Category: Writing and Language

The day dawned much like any other day, except that the date was different.

The 2004 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners are hereby announced.

(via Ipse Dixit)

Cool post in 20×20 Room about Lexicons and how they are, and aren’t, like games. And I don’t just say that because he cites one of my own favorite Lost 500 Years entries.

And it really reminds me that I need to do a print-out of the items I contributed to that effort.

An op-ed in the NY Times takes the position that punctuation is, well, not like a rule or something.

That’s the point of punctuation: not to spin a web of arcane rules, but to remind us to write (and think) clearly. It’s obvious that force-feeding the rules of punctuation isn’t working. Therefore I suggest a more tolerant approach.
The question that readers and editors should ask is not whether the punctuation violates the rules, but whether the meaning is clear. Is anybody addled by the film title “Two Weeks Notice?” Have you ever seen “dont” without an apostrophe, and wondered what the author meant? Of course not.

The tension between rules and freedom is an ongoing one, and most folks would probably agree that the grey area between them is the best course, the media res. The problem is that it’s only that tension that keeps extremists on either end from carrying the day.

So while it’s true that …

Some day we may even regard isn’t (with an apostrophe) as quaint as to-day seems today.

… that shouldn’t mean that we should all start willy-nilly dropping apostrophies out of contractions. Because, frankly, then the question becomes, “What next?”

The thing is, while clarity of communication is always (one would hope) the ultimate goal, it’s also a fuzzy one. Punctuation (of which apostrophes are, perhaps, among the least meaningful) is there to provide structure toward clarity. While I agree that language (and punctuation) do evolve, that evolution should be as slow and painful as possible, lest we instead leap into a bold, punctuationless future, or one where it’s, like, do your own thing, man …

I’m not advocating punctuation anarchy. Punctuation that serves to eliminate confusion is as imperative today as ever. But as the language evolves we should put the most picayune punctuation rules out to pasture, the way we do with obsolete rules of grammar.

One man’s “picayune” is another man’s “critical to clarity and understanding.” I’m just saying we need to be careful.

One slight deviation between American and British English is that the Brits have taken to dropping the periods after abbreviations, especially in titles. So it’s “St Louis” and “Mr Smith” and so forth. That is, perhaps, not a bad idea, but such things probably make more sense done on a large, institutional basis (e.g., the NY Times changing its house style, and the country either following, gradually, in its path, or not) than in letting 300 million people decide for themselves. They will, of course, but societally such, yes, anarchy should probably be resisted rather than embraced.

Which all feels rather muddled to me, and not very much in keeping with my usual sense of liberty and freedom and personal choice and the like. Perhaps it’s because communication is one of those things that, by its nature, intertwines two or more people, so there is a responsibility on all folks’ parts to work from a common set of rules and guidelines.

Either that, or I’m just becoming a conservative old fuddy-duddy, bemoaning the good old days when only Capt. Kirk would ever split an infinitive …

(via Rantingprofs)

Here’s a fascinating article on the myth and folklore of homeless children in Miami.

It’s horrible, in many ways, yet fascinating to see how the mythic elements of our own culture blend with those of these children.

On Christmas night a year ago, God fled Heaven to escape an audacious demon attack — a celestial Tet Offensive. The demons smashed to dust his palace of beautiful blue-moon marble. TV news kept it secret, but homeless children in shelters across the country report being awakened from troubled sleep and alerted by dead relatives. No one knows why God has never reappeared, leaving his stunned angels to defend his earthly estate against assaults from Hell. “Demons found doors to our world,” adds eight-year-old Miguel, who sits before Andre with the other children at the Salvation Army shelter. The demons’ gateways from Hell include abandoned refrigerators, mirrors, Ghost Town (the nickname shelter children have for a cemetery somewhere in Dade County), and Jeep Cherokees with “black windows.” The demons are nourished by dark human emotions: jealousy, hate, fear.
[…] Folktales are usually an inheritance from family or homeland. But what if you are a child enduring a continual, grueling, dangerous journey? No adult can steel such a child against the outcast’s fate: the endless slurs and snubs, the threats, the fear. What these determined children do is snatch dark and bright fragments of Halloween fables, TV news, and candy-colored Bible-story leaflets from street-corner preachers, and like birds building a nest from scraps, weave their own myths. The “secret stories” are carefully guarded knowledge, never shared with older siblings or parents for fear of being ridiculed — or spanked for blasphemy. But their accounts of an exiled God who cannot or will not respond to human pleas as his angels wage war with Hell is, to shelter children, a plausible explanation for having no safe home, and one that engages them in an epic clash.

There’s some amazing writing ideas in this syncretic mythos, as well as gaming ideas. Not to mention a call for help that’s difficult to ignore.

Try your luck with Richard Roth’s Hundred Most Common Errors in (American) English usage.

I got a 71/100, which should tell you something. (You do have to keep your own score.)

I learned a few things I hadn’t known before (8, 20, 32, 38, 39, 85). But the biggest problem with something like this is that language is an evolving beast — some of the “errors” stem from “proper” vs. “colloquial” English (3, 34, 36, 42, 56, 67, 83, 98 for example), and that’s always dangerous. When does something become “proper”? When enough people use it that it becomes accepted by the “experts” — which means that the “error” is repeated enough to be a “truth.”

Of course, some rules, even many rules, are necessary. Some of the distinctions and errors inhibit communication, introduce confusion, and the like. But even as much as I’m a lover of grammar, it’s something you can easily carry too far.

Still, interesting stuff.

(via GoaF)

The Winners have been announced for the 2003 Bulwer-Lytton contest. Huzzah.

(via Ipse Dixit)