“It’s Only Words” #4,276

If you see any form of “decimate” used in any text published in this century, you can be at least 90% certain it is misused. Even the most corrupt definition listed by contemporary lexicographers seems to be eschewed by at least 90% of contemporary speakers of English, because words only USED to have meaning.

(Most “readers” in English-speaking countries will not be able to understand the above text.)

“I do not think that means what you think it means.”

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*

Ain’t Got Time for This Crap

Any writer that wants to be paid for their work and yet

  1. Disrespects their readers by typing crap and
  2. NOT hiring a literate proofreader/editor

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.)

CMS Apocalypse?

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.

“Exterminate! Exterminate” ~ Every Dalek Ever

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.”

Nope

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.”)

Book Blurb Sadness

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.

Unreasonable Standards

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.

Fortunate Son

I was blessed (though some seem to think “cursed”) to be raised in a family of literates, and not just “functionally literate,” but liberally-seeded with formally literate adults, and eventually (sometimes) not-too-shabbily-literate sibs. Combine that with the fact that I am an Odd1 and my life has continually been filled with bafflement when confronted with folks who, quite apart from literacy, aren’t even fluent in English, when it’s their native tongue!

So, yeh2, I spend way more time than is probably healthy listening around some folks’ grammar. But. . . about that word. *sigh* I do really tire of folks misusing it to the point that it has now lost a usefully distinctive meaning. Nowadays, it seems to be used primarily either in a pejorative sense in the phrase “grammar Nazi” to mean someone who is picky and offensive about language and who often corrects others’ misusages. And in that vein, “grammar” is generally misused to be a reference to any correctly spoken or orthographical speech or writing.

Nope. Grammar is “A set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structures of a language. . . “3 Oh, it is more than that, and in common usage nowadays it is. . . much, much less. *sigh*

So, I am bothered not by the pesky gnats of syntax alone, but illiterate word misuses, bafflingly stupid punctuation (in writing, of course, although the way some speak weirdly placed commas can also be heard *heh*), and nonsensical neologisms**. Add to that the creation of subcultures with “lects” that are both independent of regional dialects and that seem to be structured specifically to utter nonsense (LitRPG/gamers for example, though not the only example; there is the “Friends” dialect as another example) and call it English, the popularized illiteracy/subliteracy/pseudo-literacy prevalent in the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind, bureaucratese, lying liars who illiterately lie (A.K.A. politicians), and English seems to be in dire straits.

Oh, well. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. *heh*

(Oh, and just a wee lil “BTW,” here: “I’m trying really hard not to correct your grammar,” really should read “I’m trying really hard to not correct your grammar,” even though I really don’t try at all. . . )

Better:


2 Yeh, I find “yeh” to be a better representation of the expression than “yeah.” So sue me. It sounds to my ear more like what folks actually say.