The Perils of Pauline…

Ahh the perils of being a freelance proof-reader and editor, I work from home, so I do not see clients face to face and a lot of my clients live in other states. So most of my contact consists of emails and phone calls or if there needs to be some one on one real time clarification I have a MSN account which is strictly business only, I only ever give that out to paying clients.

Last week I got an email from a reasonably well known local businessman I’ve never worked with him before, he needed a brochure/flyer proofread for basic grammar and spelling mistakes. This isn’t a problem, I do it all the time, it’s my bread and butter trade.

I was somewhat surprised that the place that he was getting the printing done at wasn’t offering the same service as part as the deal, but then I realised that he was probably getting the printing done at the ultra ultra ultra cheap printing place whose policy is ‘we print it as it comes’. So fixing errors beforehand is very good idea.

When his .doc arrived in my email box I had a look at it and I quickly realised that not only did it need basic grammar and spelling fixed, it needed a whole substantive edit done to it. So I contacted him and as politely as I could, managed to convey to him that basically his whole copy sucked, and sucked badly. But that for an extra $$ I could fix that for him as well.

He agreed and deposited the remaining amount into my account, and when that had cleared, away I went. Most of it was pretty much standard I knew what he was trying to sell, what he basically wanted to say and managed to get his mangled words into something comprehensible.

However there was one bit that I needed some definitive clarification on so I asked him to contact me either by phone so I could speak and edit at the same time, or on MSN so that I could type and edit at the same time.

He said MSN was fine, so I gave him my business MSN account and waited for him. I waited for around 15 minutes and was just about to give up when up popped on my BUSINESS account the screen name

HardC&*k4You.

Oh yes; it was MY client, I blinked and decided that best course of action would be to totally ignore it and just get on with deciphering exactly what it was that he wanted in this part of the brochure. I was switching from screen to screen, doing some editing then getting some more clarification, and each time I switched back to the MSN window his screen name would be changed to something else just as disturbing. At the same time he’d change the little ID picture, I saw an ever changing parade of penises (penii?), usually erect and all a little on the OMG scary size.

These are the screen names he used:

HardC&*k4You.

SuckMyHardC&*k

HardThrobbingMeatspear

And my very personal favourite;

Wet4MyHardC&*k.

In a word NO, it was a childish immature display and I can only hope that while he was talking to me on MSN that he was also talking to some one else, or else it just tips over in to the highly disturbing.

I finished up and said that I had all the information I needed and that I would send the finished job back to him via email in around two days he said that was fine and said “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you”. I’m in two minds about THAT one, I just replied as pleasantly as possible and as he signed off his last comment was “btw, that was my c&*k in those pictures”.

My dear client, you are a skinny mid 40ish Caucasian business man, I’ve seen your picture in the local rag a few times. None of those pictures you used was of your penis, unless your penis has a terrible terrible disease it is NOT black, nor does it look like it needs a support stand all of its own.

Next time, no matter how badly I need the money, someone else can have him.

T.V Shows I Just Did Not ‘GET’.

This is another post entirely devoid of anything at all to do with English or Grammar or anything else in between.

Over the years there have been quite a few ‘tv phenomenoms’ that I just haven’t been able to get just why people rave over them and watch them religiously, and even more so, get very rabid about them to the point of fan fic and slash.
My extensive list of tv shows that I just don’t ‘get’ goes like this.

1: Seinfeld This man is just not funny, and his bunch of whiny self obsessed friends were as about as funny as nails on a blackboard, that whole whiny sense of self entitlement just turned me off, totally

2: The Simpsons sure it was funny for the first two seasons, but after that, god help us, how much of this unfunny boorishness can people stand, year after year after year

3: Buffy The Vampire Slayer Never understood why people loved this show so much, if ever a show screamed volumes about the writers/producers ego, this show was it, it was trite, took itself far to seriously and wandered off into the realms of idiocy far too often

4: Everybody Loves Raymond NO THEY DON’T… I wanted to slap him upside the head, repeatedly, enough said

5: Firefly Good god, you’d have thought that this was the second coming of all that was holy and good, umm NO. And the fans, god save me from the fans who still can’t let go of this mediocre show.

