What did you do today?

I just laid out a story that had this headline:

"BOOK REVIEW: A new Ukrainian edition of
Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary"

Book review. Of a medical dictionary. By this point, I should no longer be surprised by anything that happens here. And yet ... !

This was the image I scanned for the story:

Fig. 1: I cleaned it up before putting it in the design document, duh.

Personally, I think it would be unethical if we didn't run review of the second volume. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's not finding out how medical dictionary cliffhangers end.

Confusion alert: This dictionary covers A-H of the Cyrillic alphabet, not A-H of the Latin alphabet. H in Cyrillic is pronounced "en" (er, that's using Latin letters to spell the pronunciation) and comes between M and O, so that's like a lot more letters covered, especially since stuff like B ("veh") and 3 ("zeh") are in there. It's been ages since I've recited the Cyrillic alphabet, so don't ask me to count how many letters come between A and H.

When I was a child I learned that alphabet to the tune of "Now I Know My ABC's" which makes no sense at all since there are way more letters in Cyrillic, throwing off the meter entirely. That's why the end of the song was a little anti-climactic; you'd get to the end and then non-musically have to recite the five or so letters remaining to get to the end of the alphabet. I suppose that made me associate Cyrillic with non-musicality (that and all the church singing, which was beautiful but always sounded improvised) and that's why I never became a Ukrainian-language pop star.

Yup, that's the reason.