It’s Still “The Little Things”

N.B., as you may note, I like to ignore the rule about writing short, concise sentences, because if a reader cannot parse clear text unless a sentence is short enough for the attention span of a gnat, I do not much care whether they read on. There are some things I like about getting to be a Curmudgeonly Olde Pharte. *heh*

Oh, I have come to expect them, but “Dunning-Krugerands” who are willfully stuck on stupid abound in all realms of publication, nowadays–self-pub, trad-pub, online and “dead tree” magazines and newspapers, etc.–and I still just cannot get used to seeing words in print grossly misused, mind-boggling displays of subject-object confusion, amphibolous construction that renders a text as meaningless gibberish, baffling syntax, the use (abuse) of punctuation as random text-confetti, and evidence of willful disregard for doing one’s homework to support even a thin veil of suspension of disbelief when writing fiction (some scholarly, peer-reviewed “scientific” papers do a better job of supporting suspension of disbelief for their fiction than do many novels nowadays. . . )

For example, except for the rare equestrian fiction by an actual “horse person,” almost every piece of fiction I’ve read in the last decade or more that features horses and riders–westerns, fantasy, mysteries: all of ’em–have gotten nearly everything horse related wrong. And most of the wrong depictions have one thng in common: they hew very closely to popular, mostly “Hollyweird,” depictions of horses and riders, and they almost always simply treat horses as a low-tech, inconvenient substitute for cars and ‘bikes. (And I have yet to read any contemporary writer of a popular genre who treats horse manure with the respect it deserves. *heh*)

But, of course, that sort of “I already know evrything there is to know anout everything” attitude carries across to every bit of a “Dunning-Krugerand’s” writing (and speech, which is why subliterate morons get paid the big bucks to be TV taking heads).

Sometimes, given the proliferation of media influence, the only way to go through a day w/o killing brain cells by listening to Stupid Speech™ or Stupid Writing™ is to turtle up and avoid reading, talking with (or even just peripherally hearing) others at all.

The hermit lifestyle is looking more and more appealing. . .

Seriously: if someone does not even know the difference betweem “come here” and “sic ’em” (go-come, take-bring, etc.) then that person should 1. Shut up/stop writing and 2. Give their best shot at passing a basic English as a Second Language course (their first language being Advanced Stupidity).

OK, that’s enough of me being positive and uplifting. You’re welcome. 😉

Unless One Is Constructing a Half-witty Insult. . .

. . . “not a wit” is. . . witless. “Not a whit” = “not a bit; not an iota; not the smallest part,” etc. “Not a wit” simply indicates someone without wit, a dullard, a dummy, a subliterate “Dunning-Krugerand” wannabe self-pub writer. *heh*

A Different “Tact”

Yeh, I’m not going to be tactful here. People who make homophonic mistakes in writing are illiterate. I DGARA whether some “edumacationist” somewhere may call them “functionally literate.” “Edumacationists” are a disease and should be erradicated.

Misused words in writing due to homophonic conflation is simply due to poor literacy. Period. Using sounds or letter combinations that aren’t even words, due to mishearing (and never, apparently, READING) words is an even surer sign, if that’s possible. FarceBook is a particularly “rich” source of both of these sorts of homophonic errors. Most recent (as in, just a couple of minutes ago) example: “intack” (not EVEN a word) for “intact.”


Oh, the post title? I cannot (well, will not) even try to count the number of times I have typed (or thought) “gagamaggot” when I read or heard, “. . .taking a different tact” when “tack” expresses the meaning and “tact” does not.

“Edumacationism” vs. Education

“Gummint” schools are largely “prisons for kids,” but there can be bright spots. . .

Of all the classes I had in high school, two “classes” have proven to be the most _personably_ valuable, long term, and both for similar reasons. I was lost in my first year of algebra, thanks largely to a disaffection stemming from ghastly experiences with ‘new math.” (Before exposure to that abomination of “edumacationist” experimentation, I kinda enjoyed math.) Thankfully, a sophomore year teacher who just loved math and teaching it resurrected a dead enjoyment of math.

And then there was band. I learned more appreciation of music from simply rehearsing and playing the works we were exposed to than in all my college classes combined. I can still hear many of those pieces “between my ears.”

And the math classes and music worked well together in forming logic chains in my head, and those served me well in appreciating and seeing links in language, history, and many other fields. Of course, the fact that I simply ignored classes when they became boring and substituted voracious reading also helped forge those “chains of reason.”

So, “gummint” schools were not a total waste of time. . . as long as I managed to ignore the boring parts. (Example: teachers who taught “from the book” when I had already read through the textbook before the first week passed. Boring.)

Jólabókaflóðið!

As part of my own lil Jólabókaflóðið (“Christmas book flood”), I started an ebook that was supposedly 800+ pp in length. Opened it. Every line is double-spaced. Double that between paragraphs. Does NOT improve the reading experience, just fakes up a 400pp book into a supposed 800+pp. *smh* That doesn’t even count the times I caught the writer padding the word count in the first few pages. Setting aside. Not even written all that well.

Moving on. . .

Ah! The Magic “and” Again!

“Me and a bunch of my friends had rented. . . ” That magic “and” – once again used to make the monumentally stupid “Ugg. *chimp scratches; chows on louse found in armpit* Me had rented. . . ” into something acceptable to idiots.

Yes, Syntax Matters

*sigh* It’s as though some folks have a complete disconnect between their brains and any expression of language. “Every task does not need to be completed” ? “Not every task needs to be completed.” The first is the equivalent of “NO task needs to be completed,” as in none of them, zero, zilch, naught. The second =~= “Only some tasks need to be completed.” People who say/write the first when meaning the second have more than a few screws loose.

“Dunning-Krugerand”* Writers FTL**

All kinds of little “gotchas” are traps for Dunning-Krugerand writers. One of my fav gripes is the inability of some to distinguish between uses of “have got” and “have gotten.” If nothing else has emerged in text before “have got,” its typical misuse by Dunning-Krugerand writers in cases where “must” cannot be substituted, for example, is a sure tell.

*Dunning-Krugerand is a term Larry Correia coined to refer to those incompetents who have a massive, undue respect for their own non-existent competence.
**FTL here denotes “For the Loss.”