6: The Office (UK version) No, just no, Ricky Gervais and his minimal range of facial tics that pass for acting made this show unwatchable. Gervais plays himself no matter what role it is, and that makes whatever he is in, unwatchable

7: All US remakes of brilliant UK comedy shows (the Office excluded) including, Coupling, Men Behaving Badly, Man About The House, All in the Family, George and Mildred etc etc etc.

8: The X Files Didn’t we suffer enough with this show lasting about three seasons longer than it should have, only now to be inflicted with a movie about it as well?.  Someone must have needed the money thats all I can say

9: Prisonbreak How many frickin times can one man go to prison and escape, three it seems, this is a case where the death penalty is needed
10: Heroes All I can say is… WHAT HAPPENED? one of the best fresh new ideas to come out of the bloated carcass that is hollywood since Lost, and you fucked it up. I am so over Heroes now, its time has been and gone, Lost is heading that way too.

11: Star Trek Come on people, it was at best a mediocre tv show when it came out, do we really need another movie about it. (though ST:IV The Voyage Home, is one of my fave movies of all time.. I mean it has WHALES!!)

Seven books (series) I will never read again.

I LOVE reading, love is perhaps not even a strong enough word to describe the pleasure that I get from reading, there was a time, when I could devour 15-20 books a week. My local library relaxed the borrowing limit for me from 10 books at time to however many I could find. I’d read the books I’d got out and then go on to read the books that my Mum had checked out as well.

So of course that meant that I came into contact with all sorts of genres, my Mum loved crime novels, so I read Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Ellery Queen, Ed McBain,  and hundreds of brilliant crime writers. Then I moved onto autobiographies, David Niven’s witty and brilliant “The Moon’s a Balloon” was the first one I read, followed by Errol Flynn’s “My Wicked Wicked Ways”.

I read all of Gerald Durrell’s amazing books about his family and the zoos and catching animals for them, and then on to the wonderful “My Friend” books by Jane Duncan and also the ones under her pen name of Janet Sandison, the lovely “Jean In…” books.

I read just about everything I could get my hands on, and then, then I found Fantasy and SF books and knew that I had found my home. These books were the ones for me.

I devoured all the books I could get my hands on, I read authors from A-Z and back again, some books I read over and over again, some books I hold in the highest esteem, along with the Authors, and then there were the books that I read once and that was more than enough.

Of course what books each of us likes is a very subjective thing, I know of quite a few people who think that Tolkien is rubbish (heresy, pure and simple) and more than a few who think that Stephanie Myers and the Twilight series are the epitome of excellent writing (poor deluded fools).

So my list of books that I read once and will never EVER read again might possibly contain some of your most loved books of all time, by your favourite author in the world, you are welcome to your opinion, as I am mine.

Books I WILL never read again!

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Stephen Donaldson. These books were all the rage when I was in college, everyone was reading them, I read them all and for the first time was filled with an overwhelming urge to STRANGLE the lead character. He DIDN’T STOP WHINGING for the whole six books, I wanted Lord Foul to win, to crush, kill maim and destroy TC. QUICKLY.

The Wheel of Time: Robert Jordan. Yes I know the man is dead and I know there are millions of people who were pissed that he died before he finished. Amongst the logorrhoea that bloats the corpse of the WoT series there is a brilliant story, it just needed a damn good editor to cut out all those pages and pages of NOTHING happening.

The Sword of Shannara: Terry Brooks. Little people going on a search for a magic item, with a cranky old Wizard along for the ride. HELLO, blatant rip off LOTR. I read the first four Shannara books, never again. I am told that the later books actually have an original story line, but I am permanently scarred by reading the first ones.

Pandora by Holly Hollander: Gene Wolfe. Gene Wolfe is usually an acquired taste like Brian Aldiss, but I do like some of his stuff, however this book is forever ruined for me. The first 120 odd pages are brilliant, it’s a great storyline, and then on page 121 Wolfe must have realised he only had half a page left in which to finish the story and he wrapped up the entire book in ONE paragraph, a deus ex machina of the like I had never seen before or since.

The Chronicles of the Age of Darkness: Hugh Cook. A 10 novel extravaganza that was supposed to be upwards of 60 books, trust me 10 was about 7 too many, predictable, plodding and pointless, like WoT a good kernel of an idea, ruined by excess verbiage.

