Ode to Gray | Hacker News Reader

Ode to Gray

theparisreview.org

43 pointshowrude23 comments

The sentence structure for this is also gray. Sentences are all of similar length with little variation. After a few paragraphs you start to feel the monotony. There is no shorter or longer sentence to break the tension. I don't know if this was intentional or not. But I think it fits the tone of the article well. I'm writing in that way right now and it's rather uncomfortable.

Edit: Made me think of this: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/373814-this-sentence-has-fi...

What’s curious is I both love grey and really enjoyed the sentence structure and writing style.

Me too, I never understood why people are bothered about varying sentence length.

Same with synonyms. I prefer when authors find the perfect word and then stick with it. The resulting word repetitions are something I only notice when someone points them out to me, even if they drive other people out of their minds.

Yep, other languages (Chinese for example) don't see it as odd if you have to use the same word repeatedly --people don't feel pressure to use synonyms to say the same thing or elaborate on a given topic. Wish more writers of English felt the same way.

Gray makes me think of an old friend of mine, who wasn't human, but a cat, and though she was almost completely gray from nose to tail (except for a few distinctive white spots on her chest, belly, and rear paws), she was anything but dull. She was a beauty, as any who saw her would attest. Her fur shimmered in the sunlight, often revealing tabby patterns you couldn't normally see. And her large, alert yellow eyes would form a striking contrast with the gray of her face and body. She thought herself a queen, and expected to be treated as such, rewarding only her most loyal subjects with purring and limited petting time. In so doing she made gray a regal color indeed.

I still miss her every day.

Gray is the perfect color for neutral backgrounds. It doesn't distract and it produces no color bias.

I really enjoyed this essay on lilac from The Paris Review from earlier in the year.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/09/lilac-the-col...

Not sure when TPR was appointed to be in charge of the color beat.

This make me think of watching "She's Gotta Have It" by Spike Lee. When watching the black and white movie I was blown away by the image depth. It a bright sunlit scene you could see shadows and details in the shade under a tree.

For some reason black and white film always had more dynamic range than color. I don't know why.

Any idea why the author alternately used gray and grey? Did I miss something in the text?

"Grey" is the British/Canadian spelling, the author appears to be American. The only times "grey" showed up in the article were in direct quotes, presumably from British English writers.

I'm an American and honestly I flip back and forth, which is probably frustrating to read.

She didn't. She quoted people using "grey," five times.

Looks like 'Grey' was mostly used in quotes, whereas the author would use 'Gray'. I'd put it down to copy-pasting.

The spellings are both widely used apparently.

http://grammarist.com/spelling/gray-grey/

>Looks like 'Grey' was mostly used in quotes, whereas the author would use 'Gray'. I'd put it down to copy-pasting.

It's also common to respect the original spelling when quoting (e.g. consciously, not just as an artifact of copy/pasting)

And sometimes they use [sic] to indicate the unusual spelling isn't an error.

Do you know what the rules are for quoting speech? If a Brit says "gray sky", would you use the British spelling when quoting?

I'm not familiar with specific rules for quoting speech. I think different publishing houses and editors have their own conventions on this (which includes things like altering the spelling of the words to infer a specific accent).

“Middle grey” [0] (one that reflects ~ 18% of light bouncing off of it) has an interesting role in photography.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_gray

Very relaxing read. But did anyone figure out what "Liard, lovat, perse." means?

From [Websters](1) dictionary:

Liard \Li"ard\ (l[imac]"[~e]rd), a. [OF. liart, LL. liardus gray, dapple.] Gray. [Obs.] --Chaucer.

Note: Used by Chaucer as an epithet of a gray or dapple gray horse. Also used as a name for such a horse.

1: http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary

* * *

lovat | ˈləvət | noun a muted green color used especially in tweed and woolen garments.

* * *

Perse (mythology) In Greek mythology, Perse (Greek: Πέρση; also spelled Persa or Perseis) is an Oceanid nymph, one of the three thousand daughters of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, and the wife of the sun god, Helios. Their children are Aeetes, Perses, Pasiphae, and Circe. One of her many Oceanid sisters is Amphitrite (the wife of Poseidon). Perse is also closely identified with Hecate.

* * *

To me it reads as ”Life, love, loss.”

https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/liard (a historic French coin, of grayish color)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lovat ("dusty blue-green")

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/perse#English ("dark greyish-blue")

Gray makes other colors pop. I like it for that.

I love gray too!

If it's not a poem, it's not an ode.

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