Drawbacks of a Long Infancy

Infant product class, that is. eBooks. I read a lot of ’em. So far, very few eBooks seem to take advantage of the medium to expand beyond print format, and many are weaker products than hardcopy books. Here’s a brief blurb of my consumer-of-print viewpoint.

Many books can benefit from maps, tables and other reference materials. With hardcopy books, these are often included, and if not I often have the material to hand (or nearby) to fill the gaps. eBooks that can benefit from such addenda need them even more than print works, because they’re often read in locales where such things are unavailable even to someone like me who has a wide-ranging reference library at hand. Such things should be included in eBooks that would benefit from them, and they should be, at the very least, context sensitive. For example, when maps are called for, scalable, zoomable satellite or aerial maps (with helpful labeling, perhaps) could be included with little more trouble than simple line-drawing maps. Use your imagination to supply supplementary materials lists eBook authors should include. You’ll have to, though, because so far very few authors have used theirs in that manner.

As to those eBooks that are weaker products than corresponding print works. *sigh* One of the worst examples I can think of offhand was a novel written by a very good writer before eBooks had really taken off. I read it expecting not great but good fun. The story was OK, as were the characters, descriptive narrative and dialog, but… he’d apparently just scanned it–or had it scanned–and converted to electronic format and apparently had not even had it proof read. Too many obvious scanning errors ruined enjoyment of the book. But that’s just one of the worst. Self-published, author edited or proofread (or author edited AND proofread) eBooks seem to be about 85% POORLY edited and proofread. Good lord, folks! Execrable grammar, spelling and punctuation just barely scratches the surface of many crap-laden plots, dialog, descriptive narrative and characters crudely drawn in crayon from B-movie central casting descriptions!

Yes, there are a lot of well-written, well-edited/proofread “Indie” published books available, but the numbers of well-written “Indie” books is only because so very much chaff is out there to winnow the well-written books out of. It’s a real pain in the neck (although the pain’s really quite a bit further south of there) to be reading along thinking, “Interesting story–OH CRAP! GETCHER SYNTAX OUTA YOUR ASS!” or “SPELLCHECK, DUMBASS, SPELLCHECK!!” or “WTF! YOU DIDN’T JUST ‘THERE’S’ ME AGAIN! over and over again.

I’m sure both the crap writing and the features blocks will work themselves out in time, though. eBooks are still in a development phase, and some writers, at least, seem to be thinking seriously about some of these things. Thank heavens. *sigh*

Details Add Verisimilitude… or Not

In fiction, the less descriptive details detract from creating suspension of disbelief, the less they might drag a reader out of the story to say, “Nuh-uh! No way! Not so!” and so getting the little things right can make a difference in verisimilitude and suspension of disbelief, let alone simple enjoyment of a story well told.

Let me offer a very small example (one of, sadly, more than a few from a book now in hand):

Speaking about an event in Atilla’s life tied to a specific town in Italy in 452 A.D., a learned gentleman intones,

“The town was founded in the first century, so it was already three hundred years old when Atilla arrived.”

Really? Any (and I do mean ANY) literate person knows that the first century A.D. began with year 1 and went through 100 A.D. 452 A.D. was squarely in the middle of the FIFTH century. It would have made sense to have said, “The town was founded in the first century, so it was already FOUR hundred years old when Atilla arrived.”

When a novel that relies heavily on historical citations (and legends tied to history) begins to pile up errors like that, it starts to seriously detract from the story.

No, before you ask, it’s not a book by Dan Brown. It’s not within several orders of magnitude of being THAT bad. In fact, apart from niggling little things like the one noted above, and quite contra a Dan Brown prose atrocity, it’s actually pretty good reading, which is what makes these niggling little problems… problems.

Continue reading “Details Add Verisimilitude… or Not”

Just One–of Many–of the Dangers of Democracy

[N.B. I’ve seen ironically elitist criticism of José Ortega y Gasset for being an elitist. Most folks who criticize him for noting some of the serious problems that must necessarily ensue from allowing democratic memes too much cultural influence are pseudo-intellectual snobs who don’t even bother–or are unable–to read and grasp some of the core ideas in his most scathing rebuke of “Mass Man” in “The Revolt of the Masses”. Here, I am not going to make direct reference to Ortega, but just note that his articulations of issues do inform what I want to try to convey here, in some very small part. The deficiencies in this blogpost shouldn’t be attributed to his influence though. No, those deficiencies are all mine.]


