It Was A Dark And Stormy Night ....

Discussion in 'Education & Personal Growth' started by sokanasanah, Feb 28, 2017.

  1. kaniths

    kaniths IL Hall of Fame

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    on vocabulary, when I started out to work the first time for a chai tea samosa corporate, one wise man suggested I should stop trying too hard to impress and stick to 1000 most common used words in English for emails and reports, so I ll be heard by everyone intended, in the intended way too. Something that has helped me to this day, the very basic KISS rule. I had never paused though, until this thread was created, to think if my writing is terrible or bad but sure know I have to work on my subject object word order placement in sentences, because you always call me 'Yoda' for mixing up the same! :facepalm:
     
  2. sokanasanah

    sokanasanah IL Hall of Fame

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    In lingustics, languages are typed according to their subject-verb-object order. Different languages follow a different order. Sanskrit, Hindi and Tamil follow an SOV order (most common), while English is SVO. SOV + SVO = ~ 75% of all known languages.

    Jedi Master Yoda on the other hand, uses OSV. An unusual way of speaking, Yoda has.
    More on Yoda linguistics here!

    Often people tend to reflexively fall back on the word order of their mother tongue or their strongest language. Surrounded as they are by so many SOV languages, Indians are susceptible to this when switching to English!:lol:
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2017
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  3. sokanasanah

    sokanasanah IL Hall of Fame

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    Some housekeeping notes in random order:

    (1) There are two threads on English, apart from this one, that I would like to see thrive. One is of course "English Matters", a lively thread with a long history and enthusiastic, if sporadic, participation. Another is a more recent thread quoting favorite passages, one that I am unable to locate at the moment:oops:. I do not want this writing thread to displace them, so let's try and focus on 'writing' here, no matter how loosely defined. No hard and fast rules, not least because I would be too lazy and lax an enforcer. If you are sure that you're making a post about writing, post here. When in doubt, post on any of these threads and cross-post a link on the other. That should suffice I think, to save us from brood parasitism - wouldn't want to be the cuckoo (in more ways than one?) that pushes out eggs from another nest to insinuate its own.

    (2) The inception of this thread lies in a desire to improve one's writing, but then a mere collection of do's and don'ts would be rather boring. Writing as craft is not really separable from reading, followed by musings about what works, why or what doesn't and why not. So we'll simply agree that this thread will contain words about words about words organized as a 'series of explorations from a secure base'* (i.e. writing); we can step out as much as we wish, only to hew back home periodically, to reflect on how one might go about improving one's writing.

    More later.
    If you wish to add to this in the meantime, just carry on with the numbering.
    :beer-toast1:

    * Borrowed with thanks from Bowlby, Sir John.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2017
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  4. Viswamitra

    Viswamitra IL Hall of Fame

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    Dear Dr. S:

    I have two specific questions:

    Question 1

    I have learned two specific quotes earlier in my life:

    "Communication is to express and not to impress" - Is that true and if so why? - In fact, in my view, the writing style, vocabulary and clarity makes one feel mesmerized.

    "Communication has to be short enough to attract attention but long enough to cover the subject" - When can we consider ourselves as regurgitating?

    Question 2

    Can variations in use of words convey different meanings?

    When I worked for a software company, my boss used to be very expressive in his sentences:

    If he likes me to do something he writes, "I would appreciate if you can accomplish this."

    If he wants me to do something definitely, "I expect you to do this"

    Viswa
     
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  5. sokanasanah

    sokanasanah IL Hall of Fame

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    Continuing with the housekeeping notes from post #13 above:

    (3) This thread would benefit if, when posting links to reading material or other resources, we agree to do it thoughtfully, by adding a few lines about why you like that particular book, website, article - whatever - how it helped you and why it might be useful to others. On a lazy day it's OK to simply say "Great book - you must read this!". I would rather have that link than not, but avoid this as much as you can. Reflections on your own private, caffeine-fueled, 'night before the deadline' struggles with language and writing, and how you overcame them, will make this thread livelier and more interesting.
     
  6. sokanasanah

    sokanasanah IL Hall of Fame

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    Housekeeping notes, continued from post #15:

    (4) This is a thread about improving writing. The biggest danger that I see in this attempt is self-consciousness, about bad writing on a good writing thread. Immeadiately after Lynn Truss published her very successful book, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", on punctuation, criticism of her own lapses appeared. Here's the opening salvo from an essay by Louis Menand in the New Yorker:

    "The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax."

    Ouch!


    It's a bit like those old gunslingers. When your reputation as "the fastest gun in the West" precedes you, there's always some young aspirant lurking around the corner, keen to demonstrate that he is faster on the draw.

