This craft we call writing: The Hodinkee house style

krogerfoot · Feb 19, 2020

This week's Hodinkee shop magazine brings the insight for which the site is famous. "It's true: collectors love chronographs," we learn, in a piece that includes this nimble aside about the Heuer Carrera:

This is a terrific model for obituary writers. "Maude Flanders sadly passed away after an extremely short battle with an airborne tire while watching the Springfield 500 auto race yesterday." I wonder if we will ever find out why the race happened in the first place. Maybe the event was like a hockey game, which sometimes breaks out in the middle of a fistfight in North America.

The Hodinkee house style of writing, a combination of chumminess toward superluxury items coupled with a sweaty worship of them, is a topic I have celebrated before here, if you value your time as little as I do mine.

Dan S · Feb 19, 2020

"The sound sounds just as you would expect the sound to sound."

I forgot just how much I loved that post of yours, Kay. 👍

ClarendonVintage · Feb 19, 2020

I am not sure if I understood this and the linked WUS thread fully but I just want to say, vintage watch collecting is chumminess. It defies logic why 60 years old junks should be preferred over modern pieces. That's why we use chummy, irrational, exaggerated and long-winded language to express our irrational preferences. Not everyone views Hodinkee as the standard and mouthpiece of horology so there aren't much expectations to begin with.

janice&fred · Feb 19, 2020

krogerfoot
this nimble aside about the Heuer Carrera:

yes it does seem odd to focus on the tragic like that. It just makes the purpose of the article confusing.

gefmey · Feb 19, 2020

krogerfoot
Maude Flanders sadly passed away after an extremely short battle with an airborne tire while watching the Springfield 500 auto race yesterday.

Except she was hit by a T-shirt from a T-shirt cannon.

abrod520 · Feb 19, 2020

Remember: Hodinkee is a publication founded by bankers and over time has shifted its purpose to sell watches to mostly uninformed bankers and other rich people, with the ultimate goal of pumping up the value of their collections and the watches they offer as an AD. So if you think of these shop update posts more like investor newsletters, and all of a sudden lines like "collectors love chronographs" and the same story about the Carrera's origins as they've told every time they've had one for sale become much more understandable.

BlackTalon · Feb 19, 2020

Maybe they are trying to appeal to the largely underserved Goth groups?

krogerfoot · Feb 20, 2020

ClarendonVintage
I am not sure if I understood this and the linked WUS thread fully but I just want to say, vintage watch collecting is chumminess. It defies logic why 60 years old junks should be preferred over modern pieces. That's why we use chummy, irrational, exaggerated and long-winded language to express our irrational preferences. Not everyone views Hodinkee as the standard and mouthpiece of horology so there aren't much expectations to begin with.

I'm only criticizing Hodinkee's amusingly terrible writing here, not vintage watch collecting, or the way people on this forum talk about it. I agree that not many people take Hodinkee seriously, though I don't really see them as such a pernicious influence on the watch collecting world.

However, I don't think there is anything at all irrational about vintage watch fandom. Watch enthusiasts are celebrating human ingenuity when they admire mechanical watches. This is a technology that was perfected centuries ago, a fantastically complex tool that works so well that many of the people reading this are wearing one right now that was manufactured long before they were even born, and barely giving it a second thought. NOT admiring that would be irrational.

krogerfoot · Feb 20, 2020

abrod520
Remember: Hodinkee is a publication founded by bankers and over time has shifted its purpose to sell watches to mostly uninformed bankers and other rich people, with the ultimate goal of pumping up the value of their collections and the watches they offer as an AD. So if you think of these shop update posts more like investor newsletters, and all of a sudden lines like "collectors love chronographs" and the same story about the Carrera's origins as they've told every time they've had one for sale become much more understandable.

I absolutely agree. Many investor relations newsletters are written and edited by professionals who take what they're doing seriously, usually because they were hired and paid by people who believe attention to detail and getting things right are important. Many others are produced like Hodinkee appears to be, as if it never occurred to them that anyone would read it. Certainly no proofreaders seem to spend much time on those pieces. I know in the long run it doesn't matter if I think Hodinkee is poorly written; the site's publishers would probably point to all the money they make in response to my impudent mockery. But it's like what Masha Gessen once said on a different topic: "They don't merely fail to achieve excellence; they don't even see the point of it."

ExpiredWatchdog · Feb 20, 2020

BlackTalon
Maybe they are trying to appeal to the largely underserved Goth groups?

Goths don't have the resources. They all work at Subway (US sandwich shop chain) assembling Spicy Italian subs.

