From Pictographic To Compugraphic is an “ethnography of information technology.” The writing industry, with its roots in the Stone Age and its crest rocketing into the age of the supercomputer, is a catalog of repeated invention and innovation. What happened? And above all, why?

Beginning in the days when the memory of the aged was the ultimate repository of all knowledge, the book continues through to the invention of ever more complicated, expressive, and efficient systems of recording/record-keeping, including the alphabet, the printing press, the typewriter, and the personal computer.

Ever since I went to New York City where I lived for ten years I have enjoyed the tabloids and newspapers. The New York Times, the New York Post and the New York Observer interested me regularly. The Standard Examiner in Ogden and the Las Vegas Journal Review in Nevada have been wonderful too with news, advertisements, sport scores and more. The columns are good as forms of entertainment or political insight and persuasion. These newspapers like columns are meant to be read for enjoyment and information.

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What makes great writing great writing is not spelling or grammar or syntax, but honesty. Not the careless honesty of our emotions, but the intellectual honesty that results from careful thoughts combined with a firm insistence that we write only true things. The honest writer always seeks to avoid deception, always believes writing the truth is more important than proving a point. Honesty in the Use of Words by Martin Naparsteck adds a new dimension to such classic writing advice as William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style and George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”

Language in Action is a big book on a big subject, all about geolinguistics (who speaks what language or languages where and what that means in terms of culture and politics, trade and all other aspects of life) and also onomastics (the study of proper nouns, names in life and literature). Subjects addressed are Early American, US dialects, the differences between the British and American languages, English in India, Freshman English as a Second and Foreign Language, Burundi and French in Africa, various Celtic languages, Cuban Spanish, Dutch and English, the language of the Gilbert & Ellis Islands, Gobbledygook and jargon, Kamtok in Papua New Guinea, Spanglish, the placenames of the Dakotas, Norwegian and English, odd languages of Europe (living and dead), origins of 55 common expressions, Polish and Polish-Americans, rules of the language game, secret languages, Spanish regional languages, Suriname as a multilingual society, English in Switzerland, Yiddish and Yinglish, strange languages of Africa, classical languages, Amerindian names, names in business and real estate, the SoHo neighborhood of New York City, changing names, names for houses, names in magic, placenames of Iowa, word games, names in satire and in literary onomastics in general, Martin Amis’ Money: A Suicide Note and satire as sociolinguistics, names in folklore, political language, slang in US politics, personal and national identity, and the language of minority politics—all in terms the average reader can easily understand.

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