Hannah AA's blog

You may have noticed that IPI has recently made some changes: a new company name, a new company website, a new-and-improved company blog. We are proud of many of these changes and we like to show them off. “Look at our new website!” we say to our family, friends, neighbors, clients, and anyone else whose attention we can get.

“What’s with the squiggly thing between the a and the t on your company logo?” they invariably reply.

I thought I would take this opportunity to answer the question once and for all. That squiggly thing is known as a ligature. From the Latin ligare (to bind), the word ligature refers, in general, to anything used in tying or binding. In surgery, a ligature is used to strangulate a tumor. In orthodontics, ligatures are the rubber bands that bind your teeth together. And in printing, a ligature is when two or more graphemes are combined to form a single glyph. That is — a ligature is the binding between two or more letters.

Did you know that the ampersand (&) is a modified ligature? It originated as the letters et, which is Latin for and.

Ligatures originated as time saving devices. Medieval scribes used ligatures while copying Latin texts — they even went so far as to combine the bowls of letters with right-facing bowls (b,o,p) and those with left-facing bowls (d,o,g). (Have you ever before thought of letters in terms of the direction of their bowl?) In typesetting, ligatures would allow a printer to combine multiple characters of a single block: think “fi” or “st,” or the still common œ.

Today, of course, typing “fi” is hardly labor intensive, and ligatures as time-saving devices are certainly out of fashion. (Maybe this is why the New York Times print edition, already an antiquated text, recently re-instituted ligatures.)

But we like the antiquated aspect of the ligature. We like that it they hark back to a time when words were printed on paper, with ink. A time when books as objects still had value. Even though we just got our first iPad last week, and even though we are constantly exploring new means of digital publication, we use a ligature because it binds us to a long history of literary expression.

And, of course, with thanks to our brilliant graphic designers, we like our ligature because we think it looks good.

We always love it when Andi steps off his corporate jet to write a guest post for our blog. But I especially appreciated last week’s post about athletics because it reminded me of another favorite summer sport: copyediting.

Last week, I was part of an extensive e-mail string on the subject of the serial comma, which is the comma that goes before the final item in a list. “I like grammar, punctuation, and spelling,” I say. Or is it: “I like grammar, punctuation and spelling?” The serial comma, also known as the Harvard or Oxford comma, caused one writer (poet Robert Francis) to complain, “When I got to Harvard, no one had ever heard of the comma!”

This week we received the copyedited version of one of our manuscripts, prompting a flurry of editorial debates. Although historians say that English writing has been systematic since the middle ages, consistency remains hard to come by. Serial commas are simple compared to the use of ellipses in block quotes, the thin spaces between quotation marks, or the relative placement of punctuation around parentheses. And don’t get me started on the subject of apostrophes at the end of acronyms. (When you have more than one CEO, do you have CEOs, CEO’s, or a problem?) John likes to quote the epitaph on a successful editor’s gravestone: “Changed which to that.”

Some might say that obsessive copyediting is dehumanizing, or worse. Anna was telling me about Roald Dahl’s short story “The Great Automatic Grammatizator,” in which a man discovers the algorithm for good literature and invents a novel-making machine. The reduction of writing to rules and regulation results in the end of human creativity. It’s a tragic story.

But it’s not my story. In reviewing our copyedited manuscript, we spotted occasions where a misplaced comma or inaccurate punctuation changed the meaning of our writing, sometimes dramatically. Because words are an author’s only medium for communication, writers are dependent on the accuracy of their punctuation. And in my opinion, great writers are those who know how to create magnificent phrases out of the mundane. They do it with style.

Last week, we held a Bright Ideas meeting with our clients at CFAR, a consulting firm steeped in the traditions of psychology and anthropology. All this talk of Franz Boaz and Margaret Mead has awakened my own latent interests in ethnographic research. And so, I offer the following selections from my IPI field book:

• December, 2009: Janine, Barbara, and John pore over an early draft of The Emotional Calendar, our recently completed book with Dr. John Sharp, with a pair of scissors. Janine is deftly cutting the document into sections while Barbara and John push them around the table, rearranging the book structure.
• February, 2010: Seven enthusiastic professionals sit around the remnants of maple scones and cranberry walnut muffins, discussing the weaknesses and merits of a new book idea (now The Idea Entrepreneurs). John stands in a corner, wildly taking notes on an endless stream of flip charts.
• May, 2010: Anna and I (in an ethnographer-turned-participant twist) sit in front of a computer screen, hotly debating word choice for a book proposal. I prepared the first draft: at the moment, Anna has keyboard control, but on occasion we both dive for the mouse simultaneously.

I offer you a case study in collaborative writing. Last week, Janine wrote about the history of collaborative writing. But at IPI we don’t just espouse collaboration: we live it. In fact, collaboration is a cornerstone of the way we operate as a business.

Not that it’s always easy. The first time I gave a position paper to Janine and received, one week later, what looked like the first chapter to an entirely different book, I was crushed. Like everyone who has ever dreamed of being a writer, there’s a little wretched scribbler in me. But then I read the new edition and I realized that, while my content remained intact, Janine’s revisions had brought the text in line with the voice of the book. And furthermore, while my love for science tends towards the technical, Janine had applied to the work her particular sense of humor. Perhaps for the first time, my writing was funny.

And in my opinion, that’s what makes collaboration great. When I write collaboratively, I can bring out my strengths, and bolster them with the strengths of other people. It’s a win-win situation.

We wouldn’t do it any other way.

Here is a sample afternoon at Idea Platforms Inc.: the five of us sit around the conference table, notebooks out, while Anna animatedly dissects the qualities and weaknesses of her shakshuka-with-polenta brunch. Or John, eyes pointed upwards, tries to convey the experience of the heavenly gnocchi at one of Boston’s hottest Italian restaurants. (Then, of course, the conversation turns back to our books).

It’s true, we’re foodies. And as foodies who are also writers, we know that it is our responsibility to make ethical choices about the things we eat. While doing research for our HOT new book (still in the top-secret stage!) we met and spoke with Bryant Terry, chef and author of Vegan Soul Kitchen, who believes that food is justice. We love the work he does towards food empowerment: and his recipe for black-eyed pea fritters.

When we were working on Globality, we learned about the role of food in the newly expanding global market. We learned how new global businesses increase our access to some of our favorite exotic foods, from bananas to Palaw (basmati rice with saffron and dates). We also learned about how these foods can come at the expense of the countries they grow in, which do not always have environmental standards or labor regulations.

That’s why at IPI we have decided to switch exclusively to Fair Trade coffee in our office. Fair Trade coffee is certified by a third-party organization which monitors for several standards of ethical farm practices, including giving fair wages to farm workers, and farming in a more sustainable way. Here’s more information about TransFair USA, the primary North America fair trade certifier.

We know that buying fair trade coffee is a small step. But we already recycle our cardboard and use compact fluorescent light bulbs. We are proud to add fair trade coffee to the list of things we do to show our support for a global marketplace which upholds ethical and environmental standards while still providing access to some of the things — and especially to the foods — that we love.