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The New Yorker is known for its superb standards in regards to grammar, though it does tend to favor passive voice like academic circles are wont to do. This is

The New Yorker is known for its superb standards in regards to grammar, though it does tend to favor passive voice like academic circles are wont to do. This is evident here, with a focus first on Larson's work, then an introduction to his person, and given that the article's main focus is on the work and not the person, this is a logical decision. You have just used what would have been a useful opportunity to discuss Gary Larson's unique art style to insist how much more you, a Hacker News commenter, knows about prose than someone employed by the New Yorker. Further, due to your comment's lack of clarification, I ironically cannot tell if you are insinuating that the author of the article used "its" correctly or incorrectly. For the record, because this possessive pronoun is referring to Gary Larson's work in the previous sentence, the usage is correct. [1] 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_possessive#Pronouns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_possessive#Pronouns

labster 6y ago
Unfortunately they have a terrible standard of spelling at the New Yorker. Every time I read one of those words with the umlaut, it causes a full parse error in my brain, to the extent that I usually have to read the entire paragraph again. Seriously, if you're not happy with "cooperate", spell it as "co-operate". This is an old standard, and it still works well. I don't get how the New Yorker tries to pretend they're the magazine of high society while spelling like Spın̈al Tap. The point of language is to have common understanding, and you can't do that if you're the only one using your weird spelling. (Also, I wish they just got the the point in their articles. At least give a summary of why I would want to read the whole long form article before launching into some anecdote about two people meeting at a bar.)
- rsynnott 6y ago
  As the New Yorker will grumpily tell you, it’s not an umlaut: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-... > She said that once, in the elevator, [the editor] told her he was on the verge of changing that style and would be sending out a memo soon. And then he died. So, be careful whose weird house style you criticise, is the message.
  - labster 6y ago
    If I write ä in HTML for an umlaut, I get U+00E4 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS in Unicode. It's like CJK unification all over again!
- beervirus 6y ago
  The New Yorker editors seem like snoots of the worst possible type. (Snoots of the better sort would include myself, Bryan Garner, and Wayne Schiess.)
- tropdrop 6y ago
  Diversity is strength – yes, even in writing. If you do not like the New Yorker's long form and quirky diaeresis, then do not read it. Other people (myself included) like the occasional long read with a cup of coffee on a foggy morning, where the prose winds its way slowly to build to a satisfying crescendo only after sufficient investment from you, the reader. I personally do not like Hemingway's skeletal, scientific style – it feels to me like the writing of someone who does not revel in the pleasure of writing. However, I recognize that's a personal preference, and under no circumstances would I embark on a crusade to have fewer people read him or suggest that Hemingway do something different to satisfy me. Perhaps I feel so strongly about this because I come from a country that would forcefully insist on designated styles of art - Soviet realism is the only acceptable art style, Pravda has the official and only acceptable journalism. It's wrong.
  - labster 6y ago
    One of the things necessary for a free society is free critique of art as well. Even if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not all art is the same quality. If you don't believe me, spend a few hours on fanfiction.net. I tried with the New Yorker. I subscribed last year, and it got to the point that no one in the house wanted to read it. We'd look at the cartoons, apply the universal captions to them ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10262979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10262979 ), but articles felt like chores. That's nothing against long form journalism, just that they don't try to make their articles accessible. It's like going to movies without a seeing a preview or knowing the genre. Sometimes that works really well, but if you get 15 minutes in and start wondering why you should care about any of these people, it's time to move on. It's great that this never happened to you. But it just so happened that their house style causes my text parser to fail all the way up the stack. My fast english reader throws an exception, and asks my foreign word region of the brain to see if it has a match. Heuristics say it's English, English says it's not a word, which then throws an exception that bubbles up to my top level of consciousness to decide what it means. It takes all of five seconds, but in the process it interrupts the flow of reading. Which gives the conscious mind time to ponder -- why am I reading this anyway? The answer too often came back negative. Nothing wrong with you liking the magazine, or other people. But to me, the diaereses are the Jar Jar Binks of the New Yorker -- something designed to take me out of the action because the writer couldn't kill his darlings. And I don't think it's wrong to complain about specific aspects of art that make it unenjoyable.

labster 6y ago

Unfortunately they have a terrible standard of spelling at the New Yorker. Every time I read one of those words with the umlaut, it causes a full parse error in my brain, to the extent that I usually have to read the entire paragraph again. Seriously, if you're not happy with "cooperate", spell it as "co-operate". This is an old standard, and it still works well. I don't get how the New Yorker tries to pretend they're the magazine of high society while spelling like Spın̈al Tap. The point of language is to have common understanding, and you can't do that if you're the only one using your weird spelling. (Also, I wish they just got the the point in their articles. At least give a summary of why I would want to read the whole long form article before launching into some anecdote about two people meeting at a bar.)

rsynnott 6y ago
As the New Yorker will grumpily tell you, it’s not an umlaut: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-... > She said that once, in the elevator, [the editor] told her he was on the verge of changing that style and would be sending out a memo soon. And then he died. So, be careful whose weird house style you criticise, is the message.
- labster 6y ago
  If I write ä in HTML for an umlaut, I get U+00E4 LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS in Unicode. It's like CJK unification all over again!
beervirus 6y ago
The New Yorker editors seem like snoots of the worst possible type. (Snoots of the better sort would include myself, Bryan Garner, and Wayne Schiess.)
tropdrop 6y ago
Diversity is strength – yes, even in writing. If you do not like the New Yorker's long form and quirky diaeresis, then do not read it. Other people (myself included) like the occasional long read with a cup of coffee on a foggy morning, where the prose winds its way slowly to build to a satisfying crescendo only after sufficient investment from you, the reader. I personally do not like Hemingway's skeletal, scientific style – it feels to me like the writing of someone who does not revel in the pleasure of writing. However, I recognize that's a personal preference, and under no circumstances would I embark on a crusade to have fewer people read him or suggest that Hemingway do something different to satisfy me. Perhaps I feel so strongly about this because I come from a country that would forcefully insist on designated styles of art - Soviet realism is the only acceptable art style, Pravda has the official and only acceptable journalism. It's wrong.
- labster 6y ago
  One of the things necessary for a free society is free critique of art as well. Even if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not all art is the same quality. If you don't believe me, spend a few hours on fanfiction.net. I tried with the New Yorker. I subscribed last year, and it got to the point that no one in the house wanted to read it. We'd look at the cartoons, apply the universal captions to them ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10262979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10262979 ), but articles felt like chores. That's nothing against long form journalism, just that they don't try to make their articles accessible. It's like going to movies without a seeing a preview or knowing the genre. Sometimes that works really well, but if you get 15 minutes in and start wondering why you should care about any of these people, it's time to move on. It's great that this never happened to you. But it just so happened that their house style causes my text parser to fail all the way up the stack. My fast english reader throws an exception, and asks my foreign word region of the brain to see if it has a match. Heuristics say it's English, English says it's not a word, which then throws an exception that bubbles up to my top level of consciousness to decide what it means. It takes all of five seconds, but in the process it interrupts the flow of reading. Which gives the conscious mind time to ponder -- why am I reading this anyway? The answer too often came back negative. Nothing wrong with you liking the magazine, or other people. But to me, the diaereses are the Jar Jar Binks of the New Yorker -- something designed to take me out of the action because the writer couldn't kill his darlings. And I don't think it's wrong to complain about specific aspects of art that make it unenjoyable.