| Author | Message | ||
     Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
Does anybody here know how I can prevent the spell check in Microsoft Word from repeatedly suggesting that I meant to type anymore? There's no such word in my usage. I loathe it just as much as alright. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
I have characters say 'alright' if it suits them. The meaning feels quite different to 'All Right' - it feels more like 'OK' than 'everything is right'. It's hard to explain. But the language is going a bit doolally. Spelling mistakes on top selling book covers these days, and dvds. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
Yes, of course a character can speak ungrammatically. I mean there's no place for wrong usage in text that isn't representing how a character uses language. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
"But the language is going a bit doolally. Spelling mistakes on top selling book covers these days, and dvds." Indeed, illiteracy is spreading, and it's up to the literate to combat it in their work. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
Also, I've maybe used it in my writing voice, if what Beryl Bainbridge called the 'bumpity-bump' required it. I miss Beryl. I wish I'd written to her. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
Also, it's starting to feel like the media knows it is happening and doesn't care. It feels like a deliberate attempt to fit in with an increasingly illiterate society, reassure the less educated that clever people can make mistakes too and might therefore be a bit 'cool'. (Hmm...did that come across as a bit paranoid?) | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
I'm not sure that the media do know. I think they may simply be suffering from the presence of, if not illiterates, semi-literate contributors who don't know any better. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
One problem is certainly that the universities were forced to admit students with a low level of literacy - an effect of Blair's ridiculous scheme to have 50% of young people go there. Alas, Kingsley Amis had it right: "more will mean worse." | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
One more thought to depress us: when Jenny retired from teaching in a secondary school a couple of years ago, she was seeing new members of staff - university graduates - misspell words and get punctuation and grammar wrong. They will presumably pass all that on to those of their pupils who don't know any better. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
Also it's who's giving these people jobs. It's one thing not learning something properly and another to hire people who haven't. I dunno - maybe there are other factors. Everything is done in such a rush now. When I was at college there were these typesetting/printer chaps who did everything using hot metal presses and things and you could tell they were on the way out. But they took time to double check everything. I think it's their attitude that's missing. They didn't seem like English students but they knew what was right. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
Ramsey - we get misspellings all the time in letters from school. My youngest son can spell better than some of them - and he's a bit 'daft'! | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 92.232.184.137 |
What's the actual phrase, Ramsey, and does it happen when you're spellchecking? I can't get Word to query "any more"... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
Well, for instance: ' Luke is taking the phone away from his ear when Terence adds “I don’t want to be alone with this any more.” ' In this case the spell check suggests I might have meant anymore. Unfortunately it doesn't offer "ignore all" but just gives "ignore once". | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
Can you 'add to dictionary', or does it not let you? They really do try to impose a style on you. | ||
| Stephen Theaker (Stephen_theaker) Username: Stephen_theaker Registered: 12-2009 Posted From: 92.232.184.137 |
What does it say in the spellchecking box just above where it shows your text (e.g. it might say "Not in Dictionary")? I'd guess it's a grammar and style issue rather than a spelling one. You could try unticking "Check grammar" and see if Word still flags it as a problem. If, when the spelling box is up, you click on Options and then Settings, you can see loads of grammar and style things that don't always need to be checked (things like contractions), and in your version of Word "any more" might fall under Misused Words or something like that, especially if you have the language set to English US, where anymore would (I think) be considered better in some places. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
Yes - US English does all sorts of daft stuff. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
Ramsey, I've had that 'correction' inflicted on my text by a copy-editor. In the UK.  | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
Thanks, Stephen! I use UK English for sure. My particular copy-editing bugbear is having till treated as though it's a contraction of until rather than a perfectly legitimate conjunction and preposition. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
The most anoying phrase in the English language: "Fragment. Consider revising." | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
The thing about universities is that, with the possible exception of English courses, there are no basic literacy classes. It's assumed that undergrads will arrive with those relevant skills. If graduates are getting through the Uni systems without the ability to spell/punctuate, I'm afraid it's a pre-grad school issue. There's no way a lecturer can possibly teach grammar/spelling as well as a degree-level subject. Time's tight enough as it is, these days. When I mark an essay, I do flag up common errors in literacy and suggest the student pay attention to this in future work. There's no time to correct everything, however. But it certainly has a bearing on the mark students are given, because there is an assessment criterion called PRESENTATION, which includes these issues. A badly written essay can lose a good 5% - somtimes the difference between a 2:1 and a 2:2 (or a 2:2 and a third; but the 1st class students tend to lack these shortcomings). | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.9.68 |
There's no way a lecturer can possibly teach grammar/spelling as well as a degree-level subject. This is true, especially when you won't be thanked for it, or even for teaching your core subjects exceptionally well. I just had a student email me saying that he was "suppose to get a form". He's on placement in a hospital. Let's hope the anesthetic machine instruction book uses "boneless nuggets of McInformation" as Will Self calls it. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
