"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Grammar exercise for the day. Diagram:
“After a long sleepless night, [Character Name] comes across a man chasing a woman thief named [Other Character Name], who soon becomes [Personal Possessive Pronoun] loyal ally in the wild.” Lil clue: as it (rather much) later turns out, the sentence does not actually say what the writer intended. *smh*
Any writer that wants to be paid for their work and yet
should be taken behind the woodshed for a wee bit of “education.”
(The spur this time was “Senor” for “Señor”. . . after too many other execrable stupidities. Just not going to read anything else by this producer of stuff unworthy of even being used for fertilizer.)
Premise of a fiction series.
FORTUNATELY, I read the author’s intro before committing to the series that might have had potential for having some interesting information gleaned through some storytelling. But, given one sentence early on, I was able to avoid further brain-damaging text. Whoever edited the book missed a gross mismatch between a plural noun and a singular pronoun. A further glance down the page and, yep: grammar being sucked like dead bunnies through a straw. I ain’t got time fer that. 😉
I’ll add to my infopack on CMSes and EMPs with info from elsewhere, TYVM.
There are kids’ writers who have some pretty decent books out, still. Surprising? IKR? *heh*
I recently read the first two books in a juvie (“YA”-ish) semi-hard sci-fi and feel I can recommend them for my Wonder Woman’s libraries (though they’re only available in ebook and paperback *sigh* Both formats have school library problems). They’re about the level of the Tom Swift, Jr. sci-fi in terms of actual hard science, IOW, more hand-waving than _actual_ science, and the kind of fudging of science foundations that had me sometimes rolling my eyes in 4th grade, but still better written and with a much more “civilized” world view than many YA books nowadays. (Yes, I still submitted word usage errors for correction, but not as many as I have come to expect in even tradpub books nowadays.)
The series begins with Awakening by Randal Sloan.
Six books in the series, but I think 2 will do it for me. As with most juvies, the plots and characters are just too predictable – a net positive for YA/juvie books, IMO, but less so for most adult readers.
Another series I am even more sold on is the City Spies series by James Ponti. Yes, the characters and plots are pretty standard (with some interesting variations), but the books are just so very well-written (and pretty darned well edited!) that the first chapter of book 1 (read at a school librarians conference) sold me on the series. And yes, my Wonder Woman reports that her students are rightly as appreciative of the books as I am. 🙂
Intercollegiate Studies Institute performed an annual “Civics Literacy” survey for six or seven years in a row, tracking trends in the general population with isolation of various demographics. While all demographics showed levels of civics literacy that would not be able to pass the dumbed down quiz prospective naturalized citizens are required to take, two things stood out to me:
1. High School seniors consistently out-performed college seniors, and
2. The lowest scoring demographic was. . . elected officials.
On the subject of the destruction – nay! extermination! – of meaningful communication, this sidebar:
More and more often I find myself baffled by the precipitous pejoration of “decimate” used to imply utter and complete destruction instead of the former pejoration implying destruction of a large part of [whatever]. What useful purpose does it serve to utterly destroy a formerly useful sense of a word? It’s almost as bad as Dhimmicraps harping on “democracy” when they mean “tyranny by means of vote fraud.”
I just ran across a “writer” who has apparently walked around his whole life with his eyes closed. Wrote that a character went from very bright, full sunlight into a very dark place and had to SQUINT in order to see until his eyes adjusted to the dark. *smh* OK, maybe the “writer” has been blind all his life, and not just walking around with his eyes closed all the time. (Oh, the scare quotes? It’s a juvie I tried to read for review that I have already discarded as not even worth panning. The “writer” needs to at least pass a Remedial English course before writing for kids’ consumption. The concept behind the book might garner readers in the target age, but it’d just teach them poor language “skilz.”)
It’s a bit. . . weird, or weirdly sad (or sadly weird?) I suppose is the word, when a book blub has to include “Note: This book does not contain any coarse language, harem elements or sexual situations.” *smh*
Of the three, at least two serve no useful purpose, unless, I suppose, prurience is the end sought. OTOH, “coarse language” does have legitimate, though limited, uses, but it’s almost never _necessary_ to further a plot or “enrich” a characterization – more effective, IMO, to “coarsen” a character via action. But. . . yeh, verbiage is easier. *shrugs*
Of course, the definition of “coarse language” varies from the merely (usefully and appropriately!) vulgar, which is primarily objectionable to subliterate Neo-Victorian Bowlderiizing “Karens,” to the obscene and even actually profane. So, “coarse language” is a particularly squishy term, and not really useful at all, at all. It’s just a way of saying, “I avoid words that offend some people,” and that road leads to blank pages.
Disclaimer: I am no genius, and nor am I someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of darned near everything, but. . . I am an Odd, and my education is even Odd-er.
That may not explain to my readers why, when I read something written by a typical 20-something or older “grup” writer, I often just shake my head and compare their vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and knowledge base to an eleven or twelve-year-old. . . me.
Yeh, when I read a writer who has groped blindly for a suitable word and instead grasped an execrably UNsuitable word to use, I compare that writer’s vocabulary to my sixth grade self, partly because, while recovering from a second surgery, I discovered a set of vocabulary quizzes in a two-volume dictionary set (each volume at least four inches thick in large, oversized formats). Yes, I went through the college-level vocabulary test, NOT because I was “smarter” than the average sixth grader, just because I had read more, even before becoming temporarily restricted physically, but VORACIOUSLY more so during that restricted period.
And that, combined with my fundamentally Odd way of looking at reality, probably defined as much of the next sixty years of my life, as much as simply being an Odd has in general. And so, people with a Stupid Level Vocabulary™ (and often even stupider level grasp of syntax, orthography, and basic arithmetic, physical mechanics, and life in general) probably tend to irk me more than is useful.
. . .people USED to at least know enough about capitalism to make the first letter after a period bigger than the ones that followed. (*pa-dump-bump*) Sadly, more and more folks do not seem to even know that much, nowadays. *sigh*