 

 

 
Democracy as a political system has its own problems. One, of course, is that time worn warning that once some of the People discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public purse, corruption inevitably ensues, and the road to the failure of democracy as a political system is not long following. But societal effects can be harmful, too. When popular culture is ever more democratized, the process of dumbing down society to the lowest common denominator becomes a process of self-perpetuating debasement.

Let me illustrate this debasement using a very, very limited example which the reader may use to draw his own examples. Lexicographers eventually bow to even the basest misuses of words and finally legitimize the misuse by denoting it in a dictionary entry. Here is one such example: “healthy”. “Healthy” was once a word–and still is among literate persons–with a primary denotation of an organism that enjoyed good (vigorous, robust) health. Its misuse for years has now brought it to the point where is is used to refer to both live and dead materials that may promote (often only in the minds of the promoters) good health. Whereas once, in referring to the health of an organism, it referred primarily to the state of being or condition of something that was alive, now it may refer to some inanimate material to be consumed or even inanimate object designed to act upon or be used by some animate being to promote that being’s health. Once, the word used to denote that latter meaning was “healthful” and so the two words provided useful information in distinction to each other when used. Not so nowadays.

Losing useful distinctions means losing useful meanings, and language is first and foremost about conveying meaning (here I usually insert my rant about those utter idiots who blather about semantics as though distinctions in meanings were… meaningless, useless twaddle, but I am to tired to the bone to deal with useless idiots right now), and anything that broadens distinctions to the point of removing useful distinctions dumbs down the exchange of meaning.

Every time someone is allowed to misuse a word without being corrected, allowed to spread its misuse, society becomes stupider. And that, dear reader, is especially dangerous in a society governed via any elements of democracy. People who do not even have the words to express themselves with clear and full meaning will not be able to rule themselves wisely… or chose wisely when selecting/electing those they represent.

Oh, this thing with dumbed down language as a result of validation of misused is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were, that wrecks overly-democratic societies. Largely, it’s not so much the misuse of words that destroys communication but the very democratic tendency to accept that just because many people do such and so then that makes such and so acceptable. (Didn’t your mother ever warn you about jumping off a cliff just because “ALL” your friends were doing so? Hmmm?)

This dumb-down spiral applies all across the board: clothing fads that make slovenly (or slutty or stupid… or slutty and stupid and slovenly *sigh*) attire normative, popular entertainment–whether it be the mindless circuses of spectator sports, the pernicious drivel of TV and movies or the musicless grunts and moans and banging around of most contemporary fake music–the acceptance of stupid expressions of stupid people as (graphic) “art”: all this and more works to debase society in a society that values the opinions of stupid and subliterate people as highly–and in many cases nowadays more highly–as someone who can actually tell the difference between a well-written book and what Holly Lisle calls “Suckitudinous” writing–or even just badly-written schlock; someone who can actually hear the difference between music and… top 40 crap, someone who has actually read The Founders and can tell when such as Nancy Pelosi is blowing smoke up folks’ skirts defending unconstitutional legislation as a legitimate exercise of governmental authority, etc.

Yes, it does make a difference that fewer and fewer people in our society can discriminate between classes of objects, events, statements… or even know that there can be good things about discrimination.

I could have used more politically charged examples than the less than life-threatening “healthy” word misuse, but discussing the misuse (and even misunderstanding by subliterate morons) of “racist”–for example–probably would have resulted in some SPAM comments accusing me of racism. Oops. *heh*

DGARA. Accuse away. 😉

Continue reading “Just One–of Many–of the Dangers of Democracy”

Why Good Grammar?

And why word usage that reflects understanding of the words used, or proper spelling and punctuation?