Here's one I had a while ago: "When I done my research methods seciton [sic], do I do an intro, then say what I done and then what I found?" I wish it was only email-casualness that resulted in these errors, but her essays are just as bad. And that's at the University of Leeds, where AAB is a common offer. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
What if everyone really did write/speak the "King's English" back in the 14th Century, and Chaucer just happened to a complete and utter goddamned illiterate? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.19.117 |
Was born to one, do you mean? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Ha! Yes, indeed, I just read over my joke, and it revealed the REAL goddamned illiterate....  Where's my petard? I need to be hoist. | ||
| David_lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 92.22.21.241 |
It's not just the written word. During the fuel crisis I heard a BBC reporter at a petrol station say "Customers literally have petrol on their minds." | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.66.23.11 |
hoisted | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I was playing on the famous line - "hoist[sic] with his own petar" - from Wikipedia: ... the word "hoist" is the (now archaic) past participle of the earlier form "hoise" for the verb "hoist". Move aside, Web. I work alone.  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.77.198 |
BBC headline the other day: "Donors save ballerinas from cuts." | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
I liked a subtitle glitch I heard of recently - 'The tomb of Tooting Common' (Tutankhamen) | ||
| Carole Johnstone (Carolej) Username: Carolej Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 94.0.72.39 |
My all time favourite, which is bellowed up and down my little street every day and night: "I didn't do nuffing!!!" | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.134.231 |
There was recently a discussion elsewhere about a certain bestseller and its sloppy, often technically inaccurate prose. One group suggested that practitioners of popular fiction do not need to attend to such details, and the other said that they should. The latter group were dismissed as elitist/snobs, and it was also suggested that their complaints were motivated by envy of the author's success. What do folk think about this issue? Is it unreasonable to expect any published fiction to be professionally polished? Or is it okay, perhaps when its readership knows no difference, for it to be published-without-technical-edits? | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
I shouldn't, but I do think of literature in the same was I do food, the Pot Noodles and the scallops. We have to remind ourselves what is what though, and not mistake trash (however pleasant) as being either good for us or as quality nosh. And Pot Noodle; I would stop eating it if it spelled Chow Mien wrong or something. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.134.231 |
There's nothing wrong with trash. What I'm asking is, when sloppy faults clearly exist, should they be corrected prepublication? Or is that an elitist attitude? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 1.161.43.89 |
"Is it unreasonable to expect any published fiction to be professionally polished? Or is it okay, perhaps when its readership knows no difference, for it to be published-without-technical-edits?" I don't think it's unreasonable. Quite the opposite, in fact - the very least I expect when I pick up a book, regardless of whether the style of writing is to my taste, is that is grammatically correct. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 1.161.43.89 |
Ahem - that last part should read: '... is that IT is grammatically correct.' Sorry! | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.17.53 |
"There was recently a discussion elsewhere about a certain bestseller and its sloppy, often technically inaccurate prose. One group suggested that practitioners of popular fiction do not need to attend to such details, and the other said that they should. The latter group were dismissed as elitist/snobs, and it was also suggested that their complaints were motivated by envy of the author's success." Bollocks to the last comment. And if the original concern is elitist, that's fine by me. There's too little of it these days. | ||
| Carole Johnstone (Carolej) Username: Carolej Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 94.0.72.39 |
I agree with Huw. It's not unreasonable at all. And I think that there is a big difference between simple writing and really bad writing. It's pretty insulting for anyone to decide that a target audience is too thick to appreciate good editing. I read trash sometimes (if trash is chick lit, erotica, shoot em up zombie etc.), and while I'm reading it mostly because I want to switch my brain off, nothing irritates me more than jarring sentencce structure and bad grammar, because then I can't switch my brain off - it starts to get hot and cross... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.134.231 |
Indeed, Ramsey. Indeed. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
The problem with fiction, Gary, is that the technical/mechanical aspects that go into creating a story, and then the story itself, are often disparate. I've read many screenplays that were wonderfully well-written... and dull as dishwater; and then scripts that were nearly illiterate, and yet told stories that riveted. As well, I've read scripts that mangled the language, and yet read finely—the act of reading them was pleasurable, a breeze; and then, work that was tedious and difficult to get through, however literate. So these issues, alas, when it comes to fiction, just aren't able to be readily sliced and diced.... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.134.231 |
Nobody was suggesting that the author of the bestseller mentioned above should rob her prose of its giddy, readable qualities; only that it should be checked for technical accuracies and stylistic 'grostesqueries'. That's not the same as making it dull. I think your comment here implies a false dichotomy. Why not be both technically adept and riveting to read? I can think of a good bunch of popular writers who manage this. Why can't all of them? Don't certain authors/publishers care? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
