There is a name for the situation that occurs when you’ve never heard of something before, and then once you do you start to notice it everywhere. At least the people on the Bulletin Board in the St. Paul Pioneer Press had a name for it.
I can’t remember what it is, and such a vague idea doesn’t easily translate to a Google search. Oh, well.
Anyway, I had a question about a grammatical style point the other day and was told that The Chicago Manual of Style dictated that it should be the way that it was.
I had never heard about the Chicago Manual of Style before, but I didn’t give it much thought and went on with my day. When I was a junior journalist we used The AP Stylebook, so I figured this was just a competing book of writing rules.
That’s pretty much the case, though the AP book seems more focused on journalism, while the Chicago book seems more academic, which you’d expect, since one is produced by the Associated Press, and the other is produced by the University of Chicago.
Incidentally, since the first mention a few days ago, I’ve seen or heard references to the Chicago Manual of Style on no fewer than 4 occasions. Funny how that happens.
If you’re really into Grammar, you can get a subscription to either the CMOS or AP Stylebook on their websites. I think I’ll stick with Grammar Girl.
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I don’t remember what we called it in our non-journalism classes at MGSH, but we used whatever style was covered in the Writers Inc. book series.
You might get a kick out of this. I was trying frantically to use Google to find the name for when you start noticing something everywhere after the first time you hear about it, and this page is the closest I’ve gotten. This may be the most unsearchable thing I’ve come across (apart from names of tunes I have stuck in my head), and it’s driving me nuts! You never happened to remember what it’s called, did you?
I was just researching this topic the other day…synchronicity indeed.
[...] back when, I mentioned in passing the phenomenon where you’ve never heard of something before, and then once you do, you hear [...]