip clubs. But even I know the Super Bowl is this Sunday. And, like any good copy editor, I can find a way to focus on the nerdiest, least exciting detail of the whole affair.

Take a look at the logo for the 2014 Super Bowl:

And then the logo for last year’s Super Bowl:

And now, finally, this year’s:

Notice anything different?

They switched from roman numerals to arabic (a.k.a. “normal”) numbers. Now why would they do a thing like that?

I haven’t researched this much at all, but I can take a wild guess. The roman numeral for 50 is “L.” So they would’ve ended up with SUPER BOWL L. How do you pronounce that? Super Bowllllll.

I suspect something similar may happen with the Final Fantasy series. They do the roman numeral thing too, and they’re somewhere around Final Fantasy XV at the moment. But sooner or later, they either have to switch gears, or else try to market a game called Final Fantasy XXX to preteens.

Isn’t language fun?