Sticks and Stones

There is a Time and a Place for Bad Language

2015-04-02T20:29:55.311000Z

In all of the work that I do I have discovered that there are countless articles published on the Internet where sloppy language is used to express ideas, trouble is we seem to be accepting its use almost universally.

Components of Writing

When we describe anything we do so in one of two way, either by narration or by speech, how we use each component matters greatly. Some years age in a TV interview one writer commented on how he wrote and told the audience we was writing in a new style for a new age and cited that his audience (primarily in their teens and early twenties) wanted this. A while later I found a copy of one of his books in our local book-store and took some time to read, I have to say I was not impressed, but this was largely because it was unclear what was narration and what was speech.

It is permissible to use words like "woz" and "gonna" within speech marks because they show the personal traits of the character within a story but to use them unquoted in the narrative element of the story, in my humble opinion, is not an element of style it is an element of poor understanding.

In thinking about this I asked myself the question, "Are you being so terribly old-fashioned?" My considered response is a categoric "No!"

Just because we live in a modern world does not mean we get rid of the basics. Yet when it comes to poetry there are different rules, where it is permissible to include slang in order to make the poem more topical, there is a need provide a feeling within a few words, which simply does not exist with other forms of writing.

Prose Style

The lady pictured here has style, you can see it by the way that she holds herself, so do the words that we use within any piece of writing.

My reasoned thinking is that while prose style has an almost infinite range of possibilities that offer the writer so many ways in which they can use words to describe any situation, the fact that we have more than a million words in the English Language also means that any concept can be described by a multitude of different approaches, and we can substitute one word for another with consummate ease, and we would be able to modify the style according to the conditions described in the story. Select certain words and they can be more action focused, select other words and they give an element of calmness and it is all about word usage and how we construct sentences specific to the situation at hand.

You may choose to use simple words when talking about a simple dwelling, yet select more refined propositions when describing the country mansion, the words we choose are somewhat akin to the differences of tone used when speaking to another person. The choice of words distinguishes in the same way that tone does and readers respond appropriately

"I am always will learn!"

Or are you? I was looking at the words on a writer from the home of our language, England, a writer who has frequently published material on a pay-for-content website over the past 4 years, she made a comment "I'll never get tired of say how important editing is" it is a pity she failed to edit her comment before posting it, using a word in the wrong context in given her location almost marks the writer out as illiterate (the word is saying, not say) and in the same comment there were a few other indications that she has not improved her use of language all the time she has been writing. This is sloppy writing at its worst.

Anyone can make a mistake, but sloppy writing is as bad as putting localised slang into the narrative element of your writing.

The Time for Bad Language

Language is nothing but expressive and people use all types of mannerisms to voice their feelings and there are many ways that people speak, however when publishing the rule is that such expressions, slang, outbursts, etc. are enclosed in speech marks, the only other place such language is used relates to the words thought by the character, which are not in speech marks but have to be made clear that they are thoughts, by using the words ...she thought, or perhaps using italics to show thoughts throughout the piece.

Recently published by Peter Giblett...

Better to have a Busy Mind, than a Dull One

2015-03-25T17:16:55.176000Z

How busy is your mind? It has long been suggested that great people start by having a busy mind. Part of the challenge of a busy mind is sifting through the ideas that keep popping up.

The Effect of the Busy Mind

It is always important to have a busy mind. When you don't have this you mind will start to wander, and often that is to places it should not go (places like the many problems that you have going on in your life). It is good to stop those problems from bothering you, as they tend to take you to dark places that you should not be visiting.

If the mind does not have time to ponder those dark issues it will more productive and we produce better results, thinking through the problems and challenges that you are working on. This is almost a daily challenge. Ever woken up at the small hours in the morning, haunted by those dark problems, then chances are you did not plant the seed of an idea for your mind to work through before you went into your sleep cycle.

I have had many sleepless nights (particularly during my troubled times) and when I analyse what happened it was certainly a case of allowing my fears to stand in the way of the new possibilities. We all make this mistake from time to time, yet the important thing is not to have it stand in your way, learn from last nights restlessness and tell yourself either positive thoughts or things you wish to achieve when you go to bed.

You will Still have Problems

Sure the problem will still be there in the morning - or will it? Truth is there are times when problems actually go away when left to simmer for a while. You (or perhaps someone else) realise that things were not quite as bad as you first imagined them to be. Truth is we have a habit of inflating the importance or urgency of problems, beyond all reason.