    Whhen Menand asks "Why would a person who is not just vague about the rules but disinclined to follow them bother to produce a guide to punctuation?", hemight well be talking about me/us and this thread. The saving is, well, hey this is not a book! The questions remains - when I am not confident of my own writing, who am I to start a writing thread?

    My own lapses bother me. I am self conscious even as I write this - very! But (hmmm, start a sentence with 'but' - didn't my grammar teacher have something to say about that in 'composition' class?). I hope we can all agree that such self-consciousness could be paralyzing. As I mentioned earlier, outside of the technical writing at work, I almost never write. Apart from the e-mails and the posts here, the last sustained bout of non-required writing I remember is my teenage diary, faithfully maintained between the ages of ten and eighteen, later destroyed and returned to the store of atoms in the universe. This thread is an attempt in "what the hell, why not?". I have never thought systematically about writing. Perhaps this will be a good beginning.

    As for posting here, I say let's not worry too much - feel the fear and do it anyway. Write as well as you can. My yoga teacher might have the right motto for this thread (what is it with these yoga metaphors?! :lol:):

    "Start wherever you are. Then, with each breath, try to get a little deeper into the twist. You should feel no pain. If it hurts, stop."

    And try again later. :beer-toast1:
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2017
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  7. Srama

    Srama Finest Post Winner

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    If I apologize, the whole point you are trying to might become moot (you know hesitation about writing and all that and I know you are talking about 'writing' and not mere 'responding'. Still!) but reading this,
    I had to butt in and say that for a moment I questioned my own teaching style, yoga teaching I mean! I never catch myself telling the students "You should feel no pain". I do ask them to stop if it hurts to but if it is good pain....bliss :) And your Yoga teacher is right on - start wherever you are and then with each breath go deeper. Cannot find a better analogy :)

    Interesting thread. Thank you for starting the thread. I have to confess, I miss Ansuya and English Matters terribly and intensely. Just her presence helped me with my own English so much. But it is what it is!
     
  8. sokanasanah

    sokanasanah IL Hall of Fame

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    Responses are encouraged!
    Well, that may simply hinge on one's definition of pain and the ability to recognize it when a threshold is crossed. Sub-threshold pain may be interpreted as no pain. It's just a good stretch - "you should feel it in your hamstrings!". 'Blissful pain' may be the trembling shivers in the core during your Tolasana (or Utpluthih), but pain in your elbow might be of the hostile variety, leading to epicondylitis!:lol:
     
    Last edited: Mar 5, 2017
  9. sokanasanah

    sokanasanah IL Hall of Fame

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    This quote is usually attributed to Winston Churchill: "'A good speech should be like a woman's skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest." He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, so he may know a thing or two about writing. Not to mention those powerful war speeches that we all know.
    "Regurgitating" in what sense? Bringing forth ideas chewed over by someone else or simply slow, long winded cud chewing?
     
  10. sokanasanah

    sokanasanah IL Hall of Fame

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    This goes almost without saying. A sensitivity to the different shades of meaning of words that seem to be synonyms, is essential both for good reading and for writing.

    One of my favorite passages from Christopher Hitchens' book Hitch-22 is about literary and word games that he and his group of friends (including Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan) used to play. One such game involved abortive book titles. Here is a quote, below, from the Guardian about these literary might have beens! See what you think.

    The quicksilver nature of literary success makes it all too tempting to think about what might have been. In his memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens recounts a quirky version of this bookish fantasy which he devised with Salman Rushdie.

    Salman began to evolve and improvise a new word game, this time of book titles that had almost but not quite made it to acceptance by publishers: The Big Gatsby, A Farewell to Weapons, For Whom the Bell Rings, Good Expectations, Mr Zhivago, Two Days in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch …

    It was obviously a game played with much affection – Rushdie describes the game in his own memoir, Joseph Anton, adding Mademoiselle Bovary, The Story of the Forsytes, Cab Driver, Love in the Time of Influenza, Raspberry Finn, and Toby-Dick (AKA Moby-Cock).

    But is there any intrinsic difference between these titles and the ones inscribed in the literary canon? Would Faber & Faber have published My Beautiful Laundromat? Would Lemuel's Travels have been universally read from the cabinet council to the nursery? Would you care that much if your wife or your servants read Lady Slattery's Lover? Or is it all just a question of 20/20 hindsight?


    And here is Hitchens himself, in his sonorous voice, talking about this.

    More later.
     
    Last edited: Mar 6, 2017
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