Them wot know about writting

[onlymark]

Every so often I have a look through the Lonely Planet TT forum, Speaking in Tongues.
On there are some very knowledgeable people who dissect the minutiae of language and writing. It's amazing what they come up with and many things can be learnt.
There is a recent thread regarding annoying grammatical errors that took my interest.
After looking through it I sat back and then wondered if any of the contributors could ever read anything without noticing the errors and then becoming annoyed rather than reading for the pleasure of it.

Just a thought.

[bjd]

No -- although some are pickier than others.

[bixaorellana]

;D (I dread to think what's going to happen to my many mangled messages now!)

[onlymark]

So, three commas missing, only one word not needed, one set of quote marks missing and an incomplete sentence.

In your opinion.

[Deleted]

Hmmm -- 2 more incomplete sentences.

[bixaorellana]

Boy just cain't help hisself!

Ees joke, Beeg Mark.

I had to dig to find anything to pick at.

And I didn't even mention that correct but weird past tense of learn that you Brits insist upon using.

[onlymark]

I know it was a joke, that's why I put the smiley.
Commas, though, are a difficult thing, even, if, you, know, the, rules.

To get back to the subject though don't you think it would spoil the pleasure somewhat if for example a baker goes to buy a cake and can't but help examine it or a film director goes to the cinema for pleasure? To me it would be extremely difficult to gain any pleasure out of reading if all I could see were the grammar mistakes within the text that were glaring out at me and would make me just want to get a red pen and scribble all over the page and then send it back to the author with a note saying something like Could do better. I'd probably have to satisfy myself by giving up reading completely and just listen to music or watch films or I suppose one possibility is to have audio books where a person needn't see any written words at all just sit back and listen to the story as it unfolds instead of continually parsing through a section of text and not seeing or understanding what the story is about at all.

[bixaorellana]

Well, yes, to get back to the subject, I completely understand what you're saying, which, joking aside, is part of what my red-penciling your message was meant to convey: while you're saying X, I'm so focused on Y that I completely miss the point.

If all authors stuck to The Rules all the time, they could never develop the styles needed to put across the unspoken depths of their stories. Some writers -- William Trevor comes to mind -- can make perfect grammar sing. Others need to push and stretch and disrupt the language in order to pull us into the universe they're making. So good writing is of necessity sometimes "wrong".

And sometimes things aren't all that well written, or filmed, or baked or whatever, but have some element of honesty or fun or sincerity that make them worthy regardless of any flaws.

Obviously we can't throw our critical faculties completely out the window, but we can also ruin something that could have given us pleasure by picking it to death.

[onlymark]

A bit like playing a musical instrument I suppose as well. If it is done technically perfect it'd probably sound the same every time for the same piece of music. But each player is allowed his or her interpretation of the rules, like lingering a little longer on a note etc. That's what makes some arrangements sound better or worse than others. As long as they stick to the framework, as with authors, there should be some latitude within it for individualism.

[bjd]

I think that writers can and should do whatever they want with words to create the style or story they want. Indeed, that's how writing and novels have changed and evolved over the years -- sometimes with lasting results (like Mark's 3-word sentence above being perfectly acceptable and understandable) or not (Finnegan's Wake, which remains unreadable except by a few academic masochists who need a thesis subject).

However, I do find that lousy copy-editing (typos, spelling mistakes, translation errors when I catch them) are annoying and I always see them. But that is being critical of the publisher rather than the writer.

[onlymark]

I do have to laugh though at the difficulty the proof reader/copy-editor has when trying to do their job and confronted with parts of a book written in dialect - as with D.H. Lawrence - how the bloody hell can you check the spelling, for one thing.

[Deleted]

Commas are indeed difficult for me. I must have been out sick the week or whatever that they were taught in my school.
I think it's one of the reasons I write poetry rather than prose.

I couldn't agree more with what BJD posted.

[mickthecactus]

Jan 25, 2012 11:04:49 GMT casimira said:

Commas are indeed difficult for me. I must have been out sick the week or whatever that they were taught in my school.
I think it's one of the reasons I write poetry rather than prose.

I couldn't agree more with what BJD posted.

Was that the New Orleans Academy for Ladies of High Repute?

[bjd]

re: dialect. I tend to avoid books written in dialect. I had to read some DH Lawrence at university. I always feel as though I have to try to read it aloud to figure out what it is supposed to be.

[cheerypeabrain]

I never done grammer at school me.


It's always been a worry especially on message boards....