Why do we do that? Obviously things like bills still need to get paid, and the chances are you still need to resolve that problem at work but really it is a good idea to question the relative importance of everything we face. That bill does not have to be paid till next week, We do not know the importance of that work problem - so ask, do not assume it must be done immediately (which most of us do).

The point is we have to put the problems into some kind of perspective and maybe you have to realise that there are some you can do nothing at all about and some that really are someone else's problem and should be avoided at all costs.

Get Busy Again!

What do you wish to achieve? This is a great question because it has the capability of making you think about the positive things you have going on in your life. We all have a tendency to get bogged down in out problems when we should spend more time thinking about the positives in out life.

Other Recent Publications:

The Challenge of Creative Writing when you have Deadlines to Meet

2015-03-05T23:42:05.832000Z

I love to spend time using my creativity to write, yet of course being creative has to take second place when there are paying projects sitting on the desk awaiting completion. One this week required much research and reading time and meant that I was unable to let my creative juices flow (or so I thought).

Deadlines

Having lived with deadlines for the majority of my life I know that getting the problem resolved on time is vital, yet I have always preferred the deadlines that I have set rather than those set by others, yet both are clearly important because without meeting the deadline you do not get paid. The worst thing about deadlines is when problems occur that are outside of your control - on this occasion my challenge was an optical mouse that stopped working mid way through, well all I can say is that thank goodness laptops and the mouse-pads they have built into them (they may be tougher to use but at least they work).

Business is all about deadlines and to ignore them means that you are going to be poor for a long time because no-one will want to work with you. I have always thought it best to beat deadline dates and do so by as many days as possible, the importance of this is generally shown by the fact that you get repeat work when you deliver to schedule.

Creativeness

In writing creativeness has many possibilities, and it is in my view when finalising your work that you have an opportunity to apply the "spit and polish" and make your work really shine. Many people reason that they have edited their piece quite a few times already and that last inspection is not necessary, yet in my experience that last inspection reveals both opportunities to make the work shine and reveals a few little fixes that need to be made (and when you are writing for the web this is the time you also need to think specifically about the impact of SEO), indeed this can be a good creative time as you have to make changes fit the limited space available.

Arguably there is more pure enjoyment from something you have taken and crafted from scratch using your own ideas and needs, however just because someone else provides the writing topic does not mean that you cannot be just as creative, albeit fitting within their specific guidelines.

The report I just created had to analyse the findings of several other peoples work and identify the lessons that needed to be learned on behalf of my clients. I spent some time simply analysing these other reports, highlighting issues, and throwing quotes into Evernote in order to put together my rough notes, having done this it was clear there were some recurring themes and by re-organizing my notes the focus of my analysis started to become clear - a clarity I wished was present when I first started reading. I guess that is the point - the possibility of being creative even using other people's thoughts. Now it is complete and has been sent away, there is time to be creative on my own behalf (and replace that faulty pointing device).

Waiting for that Email to Arrive

2015-03-05T23:42:05.642000Z

There are occasions when we seem to wait forever for someone else to do something, and I am sure there are times when they are waiting for us. Truth is we all have our own priorities and needs and one man's emergency is another's low priority task, it is just as if both are not on the same page.

Whether its you or I, we often need that email in order to take the next step in the things we are working on. Forty years ago we would have been waiting for that letter, but such is the change in society that today things are done more by email rather than letter, but the needs that are met are probably the same, it is just performed at a faster pace. For some people the email and its delivery mechanism (e.g. the Blackberry or smart-phone) means they are available between waking up and going to sleep to respond to problems, panics etc., and frequently also make themselves available when they should be resting. This has its positive and negative points, most business execs have the Blackberry with them 24*7*365 and I used to be one of those and spent too much time responding to issues late at night and today question the wisdom of this need for continuous connectivity in order for business to succeed.

Yet email is today a very important part of everyone's lives and certainly some people are addicted to it, yet it has also become a source of bad grammar and in part that is because of availability in smart-phones. One former colleague used to excuse his errors on his big thumbs (well it may have been true because the majority of his errors were when using the Blackberry) and there is an element of truth here because of the limited size of the keyboard, yet in truth there are plenty of people that regularly send emails containing errors, even when they use normal keyboards.

When writing an email I do remember my grandmother telling me as a child, the letter I wrote her contained several errors in it, then she was German-born and as is certainly true Germans are well known to be sticklers for correct use of grammar, but then we would have never been allowed to send a letter using the typewriter and would have been encouraged to use our imagination to tell her something we were doing and show a little pride in our handwriting. In truth its all too easy to allow ourselves to be sloppy when writing emails, perhaps because it is done in haste or maybe there is a feeling that it to be a less formal means of communication, which means people check it less than they ever did when writing letters (especially those notes written to close friends and family).

