Little things

I opened Ross Perot's United We Stand (1992) this morning and started reading Chapter One:

In June, 117,000 more Americans were thrown out of work. While we were putting the finishing touches on this book in July, eight companies announced they were shedding 23,000 jobs. Those were just the announced layoffs.

The Federal debt is now $4 trillion...

I had to stop, to say two things.

1. "8" is a number; "eight" is a word. Part of the decline of civilization, a small part, includes the change from using words to using numbers when we write. Yes, unwieldy numbers like 117,000 and 23,000 have always been best expressed as numbers. But I must have been taught to write "eight" rather than "8" when I'm writing, because that is still my natural inclination. And these days, I always notice things like Perot writing out the word "eight" in 1992, because I try not to do that anymore.

2. Perot capitalizes the word "federal". I used to do that, too, until I saw that people don't do it anymore. The interesting thing, though is the explanation I once read: In the days when people were generally satisfied with the federal government, the word was capitalized; these days, when people are generally dissatisfied with the federal government, the word is no longer capitalized.

I see everything in terms of the decline of civ.