A picture is worth a thousand words?

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"A picture is worth a thousand words." Attributed to Fred R. Barnard.

It’s an often-quoted declaration. How true? Where does this idea come from? Apparently Napoleon once murmured something like, “Un bon croquis vaut mieux qu'un long discours.”

Since one picture can often use 1000 KB compared to a thousand-word MS Word file taking up 10 KB, it could be argued that numbers bear this out. Go figure.

“Aha! Usted está comparando manzanas y naranjas!” protests a Spanish lawyer. (Comparing apples and oranges!) A Word file is coded in ASCII which is much more compressed than a JPEG graphics file.

“But wait,” pipes up the prosecuting attorney, “a picture is so dense, it contains so much information, it cannot be reduced. Words are just the essence, the bones. There is little in the way of context.”

“I have a suggestion,” chips in a negotiator. “Pictures that contain text sometimes have a double impact. Is that possibly one reason why comic books and anime are so popular? You take a picture to sketch in the context, the background, and then add a speech bubble to highlight the crucial quote. Something that sums up the speaker’s main idea or philosophy. A soundbite, if you will.”

“Pix + text = bite?”

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Reflexivity

Diane explains to Juanita that she rewrote her proposal.

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Diane: I mean it’s a conference on language and when I finished the proposal I realized the whole paper was going to be about technology and I’d called it “Technical issues related to texting.”

Juanita: So you just renamed it “How texting affects how we talk”?

Diane: No, I had to throw out all the technical stuff and when I’d done that I saw there weren’t any language issues left.

Juanita: Hard.

Diane: So I designed a new study. I now have the subjects texting messages to each other.

Juanita: It’s been done.

Diane: Not this way. The messages they send have to be about problems with texting.

Juanita: Very reflexive. Texts about texting. Nice one Di.

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A thousand words, a thousand ships

Author: Look at this book. Full of text. Hard to read. It needs illustrations.

Artist: Don’t you think sticking pictures in a book is dumbing down the message? Juvenalizing your readers?

Author: Information is sometimes so complicated it helps to get it across visually. Can you teach someone how to fold an origami shape or fly a plane by words alone?

Artist: Hard. So show it?

Author: And tell it too. Need both. Mixed media, multi-channel, multiple intelligence approach. For clarity, talk is good, print is better and print plus graphic is best.

Artist: Pictures worth a thousand words?

Author: Like the face that launched a thousand ships? That’s not a universal truth. Depends on the picture. And sometimes the boot is on the other foot. Some words may take a lot of pictures to explain. The word Syriana needs a whole movie to say what it means.

Artist: So case by case?

Author: Horses for courses.
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Texting abbreviations

A mini study of TXTing Abbreviations: Interaction of type of device used, multilingualism, and familiarity with topic

Data: SMS exchange between male and female on going to a movie

KC (10:25 AM using Nokia 3650 keypad) Will U chek any movie 2 go with half price?

BN (10:25 AM using O2 handwriting recognition mode) OK

BN (10:55 AM using O2 handwriting recognition mode) Iwo Jima @ 15:10 Botany Downs?

KC (10:59 AM using Nokia 3650 keypad) Nani sore? Japanese?

BN (11:00 AM using O2 handwriting recognition mode) Clint Eastwood director, Excellent reviews, 91% on Rotten Tomatoes!

KC (11:02 AM using Nokia 3650 keypad) Sounds good.

Introduction:

Most PPL abbreviate when they TXT. Are there rules governing what gets abbreviated and what doesn’t?

Discussion:

The exchange took place between a native speaker of Japanese (KC) and native speaker of English (BN). By KC’s own admission, “chek” may be an abbreviation or it may be a spelling error; she can’t remember. Use of preposition “with” instead of “at” is clearly a non-native speaker (NNS) error.

The exchange between two speakers who can use each other’s language often results in code-switching. Note KC’s “Nani sore?” (“What’s that?”), followed by use of the English “Japanese?” (not “Nihongo?”). Curious she elects not to abbreviate “Japanese” to JPNS or something similar. Possibly because switching to capitals for the abbreviation “JPNS” is more troublesome using a cell phone keypad than a keyboard?

The device used may influence use or non-use of abbreviations. Some people often don’t bother with abbreviations using a stylus on the PDA in handwriting recognition mode (unless the message is approaching 160 character single message limit). Hence BN’s fully explicated “Clint Eastwood director, Excellent reviews, 91% on Rotten Tomatoes!” BN commented that he felt abbreviating sometimes requires an extra step in the composition process.

Conclusion:

So is the use of or non-use of abbreviations entirely arbitrary? Probably not. But the influencing factors are multiple and interact and some take precedence over others so defining the rules likely results in a complex model. Future studies could attempt to construct a flow-chart of the decision to abbreviate or not.