Greetings, Fellow Scribes.
I was sitting in a meeting the other day, and I was looking
over an Email I had received from one of our customers. Noticing
a few errors and misspellings, I idly started to scratch on
corrections. It turned out that there were 14 errors in just 5
lines. That was kind of a shock... Maybe the skeptics are right
and we really ARE losing our ability to communicate by written
word. And that would be sad, since putting thoughts on paper
seems to be a real aid in unravelling complex problems and ideas.
A heck of a lot better than that meeting was, I can assure you.
Certainly, I can't claim that SUNFUN is always perfect.
Occasionally, a split infinitive, missing word or dangling
modifier escapes without my catching it. And grammar check often
fails me in writing something as silly as Funnies -- the darned
computer just never gets the joke. Using grammar check on this
stuff feels like doing standup comedy to an audience of grumpy
robots. I do work hard to maintain some level of proper English
here, no matter how silly this thing gets. There are times,
though, when the words don't come out as I heard them in my mind.
Or, maybe I really was having some literary hallucination, I
don't know.
Writing is like playing piano, practice helps, but you can
always find someone that does it better than you could ever
manage. As much as I might wish that I could write as concisely
as Hemingway or as emotionally as Capote, I suspect that it would
involve far too much drunkenness for me to pull off. You just
can't see the little letters on a computer screen when you're
smashed. You'll note, for example, that neither Hemingway nor
Capote did anything on Email.
We are all writers, even if the only thing we scratch onto
paper are greetings in Christmas cards. Even that writing has an
effect and conveys information and emotion, which is all that any
writer can do. Not that it doesn't help to have actual grammar
and make at least some kind of sense. It is always helpful to
write as if you had a point, even if you are just faking it.
Thanks this week to all of the folks that write to us,
including: Bernie & Donna Becwar (& Happy 50th!), Jerry Taff,
Pahoua Thao, Tim McChain, Bruce Gonzo, Ellen Peterson, Kerry
Miller, John Adler, Peter Adler, Yasmin & Meredith Leischer,
Junji & Miki Taniguchi, Lydia Cheong Chu-Ling, Jan Michalski,
Jack & Sherrie Gervais, George Lenta, and my favorite magazine
writer, Carol J. Becwar. As many times as I re-read these
things, there always seems to be some correction I miss. Not
that the errors in SUNFUN are always a complete loss... The
advantage of writing humor is that, if it makes you laugh, I can
always claim I meant it to be that way.
Have A Grammatical Week,
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"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank piece
of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
- Gene Fowler (1890-1960)
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NIVEN'S LAWS FOR WRITERS
------------------------
- Writers who write for other writers should write letters.
- Never be embarrassed or ashamed by anything you choose to
write.
- Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don't.
- It is a sin to waste the reader's time.
- If you've nothing to say, say it any way you like. If what
you have to say is important and/or difficult to follow, use
the simplest language possible.
- Everybody talks first draft.
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
"Writing comes more easily if you have something to
say."
- Sholem Asch
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OXYMORONS ARE A GAS...
-------------------
An oxymoron is a phrase that is a logical contradiction,
combining two contradictory thoughts. They tend to be things
that people say or write without thinking, often in news stories
or on television.
- 12-ounce pound cake
- Accurate stereotype
- Act naturally
- Aging yuppie
- Almost exactly
- Alone together
- Armed Gunman
- Casual intimacy
- Civil war
- Clearly confused
- Completely unfinished
- Dangerous weapon
- Exact estimate
- First annual
- Found missing
- Free with purchase
- Friendly fire
- Great depression
- Holy War
- Hopelessly optimistic
- Jumbo shrimp
- Legal brief
- Light-Heavyweight
- Live recording
- Memories of the Past
[ If you have memories of the future, see your mental
health professional. ]
- New Classic
- Non-denominational church
[ They have to believe SOMETHING! ]
- Non-stop flight
[ "But I don't know how to land the plane... " ]
- Original copy
- Partially completed
- Peace force
- Plastic glasses
- Pretty ugly
- Unbiased opinion
And the worst oxymoron of all...
- Microsoft Works
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"Why don't you write books people can read?"
