Category: Education

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Writers Who. . . Shouldn’t

Writers who have not bothered to become literate and who are too cheap, stupid, or stuck on the lefthand side of the Dunning-Kruger Curve to obtain the services of a literate editorial staff just should not write. No, seriously. Wading through knee-high sewage to get to the occasional flower worth plucking gets old.

Oh, the signs are Legion, but I’m sure you know them well. Here are but a few:

1. execrable grammar and punctuation

  •  inability to use tenses properly
  •  apostrophe abuses/neglect
  •  comma splices
  •  misuse of objective case/subjective case pronouns
  •  etc.

2. basic vocabulary failures:

  •  using words of which they wot not the meaning (and I don’t just mean inexplicable misuses of prepositions *sigh*)
  •  utter incomprehension of when to use/not use compound words1
  •  confusion of homophonic words with disparate meanings
  •  etc.

I could go on, but won’t. *sigh* Someone(s) needs t tell these people to JUST STOP. They are polluting the English language with their illiterate, childish crayon scrawls. That was once the gatekeeping function of traditional publishing houses, and while I’m sure it resulted in some worthy manuscripts being dumped in the reject pile, at least it did not so frequently result in utter crap being published as is all too frequently the case with the self-pub democritization of publishing nowadays.

Folks who write books without bothering to become literate, with no serious intention of even submitting their work to literate proofreaders before publication, are insulting their readers. And this issue is quite apart from the issue of folks writing “authoritatively” on subjects they quite obviously know NOTHING about. That is another rant entirely.

DO NOTE: I have read some VERY well-written and edited self-pub books, however that minority represents less than 10% of the self-pub books I have tried to read. *sigh*

Continue reading “Writers Who. . . Shouldn’t”

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Wannabe (Usually 20-Something) Writers Are almost Cute, Sometimes

It’s almost cute how some wannabe writers try to emulate literacy. It usually shows up in more than a few misused words that are homophones (or close homophones) with whatever word they are groping for or other word misuses indicating a lack of familiarity with well-written text. . . or a dictionary, for that matter. Oh, here’re a couple: using “appraise” for “apprise” or “reign” for “rein” (usually in “free rein” or some such). Kiddy writers who have heard (or THINK they have) a word but have apparently never read the correct word used in a proper context.

One can also just head on over to any list of misused words on the Internet and count on seeing them misused in some self-pub books written (and “edited”) by subliterate kids who’ve been awarded participation trophies all their lives (most likely including their attendance certificates called “diplomas”).

Oh, and comma splices and apostrophe abuses seem to be particular favs of 20-something subliterate kiddy “writers.”

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Only the Stupid, Lazy, Illiterate or (and?) Disingenuous Deride So-Called “Grammar Nazis”

Yeh, I said it, and I mean it.

Grammar is the internal logic of a language. Deriding those who espouse good grammar and point out bad grammar is equivalent to deriding logic, indeed reasoning.

Most who vomit up stupid comments about “grammar Nazis” also claim English is inconsistent and illogical in its grammar and, indeed, in its spelling of words, massive numbers of words that either look (when written) or sound alike but mean different things, etc. *meh* That’s either because they are butt-lazy illiterates or want to encourage butt-lazy illiteracy for their own nefarious purposes.

Understanding the internal logic of English (its grammar) requires something more than a “literacy” comprised of the ability to laboriously puzzle out what words those funny lil squiggles are and assign (often incorrect) simplistic meanings to them; it requires the reading of a lot (no, much more than you think “a lot” means!) of well-written text, an interest in what the words in that text actually mean or meant when the writer committed them to paper, and a cultivated ability to actually think.

Those three conditions are not met by at least 99.999. . .n% of the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind who are the primary corrupters of English nowadays. Let one very small example from a CNN chiron this morning stand as a typical example. Referring to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe:

“. . .his own party said they will move to impeach him if he didn’t [sic] resign by the deadline.”

When someone cannot even keep past-present-future clear, one is safe to assume that that “someone” is a self-made moron. And such is the nature of the influence on the English language that the Hivemind exerts: teaching a-rational thought processes, by inundation with example after example.

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Brief Note re: Neo-Victorian Bowdlerizers

Sidebar: when in soi-disant “adult” company, I do sometimes become a wee tad irritated by neo-Victorian Bowdlerizers who define anything that offends their po’ widdle feewings as “cussing.” *meh* It’s my curse just barely more than literate. . . unlike the neo-Victorian Bowdlerizers who are almost universally very nearly illiterate.

