Category: Literacy

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Gone. . . and Mostly Forgotten

A recent article, “A Thoughtless Age,” by David P. Goldman, contemplates what has been lost from our culture.

This paragraph reminded me a bit of extended family gatherings when I was growing up. . . just a bit.

“The last place where literature is read closely by a non-specialist public might be the Orthodox Synagogue, where the Hebrew Bible is examined through the eyes of ancient as well as medieval and modern commentators. It is read not as literature but as family history, and its readers have an existential interest in the result. The Hebrew Bible, to be sure, is not all of literature, but it is the best of it (nothing in Greek or Latin compares to the grandeur of Isaiah). Most of all, it is the continuing concern of a living community which has read it together for thousands of years.”

A bunch of Baptists gathering together, talking family, current events and scripture might not be an Orthodox Synagogue, but it used to be similar. Notsomuch nowadays. . . But real questions about our place in God’s creation were at least on the table, and considered in light of the “great literature” of The Bible, literature that compasses the whole of human experience and as much of divine transcendence as can be contained in the words of men.

“As long as the ambient culture runs from the existential questions brought forth by religion, and as long as the religious public contents itself with the pap of popular culture, we will be shut off from access to the great works of the past.”

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Déjà vu All Over Again

The problem with reading fiction is that there is a limited number of plots, and I’ve read them all many, many times, in so many combinations and permutations that I invariably think, “Déjà vu all over again,” when reading a novel. Characters, descriptive narrative, and minute plot variations are the interest points I read fiction for anymore. Well, that and a writer’s deftness (or lack thereof) with a story arc, etc. *shrugs* There’s enough left to feed the addiction. Re-reading exceptionally well-written fiction is quite often much more interesting than most new material available.

Non-fiction? Different criteria in many ways.

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Signs and Portents of Declining Literacy

While even I (*gasp!* really?!?, moi? *heh*) am subject to errors of this sort from time to time (particularly after struggling to read through many long text samples by subliterates), a fairly sure sign of poor literacy (that is, not being well-read) is using compound words that are adjectives or adverbs in place of noun or verb phrases OR using separate words when compounds of those words is proper.

Already vs All ready
Altogether vs All together
Anyone vs Any one
Anything vs Any thing
Awhile vs A while. . .
. . .
Backseat vs Back seat. . .
. . .
Everyday vs Every day. . .
. . .
Maybe vs May be. . .
. . .
Sometime vs Some time. . .
. . .
Workout vs Work out. . .

And many, many more.

Why do some writers regularly mix such things up? Because they are not well-read. Such writers may have read a lot of text, but if they have, the text they have read has been written by poorly-read, less than genuinely literate writers. Being well-read requires having read enough text by genuinely literate writers to have absorbed good language skills, which includes, among many attributes, knowing the useful distinctions between such compound words as listed above and the phrases they’ve been compounded from. (Insert obligatory Winston Churchill comment about ending sentences with prepositions here. 🙂 )

Of course, that’s only one, of many, abilities a literate writer will have in his bag, but when it’s missing, one can be pretty sure that the writer who lacks this ability is just too lazy to have done his homework. He might be a good storyteller or public speaker/lecturer, but he’s not really literate enough to be trusted with a pen (or keyboard) and a publisher (even if it is himself*).

*Subliterate self-pubs/”Indie” writers almost invariably are too cheap (or financially strapped) to pay for decent editing–either content or line editing–and even if they try “crowdsourcing” such things usually only appeal to their own cohort of subliterates to check their work. *gagamaggot* Of course, there are literate “Indie” writers with literate peers and readers, and their works are generally edited to a standard that, nowadays, exceeds that of the increasingly poor quality of editing coming from traditional publishing houses. Not common but welcome.

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Addictions

Some are not necessarily all that bad, ya know?

I have a lifelong friend (former college room mate) I once asked for something to read (late, had read everything in the apartment–I thought–and just wanted some words in front of my face). He handed me a soup can. I was happy. Yeh, addicted to the printed word. It’s an addiction I can live with, though. (After the soup can, I read some cereal boxes. I had the whole pantry to get through.)

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Does This Irk Me? Well, Yes, It Does.

One word mis-usage I find trending strongly of late is the misuse of “bring” for “take.” It’s an easy (and extremely useful) distinction to make; simplified: bring HERE; take THERE. When someone uses it to say they will “bring [something somewhere]” (or a close variation) to mean they will TAKE [something somewhere], it’s a pretty clear sign that they aren’t really literate . . . OR have been spending WAY too much time in the company of illiterates and have succumbed to their bad influence.

“My brakes are acting up. I’m going to bring it in tomorrow to find out what’s wrong,” only semi-works IF the speaker is at the mechanic’s at the time of speaking (or is speaking to the mechanic about bringing it to him. Of course, if one were AT the mechanic’s at the time and had bad brakes, it’d be foolish not to leave the car at that time). If one were NOT at the mechanic’s and NOT speaking to him but to a third party, then “bring” is just stupid in that context.