- Nora Joyce to her husband James
(1882-1941)
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WHAT'D HE SAY?
-------------
Academics sometimes write in long-winded, high density prose
that reads about like swimming in quicksand. Jack Kolb of UCLA
found this sentence in Paul Fry's "A Defense of Poetry" (Stanford
University Press, 1995). Yes, believe it or not, this is a
single sentence.
"It is the moment of on-construction, disclosing the
absentation of actuality from the concept in part
through its invitation to emphasize, in reading, the
helplessness -- rather than the will to power -- of its
fall into conceptuality."
[ Zzzzz... ]
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"Meanwhile her ears were filled with the sound of a
soft but frantic gasping and it was some time before
she identified it as her own."
- From a book by best-selling author
Sebastian Faulks, winner of a 1998
literary award for "the year's most
laughable description of sex."
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UNDER AN EVIL SPELL
-------------------
One thing that makes writing in English such an adventure is
the peculiar nature of English spelling. It wouldn't be quite so
bad if teachers didn't try to convince us all that one misspelled
word makes you look like an uneducated boob. Might be worth
pointing out that even Shakespeare was a lousy speller - of the
very few pieces of paper we can be certain he signed, there are
even several different spellings of his name! Not that accepting
any old alternate spelling would make things easier. Try this
one:
If GH stands for P as in Hiccough
If OUGH stands for O as in Dough
If PHTH stands for T as in Phthisis
If EIGH stands for A as in Neighbor
If TTE stands for T as in Gazette
If EAU stands for O as in Plateau
Then the correct way to spell POTATO should be:
GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU
[ Oh, a SGHUD! (spud) ]
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DEALING WITH MINIMUM WORD COUNTS...
--------------------------------
A woman from the deepest, most southern part of Alabama went
into the local newspaper office to have the obituary for her
recently-deceased husband written.
The obit editor informed her that the fee for an obituary is
50 cents per word.
She paused, reflected, and said, "Well, then, let it read,
'Billy Bob died'."
Amused at the woman's thrift, the editor said, "Sorry ma'am
there is a 7 word minimum on all obituaries".
A little flustered, the widow thought things over and, in a
few seconds said, "In that case, let it read: 'Billy Bob died -
1983 Pick-up for sale.'"
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MODERNE TIMES...
-------------
A thousand words are worth a picture -- and they load
faster, too.
- Proverbs for the Computer Age
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THE WRITE SPIN...
--------------
Being able to write reasonably well does have a certain
power. If you can get your thoughts organized on the page, you
can write them in such a way as to hide any embarrassing reality.
Once you own the crayons, you can color the picture any way you
wish.
Marketing departments do that sort of thing for a living,
and become quite adept at showing only the positive side of any
bad situation. Take the case at one company of the annual
softball game between the marketing people and the support staff.
Last year, the marketing folks lost the game 15-0, but they got
the chance to prove just how good they really are at putting a
spin on the ball by the announcement they wrote for the company
bulletin board.
"The Marketing Department is pleased to announce that
for the 2000 Softball Season, we came in 2nd place,
having lost but one game all year. The Support
Department, however, had a rather dismal season,
winning only one game."
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"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
- Tom Stoppard
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ESSAY, EH, WHAT?
---------------
My editors always scream for conciseness... All right, in
my case more so than others. However, the following shows what
we can do when we put our minds to it.
-------
A university creative writing class was asked to write a
concise essay containing these four elements: religion, royalty,
sex, and mystery.
The prize-winning essay read: "My God," said the Queen, "I'm
pregnant. I wonder who did it?"
- Thanks to Ken Venit
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"We did not all write like Hemingway but we surely
drank like Hemingway."
- Author Scott Turow, on the literary
circle he was part of as an
aspiring novelist at Stanford
University.
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WRITE ERROR...
-----------
Once there was a young man who wanted to become a great
writer.
"I want to write things the whole world will read," he
declared. "Stuff that will elicit strong emotions from people in
every walk of life. I want my writing to make them scream, cry,
howl in pain and anger."
He now lives happily in Redmond, WA, writing error messages
for Microsoft.
- Richard A. Wright
[ And he knows General Protection Fault
personally... ]
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© 2001 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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