Neither can his mind be thought to be in tune, whose words do jar;
Nor his reason in frame, whose sentence is preposterous;
Nor his elocution clear and perfect,
Whose utterance breaks itself into fragments and uncertainties.
– Ben Johnson, Discoveries, 1641

Well-written prose is a reflection of clear thought. It’s just that simple. Continue reading “Why Good Grammar?”

THIS Is Why America Is Currently in Decline

Well, it’s part (a large part) of the reason we’re in trouble. The following is a partial response to a tech site article, written by a professional “reporter” of tech news, if you can believe it. No, I won’t link it. The parts I don’t point out are as badly-written (or worse) and would only serve to improperly influence anyone not as thoroughly inoculated against linguistic drivel as I seem to be.


  • “At the time there were many different OS’s [sic] on the market…”

    Good Godfrey! Is there no editorial staff? No proofreading? No literate person to put an end to atrocities like this? An apostrophe IS NOT USED TO FORM A PLURAL!

    Apparently, there are no literate gatekeepers between writers and publishing; witness, earlier:

    “Common users also were quite skeptical to [sic] this new fancy gadget called a ‘Mouse’.”

    Not “to” but “about”. Learn the meanings of words!

    And,

    “IBM they [sic] named it PC-DOS and it quickly became a popular and widespread system.”

    WTF?!?

    And, “While back in their ‘lab’ secretly developing their new battleship, that would grow to conquer the world.”

    sic-sic-sic-sic-sic-sic-SICK!

    Sentence, please! Make a sentence! And what’s with the quotation marks around “lab”? And the comma between “battleship” and “that”? It’s just plain stupid, quite apart from being completely, totally and absolutely uncalled for.

    And the hits just keep on (and keep on) coming:

    “Windows 1.0: changing computers for ever…”

    No! No! No! Not “for ever” but “forever”–ONE WORD.

    How about,

    “Windows 1, [sic] was not the first of its kind but it introduced several improvements, among others were [sic] multi-tasking.”

    Dude! Lose the extraneous, meaningless, WRONGLY PLACED commas! They only serve to make you look stupid. And it just makes me sick to read the rest of the sentence. I gag just contemplating that abortion.

    The whole thing continues with one egregiously stupid comma, subject-verb disagreement and word mis-usage after another. *gag* And the guy actually does this for his day job.

    Thief.

    And unwitting subliterate products of “public education” (AKA “prisons for kids” and “remedial failure academies for young adults”) will read this dreck and have their subliterate ignorance reinforced. It’s evil, I say, just evil.

    See Inigo Montoya

    A “professional tech writer” (yeh, she gets paid for this kind of thing) vomited this one:

    “Microsoft is continuing to eke out the Windows 8 news.”

    That usage is so far “off list” that one would need a fully functioning Hubble telescope to gain a view of its meaning from that sentence. Even in the closest proper use of the phrase “eke out,” that is “to make (a meager supply) last, esp by frugal use,” the sentence misses the mark. One “ekes out” a meager supply to avert complete lack. There’s certainly a wealth of news M$ could release, now, but they choose not to, thus “eking out” a meager supply–the closest one could come to making that sentence work–simply does not apply here.

    *sigh*

    Literacy is more than just being able to laboriously convert those strange squiggles on a page into words or string some of them together in some sort of nearly sensible order. Understanding the words, having a store of well-written texts one has read and understood, is the next step to literacy. Things like this in text written by someone who makes her living with the written word are both disappointing and disturbing.

    An “F” for Test Design

    Lovely Daughter sent me the photo below (modified to obscure personal information of both student and teacher). If I had been grading the pictured test, the student would have been credited with 100% correct answers and the test designer with a big fat zero for amphibolous (equivocal) wording. Just sayin’.

    Oh, Great… for Kids Who Can Get Their Parents to Move East for the Summer

    TD Bank is offering kids (18 or younger) $10 for reading 10 books this summer.

    Great, right? Here’s the deal:

    1. Read 10 books this summer. See suggestions.
    2. Print out the Summer Reading Form
    3. Write down the names of the books they’ve read
    4. Take the form to the nearest TD Bank
    5. Watch $10 be deposited into a new or existing Young Saver Account

    Oh, wait. Notsogreat.

