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writing

What You Love

Updated on

Happy Imbolc/Candlemas/Lunar New Year!

A few nights ago, I had dinner with a chef. He didn’t make the dinner; he just happened to be there. Someone at the table asked him a question, and his wife interceded with, “Don’t ask him—he hates food.” The chef elaborated that he didn’t so much hate food, just the people he worked with who saw it as a commodity, as a budget item. I could see how that would frustrate a person who has dedicated his career to creating meals with respect for the ingredients and the end users. It’s difficult to love something and watch other people treat it like a plastic bag.

But you probably already know this if you are a writer of any kind. Your story, your science, whatever you’re putting out there for people to read is drafted with love and respect for the raw materials: words. The right words get the job done, whether that job is explaining a newly hatched theory or making someone cry. If you don’t love the words, if you don’t cringe when you hear people abuse them, it’s possible that you are in the wrong business.

If you aren’t using the correct words to say what you mean, then you have no idea what you’re saying, and neither does anyone else. The grant application is misunderstood and denied. The novel excerpt is scanned and rejected because agents can spot a callous amateur in less time than it takes to hit Send on your query letter.

I could ramble on, but dozens of semioticians, semanticists, linguists, and my fellow pedants have thoroughly harrowed this ground already, so I’ll settle for some entertaining examples of linguistic ignorance (underlining is all mine).

  1. “‘Bill Stepien has not broken any laws,’ the lawyer, Kevin H. Marino, wrote, arguing that the subpoena violates his client’s rights against self-incrimination and unreasonable search and seizure.” New York Times article
  2. “It wasn’t until the Renaissance that true theater enjoyed a rebirth,” Kaplan CSET Subject Examination for Teachers
  3. “As they say, the problem with the French is they have no word for entrepreneur.” Newsweek article

To be fair, the first quotation is from an attorney, and they get paid for intentional obfuscation, but it’s still worth mentioning. The others? No excuse. I would also like to point out that all three examples were brought to my attention by a person who learned English as a second language. This fortifies my theory that the best way to learn about language is to study a different one.

Let me contrast my usage shaming with a reference to some of the most remarkable nonfiction I’ve discovered in decades. I say discovered because I didn’t actually read it; it’s from a TV series called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. You can watch it on Netflix and probably some other places. It was written, directed, and narrated by a guy named Mark Cousins. Watching it will not only give you a thorough yet condensed education on the history of film, it will, if you have any sensitivity to the language at all, make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck the way they do when you hear the very best lines of poetry. The film is based on a book, which I suspect would be a joy to read, but watching the series gives you the moving images and the words together. Remember “Poetry makes nothing happen”? Film makes light happen.

Anyway, love your work. Learn to do it mindfully and with respect, or find something more suitable. Accept that other people will stomp all over it and react with hostility and scorn when you try to educate them. Feel free to complain about it in the comments; I understand.

writing

Notes from the Field, New Year’s Resolution Edition

Updated on

Happy New Year!

New Year’s resolutions—I don’t bother with ’em, but if you do, and one of yours is to be a better writer in 2014, here are a few useful tips. I added some audiovisual aids because you’re probably nursing a hangover and will appreciate something to look at besides a box of text. You’re welcome.

fiction novel—This is a redundant term, and using it on a query will earn you a form rejection in record time. You might not even get the “Thank you for submitting” boilerplate, just an email with the words Fat Chance. A novel is a work of fiction; if a book-length manuscript is about real people or events, then it is nonfiction, unless you made part of it up, in which case you may call it historical fiction as long as all the people you write about are dead or you have a strong legal team.

ellipses—These can be tricky, and I see a lot of people overusing them in place of other punctuation. An ellipsis in academic writing is used to replace part of a citation that is not relevant or too long. If the excised part of the citation comes at the end of a sentence, use four dots: an ellipsis plus a period.

Example: “Hey, they aren’t half…bad.” (Statler and Waldorf, 2002).

In fiction or literary nonfiction, an ellipsis may be used sparingly to indicate a pause in dialogue or a trailing off at the end of a statement. If dialogue ends abruptly or is interrupted by another character, use an em dash. Like any other writing trick, overuse of ellipses results in diminished effect.

Bad example: “I think…it was the…old man…who killed me!”

Better examples:

Joe spoke haltingly, fighting for breath. “I think it was the old man who killed me!”

“In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, passed the… Anyone? Anyone?”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA?rel=0-A&w=320&h=240]

 

The Player: The old man thinks he’s in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: Good God. We’re out of our depths here.
The Player: No, no, no! He hasn’t got a daughter! The old man thinks he’s in love with his daughter.
Rosencrantz: The old man is?
The Player: Hamlet…in love…with the old man’s daughter…the old man…thinks.

