On Fine Distinctions
There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second, it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward, and you win. Or maybe it doesn’t. And you lose.
Thus begins Woody Allen’s 2006 thriller, Match Point. The film touches on many compelling themes, such as passion, greed, and justice. But mostly it’s a meditation on chance. So much of life is shaped by random events over which we have no control: things like our country of birth, family of origin, or which side of the net an ambivalent tennis ball happens to land on.
Similarly, in the editorial world, tiny minutiae can have an outsized impact on the final product. This is why editors should be exceptionally detail oriented. Eli Burnstein drives this home in his informative and entertaining new book, Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties and Subtle Shades Meaning. In it, he references about a hundred examples of closely related terms and concepts. Then, with the help of clever illustrations, he explains how they are distinct.
Not only did I thoroughly enjoy the book, I also learned a lot from it. I didn’t know, for instance, the difference between an emoji and an emoticon. (Emojis are graphics; Emoticons use type.) Or an umlaut and a dieresis. (Umlauts give vowels a more e-like pronunciation, whereas diereses indicate that a new syllable has begun.) Or a crumble, a crisp, and a cobbler. (Each is a baked fruit dish, but crumbles are topped with a mixture of flour, butter, and sugar, crisps are topped with a mixture of flour, butter, sugar, and oats, and cobblers are topped with biscuits, cookie dough, cake batter, or something else with baking powder to create volume.)
In Match Point, a stroke of sheer luck kicks off an unlikely series of events that alters the characters’ lives in major ways. As the plot unfolds, the protagonist gets caught up in a tangle of lies, an illicit affair, and ultimately murder. For the editor who fails to properly identify an apple crumble, the stakes are considerably lower. But for those among us who can appreciate or even revel in the act of hairsplitting now and again, Dictionary of Fine Distinctions is sure to delight.