Category: Education

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Words: They Do Not Mean What You Think They Mean. . .

. . .IF you are a lazy, subliterate “Dunning-Krugerand.”

Read a book where a lazy, subliterate “Dunning-Krugerand” writer committed a LOT (No, more than what you think of as “a lot,” MUCH more) of usage errors, on top of other basic grammar and orthography errors, including using “squib” (yes, with a “b”) to refer to a couple of retired Navy characters. No. I tired of typing,

“#GAGAMAGGOT!!!! SQUID, you subliterate “Dunning-Krugerand” moron, SQUID!” and so intend to include something like this in an Amazon review (though I’ll include other examples of evidence that no literate eye gave a glance at the book before it was published):

“squib:
noun

a small firework consisting of a tube filled with powder that makes a hissing noise when it is lit”

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/squib

Also, re: firearms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squib_load

“A squib load, also known as a squib round, pop and no kick, or just a squib, is a firearm malfunction in which a fired projectile does not have enough force behind it to exit the barrel, and thus becomes stuck.”

SQUID, OTOH,

What Is A Navy Squid? 11 Slang Nicknames For Navy Sailors

“A term used in the old Navy (not the store), Squid is what other branches
(especially Marines) generally called sailors.”

Writers who do not care enough about their craft and who have no respect whatsoever for those they expect to pay for their “work,” and who therefore see no need to become literate are just wannabe thieves, seeking to steal $$ from readers for NOT doing their work, and to steal time better used to read or do other things. Note to wannabe writers: unless you can at least pass an “English as a second language” course, just write in your native tongue (for those who grew up in an English speaking milieu, that might well be gibberish. Very well, write your gibberish openly so that literate folks can more easily avoid it. Thankfully, many subliterate self-pubs write their own book blurbs. . . ).

I don’t want to be mean, but. . . “He MADE me do it!” *heh*

Another example, this one a whole sentence, illustrates a different frustration I experience with “Dunnig-Krugerite” writers.

“The palace is more than a thousand years old, [and was] once a stop for traders from the Silk Road.”

So, it was once a caravansaral (caravanari, caravanserai, caravansary). Would have been easier to just use the right word, viz., “. . .once a caravansaral on the Silk Road.” Oh, but wait. That would assume that both the writer and his intended audience had a working vocabulary larger than the typical fifth grader.

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“Once more into the breach. . . “

I blame Pete Townsend and legions of subliterates who have been “misunderedumacated” in “gummint” schools (A.K.A. “prisons for kids”) for the disgusting spread of “alright” in place of the useful and perfectly good “all right.” Yeh, yeh, so James Joyce wrote “alright” ONCE, as against dozens of uses of “all right.” Big deal. Even if Joyce’s usage had been flipped the other way, he wrote Suckitudinous Fiction that only appeals to sophomoric idiots who feign intellectual pursuits. (Yes, I am completely serious in that assertion.)

Heck, eve with Pete Townsend’s endorsement for the stupid, “alright” only gained any traction at all with the advent of massive “democratic” stupidity inflicted on English by “mass-man” (see Ortega) via the Internet. And even with the promulgation of subliterate stupidity via subliterate writing, editing, and self-publishing, one can be thankful the use of “all right” still VASTLY outweighs the deplorable infliction of “alright” on the English language.

So, if you insist on being a Philistine, a nekulturny subliterate (A.K.A. “trailer trash,” etc.), go ahead and use “alright” in private emails where you might be safe doing so, or in a public form where you can be raucously mocked. No skin off my nose either way. But if you (assuming a reader who wants to be a published writer and expects to be paid for wordsmithery) want to avoid a raucous mocking in, say, an Amazon review, get it right, mmmK?

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“Why doest thou plague me so?”

I have thought about just why such things as comma splices committed by writers who expect to be paid for their writing irk me so. It all comes down to their sheer laziness and lack of respect for their readers. They appear to be either too lazy to either use a semi-colon or a conjunction (or, in many cases the better option, a simple period followed by a new sentence), or they are and have been too lazy to learn rather simple standards of orthography. Either way, it shows a lack of respect for any reader with at least a fifth grade reading level. *shrugs* Is it too much to expect someone who wants to be paid for his work to take the trouble to do it right?

And yeh, this holds for the lazy, disrespectful habits of some wannabe writers (and, admittedly, some well-established writers *sigh*) who have never bothered to become literate enough to know they are misusing words/terms, committing asinine grammar errors, irredeemably stupid failures to do their research on facts (or the math on their “research” or whatever), and all sorts of other completely unnecessary stupidities that distract from whatever they are attempting to convey, whether that is a research paper, a “news” story, an opinion piece, or a novel. If they want to be paid for their work, they should actually do the work.

