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According to this article, the whole emoticons ‘n’ acronyms writing style is creeping into teenagers’ schoolwork.
The idea of emoticons in a term paper makes my eyes roll, and I’m not even
anti-emoticon, as is fashionable among smart people. Wiseguys like me sometimes need to flag our wiseguyitude. I don’t emoticon often but I use them when it seems prudent.
However, the statement that really struck me in the article was from Richard Sterling, a Berkeley prof and emeritus executive director of the National Writing Project. He predicts that eventually, the convention of starting sentences with a capital letter will disappear.
Hm, I’m not liking that idea. I’m not a language purist. I think the evolution of language is fun and exciting. But I also think that what we write should be easy to read and that includes graphically. The capitalized first letter is an important cue—at least as important as the period and the properly placed comma. I like capitalizations, paragraph breaks, commas and clarity of communication.
Unlike this sentence, which I pulled from the Fair Shares for All: A Memoir of Family and Food
, which I’m trying to finish but have stalled out on: "...Dad's minaciously short-winded frame had just been rushed to Oldchurch Hospital, the rack-rent lazaretto where I had reflexively frowned when a scalpel's intrusion spelled spasms of flashlight and seizures of bawling where once in umblical darkness I'd dozed to the clockwork berceuse of Mum's heart..."
I think it means the author's father was taken to the same hospital where the author was born by Cesarean section.
I have a decent vocabulary but in that statement alone are four words requiring a dictionary (minaciously, rack-rent, lazaretto, berceuse). One or two words, OK. I blame myself. Four? That's too many obscure words in one convoluted description. It's reader unfriendly.
The whole book is like that. MEGO. That the book was written by a national magazine copy chief makes the rococo writing all the more puzzling. A copy editor's job is to help make writing clearer.
On a related subject: Call me unsophisticated but nothing turns me off a book more than hearing it described as "lyrical." Possibly the only lyrical book I've ever really enjoyed was Bel Canto
, which I loved. So nice I read it twice.***
Fickle, fickle media (heh heh heh).
***
The Google searches that brought people to my blog got better and better as the week passed.
newspapers:watergate scandal
for sale xoloescuintle
sophie Razzle magazine
"eating is boring"
+2 Bangkok contact email address of doctors of Bangkok "email directory update" OR 2008 OR 2009 "@yahoo.com" –indians
I-35 between dallas and austin fun stops
i can make you thin but jean fain
eagle creek subcontinent pack
2008 @yahoo.com @gmail.com florida company doctors
%2
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Maybe later I’ll come up with more flotsam for our Friday. Maybe not.
4 comments:
I would love to hear commentary from some of the nastier editors that have sent rejections to me now and then (you know, the ones who persist in tearing apart the words and "one's obvious lack of writing ability")
I once challenged a new-to-me editor on the nastiness of her editing comments and she actually called and apologized. We went on to become quite friendly. She was new to the job and, I think, overwhelmed. But man, those were some NASTY comments.
A childhood friend posted a copy of an instant message conversation between her high school aged sister and her friend on a blog entry recently. It takes informal to a whole new level. When we were in high school (mid-late 90's) the internet was still somewhat new (as far as being in people's homes)... and now ten years later we couldn't even figure out what those crazy kids were talking about. I mean - OMG WTF LOL
Wow, if YOU find it hard to read, growing up in a texty, IM world, I would probably break down in tears to see it.
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