Category: Literacy

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Fun, Fun, Fun

Sometimes, Internet discussions can be a blast. I especially love it when some recent college grad (“recent” to me is somewhere in the last 30 years or so *heh*) gets all huffy and insulted when specific errors in their argument (fact, egregious word mis-usage, fallacy of reasoning–and the effect it has on his* argument–etc.) is pointed out to him*, is monumentally insulted, hurt and angry, instead of bucking up, growing up, getting a pair and doing his* own homework.

I really enjoy it when a po’ widdle baby interlocutor’s argument is a vehement “refutation” of an assertion I’ve made and. . . he* ends up accidentally supporting my argument, or when he* latches onto a word or term I’ve used (“Ooo! That sounds smart. I’ll use it too!”) and uses the word or term in a manner completely antithetical to its meaning, proving he* has no idea what he’s* just said.

Now, I’ll admit that some of the reasons I get such a laugh out of these kinds of things are not exactly flattering. For example, some are,

1. I DGARA about some illiterate blowhard’s tender lil feewings. Suck it up buttercup.
2. I enjoy watching metaphorical steam coming out of self-made idiots’ ears. They worked hard to earn my disrespect and they deserve it.
3. (Positive!)One in a hundred–with luck–will actually ask serious questions about how to repair the “holes and gaps, lacks and losses, absences, insipidies and the like” in their education/knowledge base.

I recall one such po’ soul from about 20 years ago. Head of the English department at a prestigious East Coast university. Emailed me privately to ask me–quite seriously–if my final comment about a post of his (well after deconstructing and pretty well demolishing it) were a reference to Faulkner. Well, except that he didn’t inflect the subjunctive mood in his question. Oh, the comment? To the effect that his argument was “sound and fury, signifying nothing” (and yes, it was in quotation marks). He quite literally (and I use the term accurately here) had NO idea that the quote was from The Scottish Play. No, seriously. The head of an English department at a prestigious East Coast university was essentially illiterate. He had never even read any of Shakespeare’s works. That qualifies an English professor as illiterate.

*sheesh*

But, since he emailed me privately, sincerely asking to be enlightened, I simply referred him to The Bard (with act, scene and line citation–Act V, Scene 5, in context, lines 20-31(? IIRC) for the soliloquy.).

Any English prof who’s unfamiliar with that soliloquy is taking his pay under false pretenses, IMO.

But those kinds of folks turn out the illiterate boobs I run across every now and then, illiterate boobs who are adamant in their obdurate fantasy that they “know stuff” and can actually reason.

I do them and the world at large a kindness when I disabuse them of their fantasies.

Wonderful! I get to have fun and perform a public service at the same time! Win-win for me! (And, in those rare cases when the illiterate boob actually wakes up and smells the coffee, a win for the illiterate boob, too.)

Yeh, I don’t do the PC “his/her, s/he” crap much. It’s stupid. And I find “their” used as a singular to be offensive, too, although I have gotten sucked into using it every now and then. Bad influences. 😉

N.B. I still only claim to be about half as literate as my grandfathers, some of my uncles and others I have known well for decades. And I enjoy having opportunities to repair my “holes and gaps. . .” etc. when they’re pointed out to me, so please feel free to note errors I make. Yeh, including typos. *sigh* But do be careful making an argument about word misuse. Some of my fav reading material is still my collection of dictionaries. 🙂

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Self-Made Morons: Giving the Gift of Laughter

UPDATE:

I’m really late to this thing, and I don’t really have anything to add, but that’s never stopped me before, so why now, eh? 😉

The book that’s the subject of the kerffuffle mentioned below has won the 2014 Compton Crook Award, arguably one of the awards most insulated from influence by the agenda-driven GHH crowd. It’s a reader-driven award for best sci-f/fantasy first novel by an individual author

http://www.bsfs.org/bsfsccw.htm

So, some guy wrote a (pretty good, IMO) space opera/first, et al, contact novel and someone else obviously trying to influence some upcoming awards (one of which the novel had been nominated for) wrote a “review” wherein she openly admitted she hadn’t really read the book, just cherry-picked things that offended her. (Apparently she wrote another that was even more over-the-top, but it seems to have disappeared from all the places links point to. Wonder why. Not.)

The review’s here: Fire with Fire: The Most Interesting Man in ALL TEH WORLDS (The book’s here or here, in case you want to make your own comparison to what the reviewer who DIDN’T read the book has to say about it.)