Mirror of Her Dreams: Stephen Donaldson. You think I would have learnt my lesson with TCTC, but no, I gave him a second chance, and this book has the distinction of being the ONLY book I have ever thrown at a wall.

The Xanth Books: Piers Anthony.  Every ones favourite purveyor of smutty double entendre book titles, I was actually shocked to read that Anthony was STILL writing these tacky tacky books. I have all the books up til The Colour of Her Panties and then it really hit me just how bad the quality had become and I stopped buying them. Anthony has written some very good books, I love his Incarnations of Immortality books, which had a very interesting underlying idea.

So what are some books that you have read and will never read again, for whatever reason?

Where you put your hyphen counts.

Consider this sentence.

“A black-wife beater”

“A black wife-beater”

Your misplaced hyphen has just created two very entirely different meanings.

The first one would make you raise your eyebrows

The second one just makes you question the persons fashion sense.

It’s just a . to the right and then another . and another . !

I fear I have an unholy fascination with ellipses, I find myself ending perfectly good sentences… .

Where there is NO need for an ellipsis of any kind, I am not leaving any words out, I am not indicating anything else, but for some reason I seem compelled to get dot happy and add two or three, and sometimes even more….

“I see what U did thar”

It is a bad habit and I am trying to wean myself off it, unfortunately I am not helped at the moment by the work that I am proofreading, I wrote before about the writer who had an unholy fascination with all things exclamation point! well this author seems to have my love for ellipses in spades.

Not only content to have… in the middle of a sentence that doesn’t even make grammatical sense, the beloved author tends to have them… and then starts up again for a few words before… some more and then ends with an awkward… .

Ellipses used for good are wondrous things, you can cut out extraneous words, you can indicate that someone is thinking, pondering, you can also use them to end a sentence in a manner that implies that “more” will be happening later on.

If I was thinking that too! many! exclamation! marks are! a bad! bad! thing!!, then I am almost positive that… too many… are an even… worse thing!

It’s like William Shatner as Captain Kirk not only! talking! like! this!, but adding in pauses while he…! mentally!… leaves out! a… word!…

… .

STOP! Grammar Time

I found this in my collection of funny things, I have a feeling that it came from an old LiveJournalpost I saved. I don’t know the original authors.

And now, a word from MC Grammar.

“Can’t read dis.”
Daaaa na na na… naaaaaa na.
“Can’t read dis.”
Daaaa na na na… naaaaaa na.
“Can’t read dis.”
Daaaa na na na… naaaaaa na.
“Can’t read dis.”
Daaaa na na na… naaaaaa na.
The spelling’s butchered so hard
makes me say, “Oh my lord!
What is this garbage here?
Wanna cover my eyes, burst into tears.”
I can’t…ignore this stuff.
My inner grammar-nazi makes it too rough.
Capital “I”s are somethin’ we need,
and that’s the reason why (uh!) I can’t read.

This just tickled my inner grammar nazi and made me laugh so much.

Attack of the ‘Wall of Text’

The following is what is known as a ‘wall of text’ an almost impenetrable mass of words, that may or may not make sense, may or may not be some of the best words ever written, but you’ll never know, because your eyes do a quick skim, notice there are no sentence breaks, no paragraphs, no capitalisation and your brain rejects it, and your eyes refuse to read more than the first two lines.

My inner grammar Nazi just curled up whimpering softly in the darkened corner.

Amen Angie [Harmon], finally a celebrity takes the words right out of my mouth. I could care less what color Obama is, its what he is doing as President that is important. Just because i think he is very inexperienced and why do people think he is such a good speaker when he always uses a teleprompter, he uses one for even the simplest of announcements and speeches, doesn’t sound like he’s that well spoken to me when you pay attention to when he uses one and when he doesn’t use one his speeches are awful. do research and look at his policies, and stop calling people rascist just because we don’t agree with his policies. people are just playing the race card to make us feel bad about the fact that slavery happened, and i think thats why some people continue to use that excuse, they want to blame us for what happened before alot of us were even born. why does everyone forget that he is half white and only focus on the fact that he looks black, people are always calling him the first black president, but in my opinion he is the first bi-racial president, i don’t see the color as being that important. who cares what color he is as long as he is a good President and so far he is already messing things up bigtime with the AIG scandal bonuses that HIS Treasury Department confirmed and put into the stimulus bill that no one who voted for it even read, and Obama promised that we would have access to reading it before it was voted on which he never did, that was just one of his many lies. if people would open their eyes and stop acting like he is their Savior or Messiah they would see that he really isn’t that smart or experienced, Sarah Palin had more experience than he did and he constantly put her down for not having any. i think people forget that he isn’t perfect, he isn’t going to pay your bills, or fill your car with gas, or pay for your healthcare or college, he just can’t do it without bankrupting this country..

