To me, these readings address two very different, although perhaps complementary topics that require distinction. In my 10th grade chemistry class, we spent a while discussing the difference between accuracy and precision. Of the two major texts we read, Lippman addresses accuracy and Calvino addresses precision (as is the first word of his lecture). While these terms are often conflated, they have notably distinct meanings here. Calvino’s lecture delves into description of the world around us, largely the natural world, and, in his word, “exactitude.” The first thing to note is that he abstains from addressing the accuracy of description, rather addressing the precision of description of the world around us, using the ancient Egyptian word Maat to exemplify what precision means. Maat represented a mythical feather that was weighed against souls. What is interesting to me in Calvino’s use of Maat in this context is that it does not exactly line up with his use of “exactitude” later on. The line in this lecture that most intrigued me is his quote of Hofmannsthal, “Depth must be hidden. Where? on the surface” (p. 93), especially as it related to precision and Maat. The idea that there is information hidden on the surface requires precision. For example, in a purely technical sense, the more information is embedded in a small area, the more precise the instrument required to extract that information. However, on the topic of Maat, the relation is less clear. There is no depth hidden on the surface of that mythical feather, so it appears there are two slightly different meanings of precision and exactitude at play here: the amount of information carried (such as the Maat and to a certain extent Hofmannsthal’s theory) and the precision of information conveyed.

The way this plays out in writing perhaps makes this make more sense when exemplified: a well-placed adjective can be either. A word like vermilion embodies the latter form of precision, specifying exactly what shade of red an object is. A word like “presidential,” for instance, can embody the former, conveying lots of information, but only if used correctly and precisely.