Here, perhaps this will push your curiosity button. One of the things that sends the “reviewer” around the bend was this cherry-picked sentence (quoted in more context at the “review”):

Downing shook Corcoran’s wide, strong hand.

Yeh, that’d give me the willies too. I would greatly prefer to shake a “narrow, weak, limp-wristed” pussy metrosexual paw. Yep. Oh, wait. That’s not me; that’s the po’ widdle baby who cherry-picked things to be offended at and who refused to read the whole thing before “reviewing” it. Might run into another scary “wide, strong hand”!

*feh*

To the po’ widdle baby who apparently “thinks” she has a glittery hoohah, but who obviously has simply spent too many hours playing with her autolobotomy kit, I have only this to offer: life won’t get any better until you put down the autolobotomy kit and stop sniffing the unicorn farts, buttercup. (Yeh, yeh, I’d offer this at the offending post, but I’m not wasting even a throwaway email address on obtaining a login there.)

As to Gannon’s book, well, below the fold, mmmK?

Continue reading “Self-Made Morons: Giving the Gift of Laughter”

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A Reader’s Lament. . . OK, Gripe

Yeh, yeh: I read far too many books. Blah-blah-blah.

Sadly, I had competent instruction in English when I was a lad. Occasionally I even choose to write as though I paid attention during class, even though I do not ask folks to pay me for what I write. But folks who expect me to pay them for their writing really ought to pay attention to proper grammar (I allow some leeway for dialog, since one can’t expect all the characters in a piece of fiction to be literate *heh*), spelling and word usage.

A couple of examples from today’s readings illustrate my lament/gripe:

From a “real” publisher comes a book sprinkled with loads of grammar, usage, spelling and punctuation errors. One sample: “The McCarthy’s [sic] did not comment. . . ” Apostrophe Abuse is prevalent and shows up in many ways, but I really hate it that more and more writers (and proofreaders and editors) have NO idea how to form plurals from proper nouns.

From the preface material in a self-pub (although I understand “Indie Published” is the preferred term nowadays) book, I gathered the author was tickled pink with his wife’s “proofreading” and his editor’s “professionalism”. *shudder* Not often a good sign. Sure enough, the thing’s littered with errors most commonly found in works written by hormone-lobotomized seventh-graders. *argh!*

Read two more by another author yesterday. Were it not for the *cough* “indifferent” *cough* editing/proofreading, I might have given the books as many as four out of five stars on Amazon for books of the genre. As it was, I was generous to give the books three stars. I would prefer to have the author, any proofreaders and editors at hand to personally dope slap. *sigh* Of course, the author was another of those who thanked his proofreader(s)/editor(s). (As I said earlier, usually a bad sign.)

Yeh, yeh, on top of my other reading (*sigh* mostly background to “news” and other fictional non-fiction), five novels in the past two days. One of them was competently written/proofread/edited. One. So far. . .

Welcome to the post-literate society, where published works must rise only to almost the literary quality of a Twitter or FarceBook post.

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Faux-Literacy

I saw an article today in passing that reminded me once again how the Internet has helped spread faux-literacy. Its title contained, “all the cool offices aren’t in San Francisco” even though the content of first paragraph of the article indicated that the writer’s view was something very different, that NOT ALL of the cool offices are in SF.

For anyone who’s confused as to the difference, thank the Internet, the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind and your incompetent English teachers for the spread of faux-literacy. (A couple of Venn diagrams would clarify the differences, but there one would have to fall back on skills math teachers may or may not have imparted. *sigh*)

Oh, well, here’s one set of diagrams that can illustrate the difference, although there are other ways to do it. This is just the simplest, perhaps (Click on graphics for optimal size):

All-not

Not-all

Of course, the gripe I give a bare outline of above is just the tip of the faux-literate iceberg. I had live almost six decades before I began hearing/reading subliterate morons saying/writing, “I wish I would have” instead of “I wish I had.” Did this sort of misuse of the conditional perfect just start being widely used as illiteracy (even among college graduates) has grown over the last few decades until it reached some sort of critical mass and spill over into public fora, or has it been there all along and just hidden from me because I had an exposure to people who were primarily a more literate bunch of folks?