Puzzle out those funny lil squiggles? Maybe. Understand the meaning those funny lil squiggles are intended to convey? Being able to put on paper (or in electronic “ink”) some funny lil squiggles that actually contain meaning with any clarity at all? It’s a crapshoot for college grads nowadays.

Sidebar: given the evidence of swelling illiteracy in our society, it seems obvious that spending billions and billions of dollars to add administration jobs to “education” doesn’t appear to be improving education.

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I Post These Kinds of Things Because You’re Slacking Off

The problem with self-pub? Whole HERDS of 20-something illiterate liberal arts graduates “writing” books for a “readership” of their peers. The sheer depth of their cultural, historical and LITERARY illiteracy (grammar atrocities, word misuse, COMPLETE misunderstanding of background and usage of common expressions, etc., etc.) is mind-boggling. It’s too late to lobotomize them. They’ve already done such a good job on themselves, already.

(Yes, there are a few who actually either know how to use a dictionary and form moderately coherent sentences. . . or else have gone outside their cohort and enlisted the aid of the rare literate proofreader/editor to clean up their glurge.)

Yeh, yeh. Dylan Thomas said it best (though about a different kind of death): “Rage, rage against the dying of the light. . . ” *heh*

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Not All “Literates” Are

The US reached an impressive 81% high school graduation rate in 2013. That was also the year that, had previous models been followed, the Department of (Mis)Education would have conducted another National Assessment of Adult Literacy. But, of course, following the dismal results of the 2003 assessment (which varied not a whit from the 1993 assessment) did not militate for yet another embarrassing survey.

Oh, that 2003 NAAL? Here’s all you need to know: 69% of recent (at that time) college grads could not read and understand “complex text” that included bus schedules, want ads, warning labels and driving directions.

BTW, the CIA Factbook defines that level of “reading” ability as illiteracy. Warring bureaucrappies? No, because although more than 50% of Americans–based on the NAAL, cannot read such materials, the CIA Factbook hilariously states that American literacy is over 97%. BTW, the NAAL dumbed down the term “literacy” to the point that it could come up with an 81% literacy rate. The data disagrees. . . and has become harder to get to recently, for some reason.

Has literacy in the US improved since then? The question virtually answers itself.

*sigh*

While it is not (yet) correct to say that all US citizens are functionally illiterate, it is far to say not only that not all US citizens are functionally illiterate, but that probably 50% or more of them can tell no difference between the first statement and the second.

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Valley Girl University

*gagamaggot*

Reading almost anything written in the last 30 years is a crap shoot. As traditional publishers have come to be run more and more by bean counters and literate editors have been more and more pushed aside in favor of hucksters who know how to weigh manuscripts or some other such stupid criteria, the murder of the English language there has become more and more par for the course. Still, there seem to be a (very) few literate adults left in trad pub houses.

“Indie” publishing is all over the place, but yes, execrable treatment of English is a wee tad more common in “Indie” books. It’s as though in all forms of publishing practiced nowadays, books are becoming dominated by products from writers (and proofreaders and editors) who all received degrees in Assassinating English from Valley Girl U.

Example abound, but the proximal cause of this wee rant is,

“If X didn’t hack into Y’s accounts and trace the money to Z, we might never have put it together.”

No, moronic graduate of Valley Girl U. No. “”If X hadn’t hacked. . . ”

I really, really, really wanted to dope slap the writer (and any proofreader and editor) for that, especially since it was the capstone of many usage, grammar and utterly stupid POV errors.

People who want to get paid to write (or proofread or edit) text should do their due diligence. They ought to at least work to become minimally literate. The example above disqualifies the writer (and any proofreader and editor involved in the book) from inclusion in the class, “literate.”

Continue reading “Valley Girl University”

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I Blame “Mass Man”

OK, “backyard” I can almost buy as a noun, since it’s been (fairly infrequently) used that way, and not just as an adjective, since the 17th Century. It’s still infelicitous. (And note the differences in pronunciation between “back yard” [separate adj+noun] and “backyard”[adj]) But using the adjective “backseat” as a noun in place of “back seat” is just laziness, committed by writers whose verbal vocabulary exceeds their reading/writing vocabulary (and who have a tin ear for nuances of pronunciation, as well). How many morons write “frontseat” to be used as a noun? Yeh, maybe a few–though in today’s increasingly illiterate society, increasing in number–morons. Unfortunately, there is a growing number of subliterate, lazy writers misusing adjectives as nouns. . . and editors and “proofreaders” who are just as subliterate and lazy. All should be flogged with dangling participles.

And all of the above who get paid for their abuse of English should be flogged–for real–through the streets before being tarred and feathered.

That is all. For now. . .