Wordbits » On Writing

Grammar nazis and other extremes

Ken Gagne — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:38:48 +0000

Sticklers for the rules of the English language are sometimes referred to as "grammar nazis" — an exaggeration if ever there were one, given the difference in scale of enormity between a crime against humanity and one against language. Still, it is an amusing mental picture, and one that humor Web site College Humor recently decided to bring to life. (Note: some violence follows.)

I can only imagine the apoplectic rage to which this Nazi would've been driven had he instead encountered the characters of The Onion's recent news report, "Pickup Truck Stoled":

LOGANSPORT, IN—Right out there, right in plain damn sight, a pickup truck got stoled last night out by the Murphy place, sources done reported Thursday.

According to eyewitnesses who seen it parked there, the truck, one of them nice Ford F-150 XLTs with the 4×4 and some real professional-type detail work that probably cost a bundle, was black.

"Everyone knows that's my truck. Why'd someone go and take it?" said owner Dale Hest, 35, the stepson of ol' Otto Murphy. "I just don't get it."

While it is important to both write and speak proper grammar, lest one convey an image akin to this victim of theft, one must also be careful to choose one's battles, lest the opposite extreme be attained, as in the above video. What common errors bother you or trip you up, and which do you feel have made it into general discourse?

The rhetoric of the Apple iPad

Ken Gagne — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:46:37 +0000

In a later version of The Elements of Style, Strunk and White, for better or worse, advised authors to "Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs." This recommendation needn't be taken literally or extremely, lest writers neurotically avoid any clarification to their words — but the point remains that a sentence needs a subject that should not be lost or confused amidst countless modifiers.

With all the discussion and analysis over the week-old Apple iPad and its implications for the mobile and e-reader markets, I think an important aspect has been overlooked: what would Strunk and White think of the iPad's unveiling?

Non-duplicated content from the ninety-minute press event was culled to compose the above 180-second montage. Such extreme editorial decisions will of course be slanted in its selections, with a result that's more amusing than telling. Still, the degree of rhetoric employed by Steve Jobs and his colleagues is remarkable. Would Strunk and White have us believe that so much bluster is obscuring a lack of concrete foundation?

A country of typewriters

Ken Gagne — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:36:12 +0000

The New York Times recently reported that Cormac McCarthy, author of such novels as No Country For Old Men, would be auctioning the typewriter on which he wrote his 2005 bestseller. He's replacing it not with a computer, but a newer typewriter.

It's no surprise that there are authors who prefer typewriters, just as there are videophiles who insist on vinyl or retrocomputer enthusiasts who use computers with 16K of memory. But what is surprising is that such antiquated production methods are still in use in modern industries.

My father was once in a similar situation when he remained committed to running his home business using the same spreadsheet software for two decades. The files were kept in a format inaccessible to his lawyers, brokers, and accountants, so information exchange was never as easy as emailing an attachment; more often, he had to print the files himself, and sometimes then bring them to a printshop to be concatenated into a single larger document. He was tolerated as a client because he'd been with these firms since before Microsoft Office was standardized. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when his computer finally gave out, forcing his upgrade to a modern platform.

I suspect the same is true of Mr. McCarthy, who has been a published author since 1965; his track record has earned him a leeway that would not be afforded to fledging writers. The likelihood of one of his novels being a success is worth the added cost of hiring a transcriptionist to convert his work to digital format.

Still, the cost of such unwavering technological devotion must at some point be question — as the New York Post did earlier this year when it reported that the New York City police department had spent a million dollars on new typewriters. Much of the police department's work has been computerized, but, as evidenced by these bills, a few artifacts remain. Wouldn't this money be better spent on bringing our civil servants into the 20th century? Typewriters may be fine for the entertainment industry, but the time and cost of accommodating diehards like Mr. McCarthy is not a luxury our government may always have.

From the typewriter to the bookstore

Ken Gagne — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:45:38 +0000

Writing a novel is a lofty ambition that involves years of hard work. But that's just the beginning of the long process that gets your story into the hands of readers. Courtesy Macmillan Publishers comes the rest of the tale in this behind-the-scenes look at modern-day book editing and production:

The Bible according to Lolcats

Ken Gagne — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:35:40 +0000

It amazes me that everyday users of the Internet have still not caught on to the phenomenon of lolcats. Though having only emerged this past January, they have since spread across the Internet, most popularly found on the site I Can Has Cheezburger? and even being featured in the July 2007 issue of Time magazine. As succinctly stated in Wikipedia, "Lolcats are images combining photographs of a cat with a humorous and idiosyncratic caption." Lolcat captions generally employ phonetic spellings and poor grammar, suggesting the low mental capacity of the featured felines (and perhaps of today's cell phone text messagers).

Though I'm personally a fan of these images, I do think they've gone a bit far, as it's apparently not enough for cats to be cute and funny; they need to be spiritual, too. A full-scale effort is underway to translate to this pidgin English that most popular of texts: the Holy Bible. Observe the Annunciation as the Angel Gabriel proclaims Mary to be the mother of God:

Ceiling Cat sended Gabriel, a hovr d00d, to Nazareth (dat is a citi in Galilee) to a virgn naemd Mary. She wuz engajded to a d00d naemd Joseph. Gabriel wuz liek "O hai Mary, u iz realli nice. Ceiling Cat iz wif u." Mary wuz kiend of worrid about dat. But teh hovr d00d wuz all "Doant be afraid. Ceiling Cat iz happi wif u. U iz gonna hav a kittn. Naem him Jesus. He wil be graet. He wil be teh kittn of Ceiling Cat an his daddi will give him David's chaer. He wil r00l Jacob's house forevr."

… If that just doesn't leave you speechless, I don't know what will. I'm by no means religiously opposed to this project, but it does beg the questions: Why? Who has the time to adapt this material? And can I have some of that time? Certainly my day doesn't have enough hours for my own writing…

(Hat tip to Angela Gunn)