Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2005 21:49:51 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Different subject now, you have been warned! [was: Re: [WSFA] Re: Has anyone read any good books lately?]
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 06:57 PM 3/28/05 -0500, Ted White wrote:
>From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
>> At 12:33 PM 3/28/05 -0500, Ted White wrote:

>> >As I have pointed out to countless people, countless times, "it's" means
>> >"it is" and nothing else, ever.
>>
>> Are you suggesting that I didn't know that already or something?  I
>thought my message pretty clearly indicated that I knew that?
>
>And I was agreeing with you?

Ah.  Ok.  I thought you were instructing me.

>the most common (but *the* most common error is the misplacement of
>commas).

Do you mean to other parts of the sentence or to the wrong side of quote
marks, or just having them where they don't belong at all according to the
writing style books?  When writing e-mail I tend to put them where there
would be a slight pause in speaking since this stuff is all "dialog" to me
(though without the other formatting that would go with that in fiction).

There was a newsgroup I used to read, alt.Calahans I think it was, where
the preferred style was to write your posts in third person and story
format.  It was a lot of fun.  Folks would include description of
themselves, the bar (or, as they called it, The Place) and various actions
being taken along with whatever they were actually saying.  Folks had
"personas" that they would post from (generally not human, sometimes not
even living), but if they wanted to say something as themselves they'd have
the character step into the "Light of Reality"...which was a lamp in The
Place that revealed the real person rather than the persona.  You could add
features to The Place by including them in your narrative, and if others
picked up on it and used it too, it was officially a new part of The Place.
 That's how the "Light of Reality" got there, and it also got a
conversation pit, a hot tub, and some other features that way.  "Lurkers"
were referred to as "Rafter Sitters" there.

Might be fun to try that in a thread here, eh?  We could start off with the
Gillilands' basement and go from there as needed.  Have a "virtual
clubhouse" to meet in between meetings!  Maybe identify the thread with the
subject, "[The Virtual Clubhouse]"?  Or just "[VC:]" at the beginning once
folks are used to it.  That would let folks filter on it if they found it
annoying...or particularly interesting.

>People have a problem with possessives, which they think should
>have an embedded aprostrophe.

Yeah, probably because for names you do use one when specifying possession.
 "Steve's book" for instance.

The fun part comes with "collective nouns", like organization names (not
like "a murder of crows").  Is it "IBM is..." or "IBM are..."?  That
depends on whether you are in the USA or in the UK/New
Zealand/Australia/most other English-speaking countries.

>Some of us have learned the rules well enough not to be swayed by internet
>subliteracy.   Fifty million Frenchmen *can* be wrong.

Fifty million Frenchmen usually *are* wrong, but knowing the rules and
having my alarm go off at the sight of an error are two different things.
I'm not confused by this stuff, even after a couple of decades of exposure
to frequent errors...it just doesn't jump out at me as much anymore, and I
find myself typing them wrong without noticing while I'm doing it.  I still
often catch it when I read it a day later (or even 5 minutes later), but
before the 'net I didn't type it wrong to start with.

>(And, Madeleine, "there's 'a rat' in 'separate'.")

Good!  Maybe I can remember that one now...thanks!

-- Mike B.
--
Do not use hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it effectively.