*shrugs* Who knows. I certainly see much, much more of these things since the Internet has democratized publishing of all sorts of writing.

faux-literacy Well, what do you think it means, anyway? Lots of folks think they’re literate because other people have told them they are, accept them as literate and even pay them to write their subliterate crap. They think they are literate and others around them do, but what they write (or say) proves that they are not. The more they fake literacy and spread their subliterate, moronic screeds, the dumber public discourse becomes.

And they’re everywhere. Most prominent Mass MEdia Podpeople: condemned as faux-literates by the words they utter. Politicians, Academia Nut Fruitcakes, “Edumacators” and more: all spreading subliteracy via their public pretense of literacy.

The lowest common denominator is the measure of the best in our society.

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“Magnificent Devices”–Wow. Just Wow.

I allowed myself to get sucked into this four book collection the other day. Wow. So very well-written. Best “steam-punk world” I’ve experienced. VERY hard to put down. Engaging characters, good plotting, well-detailed descriptive narrative: just a Good Read.

Magnificent Devices

Now, if you saw my normal reading list, you might be surprised that I enjoyed this collection so much. Four short books (the whole collection doesn’t run much over 800pp) that were a really fun read. I immediately bought the next book, A Lady of Resources, and immediately devoured it. Yes, I enjoyed the entire collection and I will purchase the next book as soon as it’s available.

But why, pray, might you be surprised at my glowing commentary? Oh, well, these books are “juvies” (yeh, yeh, they call ’em “YA” books now, but since “juvenile” now extends to the late 20s–or later: most politicians are sociopathic juveniles, for example–and “young adults” are more likely to be 30-somethings anymore, I’ll just stick with “juvie” mmK? ;-)), and the ONLY reason I read juvies is because I enjoy sharing my Wonder Woman’s world. She’s a K-8 librarian and is very close with her readers. I suspect a very large portion of her enjoyment of juvie books is anticipation of interaction with her students about the books she reads WITH them. And I enjoy the well-written and well-edited ones for being able to share them with her. (Besides, they are invariably very, very quick reads and don’t disrupt my other reading hardly at all, so. . . *heh*)

OK, but these books are quite different. Yeh, yeh, I read the Percy Jackson stuff. *yawn* Well-written enough, but really quite pedestrian, boringly predictable. And yes, I read the J.K. Rowling things, despite being bored to tears after getting halfway through the first one. (Maybe I’m a bit picky, but then again maybe not. . . )

These books, though, are real gems. They’re just very, very well-written, with an excellent Victorian period feel melding well with the fictional steampunk universe, characters that are engaging and credible, ripping good stories, just. . . just Good Reads, regardless the genre or target audience. What’s even more surprising is that this very, very well-written prose and these very, very well-told stories are from the hand of a person with an actual B.A. in Literature AND an M.F.A. in Writing Popular Fiction–two things that, in my experience, tend to result in writers producing Suckitudinous Fiction. *heh* My hat’s off to Shelley Adina for developing REAL writing chops despite her academic credentials. 😉

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In Long Ago Days of Yore. . .

Getting a piece of fiction written and published once took a bit of work. First, there was that literacy thing–you know, being literate enough to at least have a fair idea when you’d just put something down on paper that proved you didn’t have the first clue what you were taking about, for one thing. *sigh* Developing that kind of literacy takes a LOT of reading and perhaps quite a bit of RW experience as well, in many cases.

Then, if one were literate enough to at least have a clue about the deficiencies in one’s storehouse of knowledge and experience, the ability to correct, or at least seriously address, those deficiencies used to come in handy.

And that’s not the whole skill and knowledge set that was once very, very beneficial.

Just having a pedestrian imagination and a verbal vocabulary defined by the lowest common denominator of popular media is all it seems to take to get a novel published nowadays. And the stupider the plots and dumber the characters, the better. *sigh* Evidence: Dan Brown.

One of the worst things I see writers do mimics typical Hollyweird/BoobTube writing. When people who barely manage to inch into the first standard deviation above the norm try to write characters who are more than just average, they tend to write themselves and their acquaintances. Trying to write dialog for a very literate and “brilliant” scientist with a nominal IQ of something north of 150 using a semi-literate (or often even subliterate) mind capable of handling abstract thought at about IQ 115 results in characters that appear to be literate and brilliant only to persons to whom a Zabriskan Fontema appears to be a genius.1

To anyone with more than two active synapses between their ears, such characters seem to be dumber than a bag of hammers.