Syrte · Feb 20, 2020

I used to enjoy a lot of Hodinkee articles, I mostly have stopped reading but my only problem with them is when they insist on holding themselves out as «journalists ».
At least they used to when the discussion below took place. Now it seems they have more fully embraced their identity as a marketing vehicle, but it would be interesting to see if their vocabulary evolves..

https://omegaforums.net/threads/hodinkee-gets-it-wrong-again.60477/

NT931 · Feb 20, 2020

Ah the Hodinkee "house style"

Well worth parodying, especially when they're trying to sell a vintage watch in their shop. 😁

krogerfoot · Feb 20, 2020

Syrte
I used to enjoy a lot of Hodinkee articles, I mostly have stopped reading but my only problem with them is when they insist on holding themselves out as «journalists ».
At least they used to when the discussion below took place. Now it seems they have more fully embraced their identity as a marketing vehicle, but it would be interesting to see if their vocabulary evolves..

https://omegaforums.net/threads/hodinkee-gets-it-wrong-again.60477/

Thanks very much for linking to this thread. It was an illuminating and bracing read. I would be proud to write as firmly and lucidly as you do, in what I gather is not even your native language.

krogerfoot · Feb 20, 2020

NT931
Ah the Hodinkee "house style"
Well worth parodying, especially when they're trying to sell a vintage watch in their shop. 😁

Respect
It’s a word that we don’t often use in watch collecting, but it applies not just once, or twice , but three times when we gaze upon the visage of this grail watch.
[Raises drink, nods appreciatively]

Dedalus05 · Feb 20, 2020

A fine example of doublespeak, though I am not sure I understand why the hell The Hodinkee would bother in this instance. Wiki gives me this gruesome nugget from the history of the Carrera Panamericana:

"The 1953 running was the bloodiest year of the Carrera Panamericana. In addition to Bonetto's death- 8 other people were killed in unrelated accidents, including an incident where 6 spectators were mowed down by a flipping car. On the first stage between the cities of Tuxtla Gutiérrez and Oaxaca, American Bob Christie, with his mechanic Kenneth Wood, failed to make a left turn, and his Ford went off the road backwards, plunged over the embankment on the side and came to a cushioned but smashing stop upside down in the mud of the river bank, below the level of the highway. Christie unfastened his belts and helped "K" to reach the bank. A fairly large crowd of spectators who watched the race at this point, had hastily assembled on a ledge below the road to find a better view of the accident; many people swarmed to Christie’s and Wood’s aid immediately, and were relieved to find out that both were uninjured. But then, Mickey Thompson, a Bonneville Salt Flats record holder, crashed at the same place, and 6 people who were standing at a place to get a better view of Christie's accident were killed by Thompson's Ford, whose brakes had jammed, sending him straight into the embankment where the people were standing."

"Sadly passed away" indeed. I am reminded of Walter Duranty on the New York Times who, when writing of the famine in Ukraine , claimed "there is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." Shortly after that nugget of obfuscation Duranty won a Pulitzer. Perhaps The Hodinkee will too.

Larry S · Feb 20, 2020

The Dink is a combination of shameless commerce, industry boosterism and the occasional informative piece. Their archive contains some useful gems as well. Of late, I enjoy the comments, especially those who wax apoplectic over the latest Timex designs. I enjoy the site still. Not looking for great writing.

janice&fred · Feb 20, 2020

The feel I get from some of hodinkee's articles, given their target audience is mainly people of means, is they are "dumbing down" their writing style so their point can be quickly absorbed by those who have only a casual interest in vintage watches and don't have the time or inclination to indulge themselves into learning about them so as to make their own informed choices. They want to wear a "hip" vintage piece so defer their range of choices to hodinkee. Obviously it works.

S.H. · Feb 20, 2020

Nowadays Hodinke is for me just 😁 and 🍿, not really about watches (or in a really ironic way).

It is also interesting to read as for me English is a foreign language: lots of things to learn in their style. But it sounds more and more like streamlined corpo-speak.

Syrte · Feb 20, 2020

krogerfoot
Thanks very much for linking to this thread. It was an illuminating and bracing read. I would be proud to write as firmly and lucidly as you do, in what I gather is not even your native language.

Thanks for a very kind compliment, especially as I can see from your WUS post you write much better than I do. At least we each have our own style, which brings us back to your original topic. 😉
But you ought to write those nice posts on OF!

abrod520 · Feb 20, 2020

ExpiredWatchdog
Goths don't have the resources. They all work at Subway (US sandwich shop chain) assembling Spicy Italian subs.

I thought they all worked at Hot Topics and other related mall stores

This craft we call writing: The Hodinkee house style

krogerfoot

Dan S

ClarendonVintage

janice&fred

gefmey

abrod520

BlackTalon

krogerfoot

krogerfoot

ExpiredWatchdog

Syrte

NT931

krogerfoot

krogerfoot

Dedalus05

Larry S

janice&fred

S.H.

Syrte

abrod520

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