    1. Locate the nearest TD Bank location (WTF?!? I thought TD Bank specialized in online banking!):

    “There is no listing found based on your criteria. Please change your criteria and try again.” (IOW, “Move to a location where we have a physical presence, sucker!”)

    2. Move there.
    3. “Here’s your money kid, only… we’ll keep it for you. Howzat for a sweet deal, eh?”
    4. 10 books? *feh* Sub-par. Way, way sub-par. (Of course, “par” to me is the last Summer Reading Program I participated in as a kid. My total? 235 books for the summer. Yeh, yeh, Mom did shoo me outa the house, and visits to grandparents involved lotsa outdoorsy stuff, too. IOW, wasn’t 24X7 w/my nose in a book. I used to read a lot more than I do even now.)

    Of course, if parents would simply stop playing “event planners” for their kids entertainment schedules and just, well, parent while letting doing whatever they can to compel their mentally lazy kids to create their own entertainment, then encouraging them to read, making sure they can get to a library, etc., could go a long way toward improving our future citizens.

    Just sayin’.

    “Just too much to bare”

    *sigh*

    Apart from all the books I read (back up to a little less than half the number per week of my peak of a 23/week average of some years ago), I read, well, just about everything I can get my hands on, physical or virtual. While I don’t read as many blog posts every day as I once did, I read a lot of those too. More and more it seem the trend in all sorts of blogs is toward less and less literate expression. Two small examples from a blog at a site for health professionals:

    ” …the humor of the ______ was too much to bare.”

    “By this point all of the racket had also waken up ______________.”

    No, Mr. 20-Something IT Pro for a health institution: “too much to bear”. And “waken up” isn’t correct here either. “Had… awakened” or “had… woken” or even the poorer “had… wakened up”.

    It’s as though more and more people have never read anything written by a literate person, and more and more people have never heard a literate person speak English. Well, of course. Most are products of public schools. Perhaps as many as 1/3 (perhaps) of students ENTERING high school are proficient readers of English, according to Scholastic.com (pdf here). Perhaps. Of those who go on to graduate college (self-selected to–maybe–be more literate, whatever that means, than their peers), almost 31% are literate enough to read their way out of a paper bag, actually a decline in reading proficiency from their entry into high school.

    Is it any wonder that our (once, formerly) representative republic with all too many democratic elements is in trouble? Do the right thing: read more. Read material that’s written well and researched well and presented as honestly as possible. As much as possible, encourage others to do the same.

    Your grandchildren will thank you.


    *sigh* The first blog post I read today (on a political “analysis” site) offered more evidence of the trend noted above (I swear it I read this kind of crap a.] so you don’t have to *heh* and b.] ALL the time–unfortunately–while trying to gain info that fleshes out background the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind obscures or otherwise lies about… not that the Hivemind is any better at literate expression).

    “phenomena’s”

    No, a.) the plural of “phenomenon” is “phenomena” and b.) trying to form a plural by using an apostrophe is nothing short of stupid.

    “over looked”

    It’s one word, not two.

    ly’s (“The problem ly’s…”)

    *ack-thbbt!-spew* LIES, dumbass! Dual stupidities here. “Ly’s” isn’t even a word and the use of the apostrophe is so monumentally stupid as to be almost a landmark stupidity. This guy’s parents and teachers should be shot, and he should be dragged over hot coals on the way to being tarred, feathered and burned at the stake. Hopefully before he reproduces.

    “the support is cult like”

    The preferred formation is “cult-like”.

    “ITS not an anti gay amendment…. its pro morality amendment”

    Of course, NOW when apostrophes are REQUIRED the dumbass subliterate moron doesn’t use them! Of course.

    But this sort of thing is rampant, and not just in “citizen journalism” so-called.

    “Something Barack Hussein Obama seems to know nothing about.”


    Want more? Surely not! Well, one simply cannot go to ANY Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind outlet and not receive an assault on literacy. Consider a current (May 11, 2012) headline:

    “First Male Masseuse Who Sued Travolta Admits He Has WRONG DATE…”

    WTF?!? A masseuse is a woman who gives massage. A male who does so is a masseur. How these people who write such things can live with themselves I don’t know.