(Skip to 2:06, or enjoy the full clip if you’ve got time.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk7V8f6E5po?rel=0-A&w=320&h=240]

since and while—These are words that indicate the passage of time. If you are using them to mean because, whereas, or although, stop.

Incorrect:
Since you asked, I’m packing up your stuff.
While that is a valid point, I disagree.

Correct:
I’ve been living here since 1993.
While you were sleeping, I kidnapped your goldfish.
Because you never kiss me goodnight any more, I’m moving out.
Although you make a mean cup of coffee, that’s not a strong enough basis for continuing our relationship.

chaise lounge—I know, I know; it started as a simple typo, but that’s no reason to let it fester in our language. Chaise longue means “long chair” in French. It rhymes with “fez wrong,” only you need to lengthen that o  and put a little Long Island on the ng. Lounge is what you do on the chaise longue, or possibly the room in which you display this article of furniture.

influencer—This word is very popular right now, and it’s making me crazy. Influence is both a noun and a verb. It means “flow into,” in the sense of a stream or small river joining a larger river, bringing its unique pH, native plants and animals, and sediments with it. An influence is an addition to someone or something that alters content, direction, or velocity. Influencer is a superfluous, unnecessary, and illogical formation, and you can tell all the thought leaders who are tossing it around that I said so.

Thanks for reading, and best wishes for prosperity and published work in 2014.

writing

Notes from the Field, November 2013 Emergency Intervention Edition

Updated on

OK, this is serious. Like this guy, I don’t have pet peeves, I have…other feelings, and this usage issue is a major cause of them.

horn vs. antler—These are two different body parts found on entirely different species. The terms are not interchangeable.

  • A horn is a permanent growth on the skull of an animal. The horns of cows, goats, and sheep are made of an inner core of bone with an outer casing of keratinized skin. Keratin is the stuff that composes hooves, nails, and hair. Rhino horns are also made of keratin. Horns occur on the male and female of the species.

cow

  • Antlers are annual growths made of bone that occur, with one exception, on male deer, moose, and similar species (cervids). Female reindeer are that exception. They grow in the spring, covered by a thick, velvety skin of blood vessels. The velvet dries up and falls off, and the buck uses his antlers to show off and score mates. Cooler weather rolls around, and the antlers fall off. Some people collect them and turn them into furniture or knife handles.

220px-Red_deer_stag_2009_denmark

Bottom line: antlers are shed; horns are for life. Deer do not have horns, unless they are very special deer that have formed a brass quartet, and even in that case, those things on their heads are still antlers. Are we clear? Can I look forward to never seeing another sentence about deer horns, please?

writing

Notes from the Field, October 2013 Edition

Updated on

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk?rel=0-A&w=320&h=240]

unique: This word means one thing, literally—it is an adjective meaning singular, that there is only one of its kind, anywhere, ever. As such, to add a qualifier to it, for example, very, or even worse, sort of, is logically absurd. A thing either is or isn’t unique. Most of the time it isn’t. Some words that really mean what you’re using unique for include:

  • rare
  • distinctive
  • innovative
  • novel
  • bizarre
  • idiosyncratic
  • particular

Use those instead.

conscious/conscience: I suspect that this is more often a misspelling than a usage error. Just in case, conscious is an adjective meaning aware. The noun form is consciousness, which is not the same as conscience. Conscience is a noun meaning your inner moral or ethical guide, the internal compass that directs (or should direct) your behavior. Consciousness and conscience both deal with awareness, but the latter specifically addresses your behavior. The former just means you’re awake. Do not let your conscious be your guide.

neither…nor: You can use nor in a couple of ways, but I’m seeing a combination of the two ways, which is sloppy and nonsensical.

  • Bad example: I didn’t want apples nor oranges for breakfast.
  • Good example: He drank neither beer nor wine, only whiskey. [Note: You can add a second nor in here for a three-item list.]
  • Good example: The meal was not served on time, nor was it prepared particularly well. [Note that this example can easily be reworded into the structure of the first good example, which is often preferred, but sometimes this second way is more emphatic.]

When in doubt, check a dictionary; you can’t always count on Inigo Montoya to tell you these things.

 

feminism writing

Yes, It Does Matter—Choose Your Words Wisely

Updated on

Here’s a term I hate right now: “mommy.” As in mommy cards, mommy porn, mommy aerobics. Two people I’m very fond of call me mommy and I’m not offended, but everybody who uses it as a dismissive and therefore degrading shorthand for “woman of childbearing age”—yeah, I’m talking to you.