To a degree, you're correct, Gary. Misspellings can be corrected; a character in a story, in her kitchen, drops something on the "ground"—the editor changes it to "floor." But the gray area comes both in stylistics, and sense. A writer can use excessive exclamation points!!! But still be fascinating!!! And if my character is starting to cross the room, and you as my editor tells me he should just be plain crossing the damn room, because starting to is illogical... you may be right; but as such things pile up, have you killed my individual voice as a writer?... Using "said" continuously, monotonously, passes for perfectly fine. Using adverbs every time someone speaks—he said crassly, he said sarcastically, he said jubilantly—what's wrong with that? How do you correct that? And though one can't point to a rule in a book, isn't that surely an abuse of the language every bit as egregious as palpable illiteracy (though then, why wouldn't nothing but "said"s not be, too)? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.134.231 |
I'll give a little here, and agree with some of that. The whole gaudy business of adverbs, etc, is okay, and adds a little spice to the whole proceedings. But I guess I'm talking about absurdities and needless repetition. A few examples, taken from popular fiction: "The late professor was dead. His corpse lay on the floor." "The moon came in through the curtains and danced on the carpet." "His paces echoing across the tiles underfoot, the man entered the room and stared at the ceilling overhead." Should these really appear in a professional published novel? Would it be an imposition on the author's 'style' to improve them? Would the prose be robbed of its readability if they were edited? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
I agree, Gf...and we're only talking minor edits here, so the style argument isn't valid: "The professor was dead. His corpse lay on the floor." "The moonlight came in through the curtains and danced on the carpet." "His paces echoing across the tiles, the man entered the room and stared at the ceiling ." | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.156.210.82 |
In my experience, that's what a good professional editor does. They make these minor tweaks that - taken as a whole - improve the literary quality of a piece of work. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.134.231 |
Indeed. I'm not talking about turning Archer into Dickens. I'm referring to basic nuts n bolts. I've seen far too many novels lately seemingly sent to print without even been touched. Witness the Terry Pratchett award-winning APOCALYPSE COW. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Those are definitely sentences where an editor can do some necessary improving, with little loss of the writer's style. But perhaps it's like this? Like with my example with the adverbs. Nothing wrong with using them excessively... except that, no one will like it. Just like some stories we've all written, no one wanted to publish, no one wants to read, for whatever reason. And maybe in the world of publishing, it's gotten to like how I am reading scripts: Sure, fix the grammar, spelling, etc. But what about good scripts? They're so rare, that you no longer care about the spelling and grammar and all that—and, when you encounter piles of ill-usage, it means nothing if the script's great. It actually all becomes a total non-factor in assessing work. (Though, to be fair, scripts are blueprints for film, and not intended as the end-product, like say novels and short-stories are.) | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
And let me again decry this novel THE HYPNOTIST. It is wretched beyond measure, beyond fathoming. It is absolutely un-readable. I'm only continuing because I must know what this story does with its main character, and in unholy awe at the very shite-ness of it. The only way to improve this book, is to publicly crucify its authors, editors, and publishers. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.26.134.231 |
So a raw talent sometimes needs a good editor to tame his or her chaotic excesses. Isn't that what the author-editor team is all about? >>>But what about good scripts? They're so rare, that you no longer care about the spelling and grammar and all that—and, when you encounter piles of ill-usage, it means nothing if the script's great. Your example, Craig, is surely about what the editor sees, and not what the purchasing reader should see. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Yes, this is essentially what Hollywood has to deal with: http://www.theonion.com/video/today-now-interviews-the-5yearold-screenwriter-of, 20188/ | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
Gary! You knew the answer to this before you asked it! OF COURSE books need to be spell/grammar checked! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.182.194 |
I was just inviting opinion. Of course I had my own view. I did elsewhere during that other discussion. I found being continually accused of envy particularly pathetic. I'll resist revealing the identity of the person making that claim. Bollocks, indeed. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.152.62.175 |
The envy thing is rubbish, isn't it? You know, I had a story of mine in a mag once and it was typoed to buggery. It completely ruined it. I used to be heartened that Truman Capote was a bit of a one for bad spelling and lapses in grammar. But like we say here, it's not just the writer who's putting the books out there. (I still can't get my 'it's' or 'its' right. I don't think I ever will - but it doesn't mean I want them in my stories.) | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.22.77 |
If anyone has bought the Observer today, just examine the teaser paragraph printed in large type at the head of the article about David Simpson (it isn't online, though). I fear my case about the spread of illiteracy is made. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.178.159.240 |
I've only just seen this thread. I started a couple of rants on Facebook some months back regarding 'anymore' and 'alright', but that soon degenerated into listing the worst misuses of apostrophes that I could find, the winners being:- Jame's Bond Snobb'ish The spread of illiteracy? Surely not! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.208.217 |
What's wrong with alright? | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.178.159.240 |
Nothing in speech in a story, but I think it's wrong in text. "He was feeling alright again" should read "He was feeling all right again". | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.178.159.240 |
I just searched the phrase 'is alright correct?' and for the most part it isn't, although apparently it's starting to be accepted as such in some quarters. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.178.159.240 |
...searched 'for' the phrase... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.208.162 |
I've always thought there was a subtle difference between all right and alright in the same way as already and all ready don't quite mean the same. |