*meh* I do find such writing marginally interesting, though, as a window into the dull minds of the authors. Of course, when I ask myself, “What WAS this author THINKING?!?” the answer is usually, “Oh, right. Nothing at all. . . ”

1Visiting with a bright, thoughtful and literate person in the upper reaches of the first standard deviation above the norm (according to this person’s estimation; my experience of their abilities leads me to believe their one known experience with IQ measurement fell victim to test anxiety) has spurred me to expand this a bit.

Yes, “merely” bright people can write characters who are “brilliant” and do it competently, creating believable characters, BUT (and this is one HUGE badonka-donk “but”;-)) such persons MUST do their homework! Their research should include a LOT of reading of truly brilliant thinkers (and “conversation” with those thoughts read), face-to-face conversations with such persons–both casual and on-topic in those persons’ areas of expertise–and review of their characterizations and dialog by a literate person whose intellect is of a comparable level to that of the character written.

Better, of course, would be for an author to simply be of the class of persons he is characterizing, to have among his peer group more than a few persons of similar intellect, etc. But, alas! that is NOT the case with Hollyweird/BoobTube-influenced “bright enough for success in a dumbed-down high school setting” subliterates who seem to write most of the “genius” characters in contemporary fiction. *sigh*

BTW, while I enjoy the show in small doses, “The Big Bang Theory” is a very nearly perfect example of this problem in writing. Yes, it has at least one really bright consultant helping to get most of the science references at least within the ballpark of contemporary “consensus science,” but the characters are more laughable caricatures of nerds than perhaps the writers intend. . . or at least in ways the writers could hardly intend. It seems obvious from the writing (and directing and acting) that, aside from minimal input to keep “science-y” comments mostly on track, the folks involved in producing the show fit pretty well into the “semi-literate, nearly bright, clueless about genius” category of content creators I deplore here.

*shrugs* The show’s still entertaining in other ways, and if I view the “brilliant” characters as simply sophomoric poseurs with delusions of brilliance, it occasionally ends up being pretty enjoyable fluff.

But a steady diet would gag a maggot.

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They’re Killin’ Me. . .

No, not my dogs (although my feet to hurt a bit. . . but then I’m getting old, so what do you expect? :-)) People who are fairly literate who nevertheless allow Crap Media (A/K/A the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, badly-edited poplit, etc.) have far, far too much influence over their own vocabularies–spoken and written.

OK, so I engage in quite a bit of “pop-speak” from time to time here. That’s fine. It’s casual writing, and I’m not getting paid to do it. But even “casual” writing should be correct if someone’s getting paid for the words they casually and, all to often–unfortunately–carelessly toss out.

Several times, recently, I’ve seen such abortions as a noun (such as “workout” or “logout”) used as verbs (“work out” or “log out”). Enough lazy, subliterate, immoral idiots do this and you can bet such things will become widely used enough to blur and then eliminate the useful distinctions between noun and verb forms in print.

It’s appalling. . . and as I said, immoral for people to take money to do a job and then do it badly. It’s theft. (It’s also a crime against the English language, but I don’t know of any statute that would apply. *sigh*)

N.B. I do cut a few professionals some slack in certain circumstances. I read a lot of Advance Reader Copies of books, books that are in the penultimate stage of editing before publication. I expect a few errors in such books, because ARCs usually serve as final proofing copies that will see another read-through before actual publication. So I cut those authors/editors some slack if only a few problems crop up. Example: last night I read a (~400-page) ARC that had three glaring errors: “then”for “than” three times. It’s a form of mental typo that sometimes crops up in even the most literate writers’ works, and is almost always caught at one stage or another of the proofreading/editing of a book issued from a good publisher and apparently almost NEVER caught, in my experience, by “Indie” (self-pub) authors whose proofreaders are of an uneven nature. Unfortunately, traditional publishers are more and more drawing authorial, proofreading and editing staff from a pool of college grads who are themselves essentially illiterate, so some ARCs from trad-pubs are littered with all sorts of crap. . . that makes it into the final, published, books. *sigh*

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Balance

I used to read EVERYTHING. No, really. Cereal boxes, soup cans, ACTUAL ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS *heh* (after having assembled whatnot, more often than not :-)).

Fluff or food: it’s really all in how one reads it. I re-read my collection of Shakespeare earlier this year, but I’ve reaped as much from thoughtful, critical reading of poorly-written YA books (informally reviewing ’em for my Wonder Woman, librarian) by reading those with an eye to the Good the Bad and the Ugly–and pondering, based on internal evidence, on the causes of each.