Let’s focus on mommy porn because it’s making a ton of noise and money. Porn has been around forever. From naughty postcards to VHS to streaming video, porn has been a driving force in entertainment technology. If you enjoy it and have a clear understanding of the difference between the fantasy you’re consuming and the reality of actual interpersonal relationships, great! Knock yourself out. Its value as art or cultural barometer is entirely subjective and ultimately irrelevant. What is relevant is that 1) recently a subgenre of erotic fiction has been selling ridiculous amounts of books, and 2) journalists and critics have coined a term to reduce the genre and its consumers, to make them safer, less important, and sort of cute in an embarrassing way, like baby drool. What’s wrong with erotica? Or, if you’re put off by the literary implications, just call it porn. Or even women’s porn. Personally, I like the term “smut.”

In earlier times, when society ladies went to visit one another and found their desired hostess not at home, they left a card with the butler so the lady in question would know who had stopped by. Calling cards were elegant and let every woman know exactly where in the social hierarchy she fit. Mommy cards are like business cards that only contain personal contact information. Women hand them out at parks and toddler enrichment classes to organize “playdates” (another term that bugs the crap out of me). Are there daddy cards? No, dads simply text or call one another so they have a name and number saved on their phone, and then they go home and watch daddy porn, also known as porn.

Are you seeing the pattern? The set {mommy X} includes stuff that regular people don’t care about or need, like calling cards to micromanage their kids’ social lives, five-passenger vehicles, wussy fitness classes, high-waisted jeans, or books about sex with vampires. The set {regular people} is equal to the sets {useful members of society} and {people who like good stuff} and excludes {mommies}. Labeling erotic books and movies targeted to women as mommy porn is insulting both to mothers and people who aren’t mothers but enjoy that particular form of entertainment. It’s also likely to confuse the heck out of a certain type of fetish enthusiast. And, no, this isn’t intended (entirely) as a feminist screed but an example of how a word, even a loving one, can become a blunt instrument when used thoughtlessly. Think about your words, and write with courage and precision. The attention-grabbing choice isn’t always the most effective one.

science writing

Applied Poetry, Part One

Updated on

Here’s what I love about technical and scientific work: it brings with it a fantastic and varied vocabulary and creates new associations for common words. What makes writing fresh and exciting? A new voice, a new way of describing something we all can recognize. A new phrase made out of old words. Every discipline has its own specific lexicon, exotic and utilitarian at the same time.

Below is a brief sample of borrowed terms that are entertaining me at the moment. Want to play along? Start reading things outside of your usual choices. Pick up a magazine about astrophysics, knitting, veterinary medicine. See what you can find and steal for use elsewhere. If you find something great, add it in the comments.

Axiom of countable choice: This is “an axiom of set theory [that] states that any countable collection of non-empty sets must have a choice function. Spelled out, this means that if A is a function with domain N (where N denotes the set of natural numbers) and A(n) is a non-empty set for every n ∈ N, then there exists a function f with domain N such that f(n) ∈ A(n) for every n ∈ N.” Straight out of Wikipedia because I can’t explain it any better than that without screwing it up. One thing I can tell you is that it is not inductive, because countable choice is not the same as finite choice.

Chain of custody: This is a form that accompanies field samples on the way to a laboratory for testing. It provides a record to guarantee that the samples were not compromised. I love the idea of a metaphorical chain, a written tale of an item changing hands from creation to disposal. Imagine if every person had one.

Doctrine of signatures: Not a science term anymore, but this was cutting-edge medicine in the Middle Ages. First discussed by Dioscurides in Greece and Galen in Rome and later written about extensively by Paracelsus and Jakob Böhme, the doctrine advances the idea that living things will heal or affect parts of the human body that they resemble. For example, liverwort looks like a liver and is used to clean the blood. Earwigs were believed to make a fine remedy for earache. The idea is that of some divine pharmacist signing everything with its proper function for us, the alleged stewards of creation.

Shadow price of carbon: This reminds me of the Shadow Parliament or Shadow Ministers in the Westminster system of government, which sounds terribly sinister but is really just a form of checks and balances. If it makes you think of the Shadow Proclamation, well, I’m right there with you. The actual definition of the SPC is the long-term environmental cost of using or avoiding the use of a unit of carbon in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly everything has a shadow price: say, for example. you slip out of your office to grab a cup of coffee and miss a call from a client, who then offers a $40,000 job to someone else. The shadow price of coffee just became $40,002.