Toastmaster Magazine Reading Gathering in July

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water. ~~Ernest Hemingway

Irene, the beautiful hostess of Toastmaster magazine reading gathering in July, selected three interesting articles from June issue. She invited Kate to lead "Want to Become a Wedding Speechwriter" by Laura Yeager, Lydia to lead "Communicating with Authenticity" Q & A with Barbara De Angelis, and me to lead "Get the Quote Right!”by Fred R. Shapiro. We met at Bookzone Restaurant, Friday evening, the 12th of July.

I was happy to take charge of "Looking At Language", and I studied and verified every single word in Shapiro's article in order not to just pin the quote on Twain, Shaw or Churchill. Unlike American counterparts, Chinese writers seldom use quotations in the beginning of an article. Maybe because they prefer to use well-known proverbs to reflect upon their philosophy of life. Maybe because there isn't a reliable reference book of quotations in Chinese on the market.

I went to Bookman Books, a prestigious bookseller of English textbooks in Taipei, to look for the three best quotation books mentioned in the article. I could only found an old edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. The new edition has been sold out. So, I was not hesitant to reserve a copy of Bartlett on the spot for my writings in the future. Obviously Bartlett is more popular here in Taiwan. Nevertheless, I don't mind keeping the recently published "Yale Book of Quotations" as a second resource, given that the editor Shapiro claimed it "the first quotation book to be compiled using state-of-the-art research methods to seek out quotations and to trace quotation sources, to verify and to reverify."

Just at the beginning of writing this essay, I followed Shapiro's advice to verify the famous quotation of American writer Ernest Hemingway. I was puzzled with the actual size of the Iceberg being above the water when I found some quoting one-eighth being above (Shapira, Wikipedia), some insisting one-ninth being above. Between eight and nine, I must go to Page One, the biggest bookstore in East Asia at Taipei 101, the highest building in the world, to know the right number one of these days.

No matter what, Chinese like both numbers eight and night. Eight is prosperity. Nine is perpetuity. I wander if Hemingway verified the correct proportion of iceberg above the water scientifically when he jotted down the highly quoted statement, or he just wrote it with "truthiness" literarily.

PS: When water freezes it traps air and becomes less dense, so it weighs less - about 10% less - than liquid water. That means it will float, but with only 10% of its mass above the waterline. That's the situation in fresh water. Salt water is denser and therefore heavier, and the density is also greater when the water temperature is close to freezing point. That means it can support more weight. So the proportion of an Atlantic berg above water is actually a little higher - about 14%. Sherry