Light the fuse

Not the great New Zealand mobilisation novel

An early work-in-progress dedicated to
helping precipitate the
Great Mobilisation,
circuitouslby provoking a novel by an award-winning author, to provoke a movie etc. of, to help build the mandate for the Churchillian leadership of…y

Dare to be wise!
Kant

Style guide

Contents
author Cimino
published 20251017–

Man before remains of his mother’s house, bulldozed by bank.

Mortgagee Destroys House: Cardigan-wearing Cimino knew as he set it full-width late in the afternoon, late in January 2009, he would never better that frontpage headline. Believing he’d confused mortgagee for mortgager, the newspaper’s editor was furious—“My friend is a legal executive, and she assures me…”. Cimino gently counselled trusting her dictionary ahead of her friend. image Dargaville News

Subeditors: Those cardigan-wearing people who know an awful lot about their very small domain!
Kathryn Ryan

Subeditors have it easy, compared to self-subeditors. Subeditors might toil at the absolute coal face, but they do so with an immense advantage over the author and editor, in that they are reading with a fresh set of eyes. The author–subeditor shoulders all the care and all the responsibility, of implementing the rules of a publication’s style guide.

Style guides exist, primarily, to help achieve consistency throughout a publication. Newspaper style guides, generally, dumb down; other mastheads adhere to positively archaic styles—The New Yorker famously, insists upon the diaeretisationcoined, of course, from diaeresis coöperate serenely indifferent to a world long since inured to thrall of pronouncing the word coop-erate. Some readers—possibly most—may find this style guide irksomely idiosyncratic. The earnest intention, however, is for Light the Fuse to read agreeably as is conscionable. Coöperate/cooperate, cooperate or would demand massive brain rewiring, but given the existential imperative for co operation, perhaps, with the heft of the The New Yorker behind it and fuse-lighting…

Although the following guide is listed alphabetically, the styling of the two names in common use for the multi-island nation state of Aotearoa officially known as New Zealand is given pole position:

Aotearoa/New Zealand Aotearoa is used where practicable when referring to the multi-island nation state of that name. Elsewhere, the official name New Zealand is preferred when the nation’s name is employed as a proper adjective, for example:

Hospitality, pre-neoliberalism, was a proud New Zealand attribute. Sadly, hospitality is currently only valued if it is being comprehensively monetised. As neoliberalism is rendered irrelevant by the Great Mobilisation, it is hoped that New Zealanders will rediscover a wholesome role for hospitality in Aotearoa…

Just one style benefit of using both Aotearoa and New Zealand, but separately, is retaining New Zealander in preference to Aotearoan , Aotearoaian , Aotearoaer , or Kiwi . It should go without saying that using Aotearoa–New Zealand would reek of virtue signalling, and be unrelievedly unstylish and cumbersome.
To be continued…
Return to text

‹ Endnotes | Appendix 1 ›

Return to top of page | Endnotes

Disclosure The author of this novel modello is no longer the secretary of Mahurangi Action Incorporated or the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. The content published here, however, is that of the editorially independent, independently funded Mahurangi Magazine.