Category: Subliterate “Dunning-Krugerand” writers

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Ortega’s “Mass-Man” Leading the Way to. . .

Even just a glance at the passing scene leads one to observe that the Internet’s empowerment of Ortega’s “mass-man” and the attendant massive explosion of the growth and influence of “Dunning-Krugerands,” has only exacerbated the downward spiral toward Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons.”

The Marching Morons

Setting: Far future (less far, now, by a LOT, if today’s society is any indication). “The human population is now 3 million highbred elite and 5 billion morons, and the “average” IQ is 45 (whereas today an IQ score of 100 is average, by definition).” (? Wikipedia)

Posted on

Well, American Spectator “Snuck” (#gagamaggot) in Another Moronic Headline

Ukrainian Leadership Claims Drone Sunk [sic] Two Russian Patrol Vessels

The headline is more telling than the actual article. If a Ukranian drone SANK a couple of Russian patrol vessels, good, but that R. Emmett Tyrell is willing to put his name on a mag that so grossly abuses the English language in a headline says pretty disgusting things about R. Emmett Tyrell’s lack of literacy, and poor literacy inevitably leads to sub-par communication of ideas (something I have had against American Spectator for some time, now, anyway).

Note: the PRETERITE (A.K.A., simple past tense) of “sink” is in no way, shape, fashion, or form “sunk.” “Sunk” is for perfect tenses (had/have sunk). Any headline writer that keeps his job after stupidly, illiterately, writing the headline proffered here does so only because editorial eyes are also pseudoliterate or just stupid.

OK, OK, maybe the problem is just that American Spectator is staffed with editors and headline writers who pattern themseves after lobotomized Bonobo Chimpanzees or Cooter from Gunsmoke.

American Spectator: promoting the destruction of literacy one headline at a time?

Posted on

Classes of Writers

There are two main classes of writers that can — broadly — be discerned by this bright line divider:

1. Those who know how to use and appropriately do use m-dashes.
2. Pseudoliterate imposters (whose “work” is usually edited by lobotomized Bonobo Chimpanzees).

Oh, there are many other indicators, but that one will generally do the trick.

YW.

🙂

There may be those among my (2?) readers who question which class I belong in based on my own use of an m-dash above. If so, nanny-nanny-boo-boo to you. *heh*

BTW, I read the occassional pseudoliterate imposter for the dubious pleasure of making snarky comments in notes, then reposting those notes in a Amazon review. Yeh, it’s kinda mean, but they EARNED it. One such pseudoliterate imposter I read recently described a wedding (it was in an “action hero” sort of seventh grade boys’ fantasy). My impression of the “classy” (so asserted by pseudoliterate imposter) wedding was of a kinda trashy “trailer park” wedding. (And yes, I know some perfectly nice folks also live in trailer parks, but I’m invoking the “TPTrash” meme for shorthand, here.) It was a hoot trashing that, since it had already trashed itself.

Posted on

More Contemporary Fiction Foibles

I tend to “file 13” books I pick up whose central character is openly described as “brilliant” and yet who consistently does execrably stupid things all within its realm of assigned “smartitudinousness” (is there a useful real world term for assumed but non-existent inteligence, or may I just use my snarky neologism?).

#gagamaggot

Posted on

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. 😉

Posted on

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*

Posted 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.

Posted on

“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.”