N.B. Sometimes a vulgar term is the best term to describe something/someone. Just sayin’.

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Well, At Least the Writer Is Trying

Reading a book today that is. . . amusing. It’s supposed to be an action-packed “thriller” set “25 Years from now” (whenever THAT is) that’s chock full of “advanced tech” and “cutting edge science.”

That’s really funny. The “advanced tech” still relies on USB cables, and the “cutting edge science” is a “Dan Brown stupidity level” misunderstanding of everything from string theory to tachyons to time travel.

If it weren’t for lotsa laughs, I’d say the writer isn’t just trying but very trying. *heh*

Oh, on top of that, the writer pads the word count by having much of the dialog in both French and English (the English for the illiterates who either don’t own any French vocabulary or can’t work the meanings out via linguistic roots, I suppose).

More laughs.

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Right in My Wheelhouse, As It Were

I’ve been reading an eARC by invitation today (the invitation consisting of a request to not[e] (Thanks Colin!) errors that “might have slipped by” editing/proofreading, and submit them via email before final publication). Most of the errors have been either homophonic (such as “peak” for “pique”) or mistakenly writing compound words as two separate words, with only a few actual word misuses not attributable to homophonic errors.

Almost all the mistakes are likely due to the writer having a larger _verbal_ vocabulary than is available in written form to the writer. This can really only be mended by more reading of well-written text by the writer. Until then, the writer is at the mercy of editors and proofreaders whose (and that was one: using “whose” when “who’s” was required) literacy may well–as seems to be the case with this eARC–be no better than the writer’s own.

Oh, and LOADS of misplaced commas, as well as just plain old everyday missing commas. VERY few comma splices, though. That’s nice.

Now, there are likely a number of problems I have not made note of for the writer, since I am NOT line-editing this book but just noting things that jump out at me. Line editing is demanding work, and I’d have to charge for that.

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We Are Doomed

Seen elsewhere (and very slightly redacted to obscure the source):

“If I would have [sic] known I would have went [sic] there. . . “1

*head-desk* This is what passes for literacy in our society today. When such garbled gibberish can actually pass an editor and be published, it’s no wonder folks are so badly under-mis-disinformed: they are unable, based on the evidence of speech and writing, to even think straight.

1While I cannot imagine either of my readers *heh* scratching their heads over my comments on this sentence, here:

“If I had known, I would have gone there.”

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Well, That’s Just Life

Just about no matter where I go on the Interwebs (a few bloggers aside), I have from time to time been chastised by poorly-read folks for my vocabulary. Hey, lazy-asses! I work HARD to dumb it down for you!

Thatisall.

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Subliteracy Abounds

I have seen this several times, including in Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind “reports,” and while I celebrate what folks are trying to say, I find it distressing to see such widespread evidence of subliteracy that apostrophe abuse like this demonstrates. Think it through. “Apostrophe + s” indicates either possession or a contraction of the noun with a verb e.g. is, has, was). The former is nonsense here. If this were to indicate the latter, then it would still be nonsense, because not only would it be nonsense, but IF the possessive form of the plural of “Bundy” were used, it would be be the proper plural form (Bundys) followed by an apostrophe: Bundys’.

This is just basic literacy. Writing nonsense English indicates a stunted ability to understand written English. But, of course. . .

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I Am Sooo Tired of Pretentious, Subliterate Boobs Who Think They Can Write

. . . in English, at least. One stand-out giveaway that some wannabe writer is both pretentious and a lazy subliterate: using subjective case pronouns as objects, rather than using the proper objective case.

Typically, these sorts of poorly-read, poorly-educated boobs use I, she, and he in place of the correct me, her, and him as objects of verbs or prepositions, apparently thinking it sounds “classy” or at least that it is correct. Some even rationalize it, when confronted, with an argument of an assumed subsequent verb that would convert the object into a subject, but that’s just a back-formed excuse.

There are many such examples of simply execrable grammar, syntax, and word misusage that are hallmarks of subliterate pretensions to literacy, but this one is a dead giveaway. Such wannabe writers should–and would, if they had any worthwhile ethics whatsoever–enroll in remedial English classes, and keep taking the classes until they are able to at least pass the course.