Word: shorthand
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...more easily measured and assessed. Each candidate brings to the campaign a distinct management style that serves as a rough approximation of how he might react to the burdens of the presidency. The following questions may not be worthy of Oprah Winfrey, but they serve as a useful shorthand for sorting out the claims of the contenders...
...night the Supreme Court struck down the California statute that the San Diego police had used to nail Lawson for vagrancy, Lawson, who was called the California Walkman in headline shorthand, was all over the networks, sauntering, as the news programs had it, wherever he pleased. He said at the time, "If you are one of those individuals who, over coffee and the morning paper, says, 'This is terrible. Somebody ought to do something about this,' you will probably see the person who should do something when you look in the mirror to shave...
...weakest parts of the collection are diffused by sociology and demographic shorthand: a smoothly flowing resume substituting for characterization; the itemized contents of a lost wallet, including credit cards, club memberships and photographs, heavily making the point that the seat of the owner's identity is his hip pocket. A story that begins "Though I was between marriages for several years, in a disarray that preoccupied me completely, other people continued to live and to die" sends the eye skidding down the page in search of traction...
...messages were often written in a kind of furious shorthand, using abbreviations, initials and acronyms at every opportunity, as though the writer were too rushed to tap out the entire word or name. AMCITS stood for "American citizens," NLT for "no later than." Vowels disappeared from staccato sentences: "We will not be trying to adjust yr sched for next June for this mtg." Oliver North's memos, often typed on his computer late at night and sent directly to his National Security Council superiors, read like the dispatches of a man with no time to waste, a man obsessed...
...audience, the characters are picture-book flat. Only the images are deep and dense. The friendly loggers of Lumberton wave at the camera; Frank screams an obscenity and poof! disappears; a corpse is bound and bowed like a Kienholz sculpture; the climactic gun battle takes just a few shorthand strokes. The acting styles collide fiercely too. MacLachlan and Dern have an innocents-in-hell sweetness; Stockwell does a preening Percy Dovetonsils number; Rossellini is a madwoman with all stops out; Hopper tops her, with maybe the vilest sadistic creep in movie history...