Sterling #gagamaggot example from. . . just now: a writer with a character whose first person narrative presents him as exceptionally literate, former English teacher, Deep Thinker, always spouting “erudite” quotations, etc. CONSTANTLY committing egregious grammar errors, misusing words, and more. Kills suspension of disbelief.

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Self-Made Morons

#gagamaggot Every time I see someone blowing off about “Marshall Law” (and yes, it is almost always inappropriately capitalized) I just *smh* at such stupidity. Irritating to think that someone could be a putative adult in today’s America and be illiterate. (Yes, illiterate. Someone can string together a bunch of text w/o being really literate. OK, maybe just subliterate, but the sheer lack of comprehension of basic English that leads someone to type “Marshall Law” in place of “martial law” really does indicate a serious lack of literacy. And it’s not all the fault of schools. Monumental laziness is required to achieve that level of subliteracy.)

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Just. . . Things

Asking all one of the readers that drop by, nowadays: are there any simple problems with English usage that irk you? As frequent reader (note the construction *heh*) likely recalls, I have a few such bugaboos, like

  • bafflingly and wildly inappropriately misused words (infer for imply; poignant for pointed; vested for invested, and worse. Much worse *sigh*)
  • compound words either used wrongly or not used where called for (backseat ? back seat; log in ? login; backup ? back up; etc.)
  • warped time sense (an inability to recognize and properly use perfect tenses, particularly past perfect and conditional past perfect tenses; stupid misuse of present tense for past events, etc. Also illiterate formations of past tenses for some common words, such as “broadcast.”)
  • inability to properly use subjective vs objective pronouns. Also in the running for pronoun misuse: a pseudo hoity-toity misuse of the reflexive pronoun “myself” where “I” is correct (apparently under the impression that using “myself” IMPROPERLY somehow conveys a higher level of literacy. . . while unintentionally revealing subliteracy)

Yes, these are a few of my less favorite things. . . And yes, there are more. Stupid punctuation, laughable misspellings, syntax only a mother could love (and then most likely only from a babbling baby), grammar better associated with a brain-damaged Bonobo chimp, and on and on. . .

“Is she over her head?” written by a writer who did not engage his brain before failing to type “Is she in over her head?” Yeh, another one: mishearing and or misreproducing common expressions, rendering them as nonsense.

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Thanks for the Heads Up

Among other mind-boggling abortions of English literacy in a recently-read screed (including apostrophe abuses/neglects, comma splices, inexplicable “grammar” and syntax, & etc.) was this laughable phrase: “vest interest” (instead of “vested interest”) –attached to a comment that also had no basis in fact, of course.

I appreciated the writer going to such great lengths to let me know his opinion was worthless, so that I could forever after avoid his stupidity. Very helpful.

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“Very Unique”

Stupidity cubed. Impossible. “Unique” is unambiguously and singly determinate. Only; single. Having no like or equal; unmatched; sole; unequaled; single in its kind or excellence. “Too” cannot be used to qualify it. The only qualifiers are limiters such as “nearly,” “almost,” and “not quite.” Nothing can be “more unique” than. . . unique. “Very unique” is nonsense, at best.

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Ugly Words

A thought for today on ugly words, from Henry Watson Fowler:

Whether we are to say forecast or forecasted in the past tense & participle depends on whether we regard the verb or the noun as the original from which the other is formed; … The verb is in fact recorded 150 years earlier than the noun, & we may therefore thankfully rid ourselves of the ugly forecasted; it may be hoped that we should do so even if history were against us, but this time it is kind. [Fowler, 1926]

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When a Dunning-Krugerand* Writes Self-Pub Books

Read a *sigh* “cute” series of novellas (touted as novels but roughly 1/3 the length, or less, of anything I’d class as a novel). Irritating. OK, so they were REALLY fast reads. Clean plot/characters (for the most part–a “super upright, never tell a lie” character? Liar. And the character still viewed himself as honest *sigh*) But, one persistent problem: the writer(s) just did not do their homework. Bits here and there just would NOT work or were utterly and even sometimes laughably impossible, but were essential to the plot. “Dunning-Krugerand” moments* destroying suspension of disbelief, and suspension of disbelief was hard enough to begin with given the premise. Bits like that piled up and kept on piling up until the last “installment” was just a slog, finished just so I could notch up a bit of “reader masochism.”

*”Dunning-Krugerand” is a neologism coined–as far as I know–by Larry Correia to refer to those stuck somewhere on the lefthand side of the Dunning-Kruger Curve, having an unrealistic view of their knowledge base and competence, thinking of themselves far more highly than they ought. Usually, it is simply used to refer to those people, but here I have it to characterize the examples of the writers thinking they were using the right word/term but using exactly the wrong word/term, or describing a physical action or some equipment in such a way that they demonstrated they had no earthly idea how such worked in the real world, getting it so glaringly wrong as to completely destroy suspension of unbelief.