It’s a run on verbal spew of words, the writer may have a point, it may indeed be something that we should care about, but if it looks like that, then who is going to take the time to read it properly.

And just let me add, that the opinions expressed are the opinions of the OP and not mine, I was just using it as a good example of why it pays to pay attention to your basic sentence structure, grammar and punctuation.

Come again?

Among people who know these things I am often told that English is one the hardest languages to learn, not so much to speak, but to learn how to write and read, this is of course due to the many hundreds of words that we have that are spelt the same way but mean something entirely different.

To wit:

• The bandage was wound around the wound.
• The farm was used to produce produce.
• The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
• We must polish the Polish furniture.
• He could lead if he would get the lead out.
• The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
• Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
• A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
• When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
• I did not object to the object.
• The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
• There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
• They were too close to the door to close it.
• The buck does funny things when the does are present.
• A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
• To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
• The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
• After a number of injections my jaw got number.
• Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
• I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
• How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Upon reading that is it any wonder people for whom English is a second language throw up their hands in disgust and mutter rude words about our antecedents and their possible breeding habits, they have my utter sympathy.

I suppose that means I should feel sympathy for those among us for whom English is their first language and who still have trouble getting their heads around English, but I won’t, for anyone without a learning disability it’s just sheer laziness.

Picking up the basics of grammar and spelling is not hard, it’s not even particularly time consuming, and it will do you the world of good, it improves your chances in getting into college, Uni or getting a job, and it gives you a sense of achievement.

How ‘U’ doin’?

While I admit that sometimes it feels like I am fighting a rearguard AND losing battle against the decline of general good English and grammar, I like to think that I am still somewhat flexible and not really a horrible grammar Nazi; insisting on perfection in every single written thing I see.

It breaks my heart to see certain things,  I can accept a certain laxness of spelling and grammar in highly informal settings like IRC, or on IMs, where people using ‘u’ and ‘r’  or not even bothering with capitalisation is the norm, that I can grit my teeth and get over, because I admit that on occasions my own spelling leaves a little to be desired and I too have suffered from ‘fat finger’ syndrome, even on a full sized keyboard.

What I cannot and will not accept is that style of communication in an environment that is meant to be formal, especially one that is dedicated to the formal study of English. One of my courses involves participation in an online discussion, the participation counts towards part of your marks, not a vast amount but in my opinion, every little bit counts.

When what is supposed to be a serious, formal discussion about English and the facets that are involved in the course is peppered with things like

‘How u doin on the assig, im not sure i have all da facts i need, r u goin to aks for a extension, i thinks u should so u can help me with mine’

and

‘i feel like i have been writin this same page 4 eva, noone sed it was gonna b this hard’

I can only hope that they are trying to graduate with a degree in txtspk or lolcat.

P.S and my own inbuilt grammar checker just nearly had a conniption with the above sentences.

I ain’t got no… double negatives

Say hello to one of the most painful facets of popular culture expressed in conversation, the double negative, mostly it appears they are used for emphasis, or to be sarcastic, however that doesn’t stop it from grating on the ears and the eyes, MY eyes in particular.

A lot of languages feature double negatives as a standard, English does not, and the most popular one seems to be “ain’t”, which according to popular thought is either  a contraction of  “are not” or  “am not” or even  in some bizarre form “have not”.

“Ain’t” is NOT a word, not a real word, it’s just a nasty piece of slanguage/vernacular which has crept into long term usage, polluting the eyes and ears of the readers and listeners.

• I ain’t no Doctor
• He don’t know nothing about anything
• He doesn’t know nothing about nobody

The proper constructions are to either use the negative adverb or a noun of negation.

• I am not a Doctor
• He doesn’t know anything about anything
• He knows nothing about nobody.

I realise of course that I am fighting a lone, losing battle against the forces of “ain’t” it’s been popularised so much that people think it’s a real word, a real valid contraction.