In the recent past I have done a lot of thinking about the impact of our words and the need for good and precise use of this language. There is every reason we should take as much care with the language we use in emails as for that we use when facing a job interview because we should put our best foot forward whenever we write for other people's consumption, whether they are close friends or people we have never met.

Of course we will make mistakes, but they should be rare rather than what we normally expect with email - it is time to stop being sloppy. It is best to take a little time and get the words and sentences right.

Image Credits

The images used for this material were obtained from:

Email in envelope by MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 by Geek.com

About Peter Giblett

Peter, a former business executive, has written on many websites about a variety of subjects especially about writing and the use of the English language. One challenge we must all face is about improvement and that is the reason behind the creation of this Blog - to challenge everyone with their use of the English language through its everyday usage.

Colourful Writing in more ways than One!

2015-03-05T23:42:11.558000Z

It is true that a good writer will provide colour through the words, phrases and sentences they create, but could the use of colours to emphasise moods and to distinguish the dialogue when two characters are taking part in a long conversation.

Monochrome

We no longer live in the age of the typewriter which could type text in a maximum of two colours, black and red (superior models only) and as such there is no reason why a writer cannot make use of colours within the body of electronic documents, it is perhaps historical conventions that leaves writers limiting themselves to the limits of black, we can bolden it, underline it, or even italicise it and perhaps use block capitals.

Truth is there is so much more we could do by breaking free of the confines of our automatic choice, black. Through colour it is possible to show moods and emotions, enhance how dialogue is shown, colour adds so many visual clues which can certainly enhance the value of the writing, yet colour is so much more that just the images (which in and of themselves are important).

Moods and emotions

With a wide range of colours available it may be possible to portray emotions more clearly through the use of colours, the classic ones being red for anger or rage and green with envy but these may be problematic for some who suffer colour blindness who see both red and green as the same shade. It was easy to select these colours because they are dictated by common satings, but other settings may be entirely personal, for example I associate the colour purple with pain, yet a friend once described pain as orange, so it is clear that there are no common conventions for the use of colour in order to show moods, emotions and other feelings through the use of written text.

My father once described the concept of love as sky-blue pink, by which I consider as a way to describe a confusing concept (e.g. and infusion of opposites because of the colours normally associated with baby boys and girls) rather than specific use of colour for the concept, in other words he was saying that describing love is complex and full of contradictions.

There are also some practical problems with colour, for example yellow on a white background is almost unreadable, but this colour works well on a black background, so selections must be appropriate for both the page and the mood being described.

In black text we tend to make a statement of anger as one that is both UPPER CASE AND BOLD (which is one of the reasons why you may have been told that it is generally considered rude to send emails in upper case) and certainly redness could enhance the power of such a statement, with BOLD RED UPPER CASE being the extreme of anger.

The only other colour convention to note is the use of blue underlining to indicate that a hyper-link is being used and this is very important from the perspective on on-line material.

Colourful Speech

There can be great animosity or great love between two characters, and a lot of the essence of any story is about the colour of the speech used. Of course in part this can mean the expletives used but also relates to the interactions between one person and another, to highlight hidden agendas and detail the thoughts, hopes and dreams of the main players.

We should perhaps consider using colours is in a dialogue. This is for use when there is discussion between Ben and Mary while the friends are travelling together down the long and winding roads. If Ben's words were one colour, say purple, while Mary's words were highlighted in another colour, for example orange, then it would be easier to see who said which words without having to resort to adding "he said" or "she said" to segments of the speech.

There are certainly limits here because it would be very expensive to print physical books in colour, but this could certainly be possible when producing e-books to encompass speaker colours. The default, black, is there to guide readers across the story, is the colour of narrative elements of a story at normal times.

Recent Stories

The Challenge of Spell Checkers

2015-03-05T23:42:05.654000Z

We have come accustomed to it when we write, the red squiggly line that says you had one of those mental moments and spelt it wrong, it is just like the teacher back in school days getting her red pencil out to highlight your errors.

There we have it, problem number one, most spell checking software consider the past tense of spell to be spelled and there is a simple reason for this, they are based on American versions of the dictionary, however in Britain many regional dialects use spelt, but to Americans this is a type of wheat, grown in Europe, so an American uses the word spelled.