It’s all in how one reads what one reads. I read different material and authors for different reasons. I read an Anne Rice book recently (the first such in years for me) and was caught up more in appreciating the craft of her writing than the story and characters, both of which I disliked greatly. . . and which, having read other books by her, I suspected I might. I read David Weber books, despite my irritation at some of his writing flaws–consistently using certain words in ways that move me to suggest he might do with an Inigo Montoya consultation *cough*, his sometimes excessive wordiness, etc.–not even so much for the plots and characters as for the ethic he presents. I do NOT plan on re-reading Calvin’s “Institutes”. Thank you, no. Good stuff, for the most part, but juuuuust a wee tad on the tedious side for me. 🙂

I do try to hold myself down to a book a day, with some success, but I’m not going to make that a strict rule. Sometimes, it does take me three or so days to read a book, but that’s almost always because I have three to five other books I’m reading during that time as well. Always done that, probably always will. It’s fun to dream mixes of books currently in my read pile. 🙂

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Give That Writer a Dope Slap

. . . and an enrollment in a remedial English class.

Yeh, yeh, I know it’s six of one and all that, but, in my experience, writers who write the rather awkward, “had woken me up” instead of “had awakened me” also tend to write such abortions as “backseat” (adj) to refer to a “back [SPACE] seat” –a seat (n.) in the back of something–or “backyard” (again, adj.) to refer to a yard (n.) in the back or “back [SPACE] yard”. These aren’t horrendous bobbles, but they are annoying in that they indicate a sloppiness of craft.

The worse annoyance is that by degrading the language–using adjectives in forms readily recognized as adjectives as nouns, replacing an adjective [SPACE] noun they contribute to the destruction of useful distinctions in words. What? Would a writer of “backseat” (used to refer to a back seat) write driverseat or passengerseat? Maybe so. . . *shudder* “Backyard” used as a noun writers: will you also be consistent enough to use “frontyard” and “sideyard” as nouns? Hmm? Yeh, when one puts it in those colors, such usages look as stupid as they are.

Oh, other abortions often flow like Exlax-induced sharts from the hands of such writers, things like first-person narratives recounting past events in a breathless present tense to, I imagine, induce a sense of urgency in thoughtless readers in much the same way newsreaders attempt to convey a freshness and urgency to their banal lies with the same device. *sigh* Of course, given the temporal deficiencies of readers (or watchers) of such drivel, the device may well work, for values of “work” that include giving an idiot a spoon to use in scooping out more of their own prefrontal cortex.

And indeed, it seems to work pretty much that way. But it does get worse. Really. I recently read about 1/4 of the way through a book wherein the author used just about every dumb device, awkward phrase, and misused word he could cram into the thing in his attempt to. . . write a typical “Dan Brown” pseudo-thriller.

Oh, *gagamaggot*

(That said, the writer was failing to be quite as bad as Dan Brown when I bailed, even with his violent assaults on the English language. But that says more about how execrably bad Dan Brown’s writing is than anything else. . . )

But seriously, “had woken him up” for “had awakened him”? How hard is it to write (and think) just a wee tad less awkwardly?

(OK, OK, apparently pretty darned hard if my own writing’s any example, but take note: I’ve not asked you to PAY to read my scribbles, have I? Hmm?)

Yeh, yeh, I know that BECAUSE of illiterate uses by dumbass writers “backyard,” “backseat” and other such words used as nouns is becoming more acceptable to those who just DGARA about useful distinctions in words, the ability of the written word to inculcate rational thought or any number of other positive values. I despise such rotten, destructive persons and their destructive effects on society anyway. So there. *heh*

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“Don’t Know Much About History”: One of the Reasons the US is Getting a “Swirly” from Reality

Victor Davis Hanson beats a drum often heard here at twc:

“Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition, and basic math skills.”

Remember third world county‘s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:

“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history are in the majority and dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance.”

And remember also that “literacy” is not just being able to decode the written word, either facilely or laboriously. It’s being able to do that AND having a goodly store of useful knowledge gained thereby. Anything less and one is simply either a useful idiot fit for deploying in the service of evil or a completely useless idiot, good for nothing in particular.

Sadly, somewhere near 75-80% of Americans seem to be one or the other of those two idiot alternatives.