As an Englishman living in Canada, during my lifetime I have worked with people from almost every land that speaks the English language, generally I continue to write with my home version of this language rather than adopting a Canadian (or even American) variant. This means choosing to use words like colour, with the "U" included in them, and use "realise" rather than "realize". I am often the first to notice when the spelling checker is wrong and usually reach for my dictionary (and seem to have 3 within arms reach) to confirm this fact, this was how I discovered there to be many problems with spelling checkers, not to mention the fact that there are more than a million words in the English language today and new words are added to the dictionary every day.

Another writer, Marilyn Davies, has written about problems with spelling check software also so I am not alone in talking about this. Many writers turn off spell checking for all applications, which I do not because they are useful in highlighting when I have made a typo and even-though my typing skills are reasonable I do occasionally slip.

Yet one further limitation of spell checking is when you misspell something, yet the error is actually still a correctly spelt word, like using "net" when you intended to use "not", the problem with this type of error is that they are almost impossible to spot because your mind will almost always trick you into thinking that the right word is being used on the page. Believe it or not this is where temporary blindness has assisted me because those dark days caused me to install software that reads text to me and today it is rare for me not to post without having the item read back to me as a part of my quality control routine, which most often finds these errors.

Some problems with spell checkers include:

Not good with place names, has some knowledge of American places, but others are often problematic
Works poorly with proper names
Technical terms have to be added to a custom dictionary
Does not find misused, but correctly spelt, words
Does not detect the improper use of homonyms
Flags words as an error yet they are correct (and the replacement provides an identical spelling)
It doesn't offer useful suggestions

Nine times out of ten when I am unsure of the spelling I will either Google the attempted spelling or look it up in the dictionary. In all fairness when you know a word but are not sure about the order of the second or third letter then a dictionary search is much more complex, but Google can often find the word you intended.

About the Author

Peter Giblett has spent the majority of his life in business, he has been writing on-line since 2008, has produced web content for many web sites, is a writer and moderator for Wikinut, and writes occasional guest pages on 2 Drops of Ink. Sticks and Stones is intended to be a new source of inspiration for those looking to improve their English.

Image Credits

Red Pencil By Green Street - Royalty free images owned by the author.
Forest Light by Peter Giblett.

The Thinker: Holding the key to the Real Answer?

2015-03-05T23:42:06.019000Z

How much do you think about any problem you face? Many people instantly rush into solution mode when they should spend a little time thinking about the problem and the impact of each potential solution available. With our fast-paced society it is easy not to think things through, this is not a matter of philosophy but does require some understanding.

Understanding Any Problem

People have a tendency to be reactive and do things based on spur of the moment decisions. Trouble is we often act without understanding the problem at hand. Rarely do we take time to understand the root cause of any problem; we fail to take time to think things through.

If you have not given it enough thought then the chances are that you will not be using the right solution, its rather like taking a headache pill when you are suffering a headache - you are not looking for the root cause of the headache which could indicate a medical condition. Too frequently we seek the quick answer when more analysis is actually needed. The problem with the quick fix is that it treats the symptoms rather than finding the real problem, Most of the time this isn't a issue, but there are times when it clearly is.

Do I really understand the problem I face? This should always be a question we should ask.

Understanding Requires Analysis

Have you analysed it deeply enough? This is frequently where solutions go wrong. People love to jump in and start to tinker, yet it may not be the best approach.

I was looking at one such problem many years ago as a business consultant. All the client's staff 'knew' what to do to fix the problem, trouble was they were fixing the problem every week and wasting time in doing so. They did not think about looking for the root cause, the problem in the computer program, then resolve it - the net result was this wasted time continued for many years.

We were looking at changing some of the business processes when we stumbled on this almost by chance, even after we had a programmer change the code to cure the system problem employees still spent time double checking, showing the extent of the problem and how the fix was in-ground into people's minds, they had long since stopped trusting the computer. It also shows that lots of time is wasted by so many people, when the right person should be called immediately.

In order to solve any problem we should perform a full analysis before attempting to change it.

Understanding Requires Thought

Truth is we tend to do too many things without thinking through the consequences of the actions taken. Analysis and thinking a problem through are the twin towers to any problem solving approach. This is something we should make a more conscious effort with for all problems that we face.

If we do not know the fullest extent of the problem then it is essential we listen to those who are impacted on a daily basis, they often know best.

Prior posts on Sticks & Stones

About Peter B. Giblett

Peter Giblett is a business consultant who has a passion for writing, published in a number of locations including 2 Drops of ink and Wikinut as well as a number of client websites. He is currently looking for new commissions to write for clients and can be reached at peter@giblett.com.