So?

MickH said:
Ahoy Michael,

Stephen Fry's series has been a real joy. Sadly I missed today's installment so will have to resort to iPlayer.

There are three sources for information that I completely rely on and trust, one need look nowhere else:

Wikipedia
Stephen Fry on "QI"
and Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson has written two very interesting books on the English language "Mother Tongue" which concerns itself with English and its roots, and "Made in America" which covers the use of English by the colonials. I was very surprised at how many expressions and idioms that I would have thought were originally English turn out to be "Americanisms".

Cheers.
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Really. I have missed the early shows.I have The Adventure of English by Melvyn Bragg.
Oh ,according to the broadcast "what cheer" was still being used in the north east apparently until the 1950s. Any geordies here ?
Dickens used hello both in it`s old sense ,as an exclamation, but also in it`s new sense as the latest street language in Christmas Carol. According to Fry.
What this all has to do with RF s I don`t know but interesting never the less.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Dear John,

No.

I may be arrogant, but I'm not THAT arrogant.

A style book creates the illusion among the semi-literate that they aren't too bad, and cripples the literate.

Cheers,

R.
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I was thinking a style book should be the one that tells you the basic rules for reportage-- just as a beginning photographic manual, and hopefully the ones that need it read it, and the ones that do not, do not.

About the level of a pocket dictionary, I believe the only ones I saw were about 20 pages. A style book for literature would be an oxymoron.

Just as in photography, a particular piece of equipment or a book will not make an artist, but allows you to begin, it is up to you to finish.

The level of reporting/writing today is so abysmal the bar seems quite low, less than that of grade school students, so any help might be better than none.

When I was working at a newspaper, many writers, photographers and editors had begun by answering phones and sharpening pencils. The last photographer who began as an office boy, with a--just out-- Nikon F and one lens put in to his hands, just retired, as the head photographer.

When I left, a few years later, all new hires were university graduates, but the level of writing had not changed. Were it so today. The City Editor of 35 years had left, and it took a dozen or more tries to replace him.

I suppose a Berkeley or Northwestern Journalism grad should be able to fit verb and noun, but I just do not see many good ones in practice, and newspapers are declining rapidly. Perhaps the literate are not applying?

Not enough ads to stick between editorial copy, and vice versa?


Regards, John
 
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JohnTF said:
When I was working at a newspaper, many writers, photographers and editors had begun by answering phones and sharpening pencils. The last photographer who began as an office boy, with a, just out, Nikon F put in to his hands, just retired, as the head photographer.

When I left, a few years later, all new hires were university graduates, but the level of writing had not changed. Were it so today. The City Editor of 35 years had left, and it took a dozen or more tries to replace him.
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Dear John,

Well, yes.

Cheers,

R.
 
I've been publishing novels in the US and Britain for twenty years or so, and in that time things have changed a bit -- when I first started, the American version (I write in American) would say "hood" and trunk" and the British version would be changed to bonnet and boot; and there were others.

No more. The Americanisms are now accepted and are apparently well-known to Brits. In American, we used to say, "hung up," the telephone, but since there's nothing to hang the receiver on anymore, I find the British, "rang off" is becoming common and I've used it in my American versions.

The British "bloody" is also heard in the US, with a correct usage. The British word "twat" has the same gynecological meaning as the American, but the British word also includes the meanings of "twit" or "prat," and I've seen it used in the Guardian. That would never be done in the US, where the meaning has remained strictly and vulgarly gynecological.

The word "so" is an oral punctuation mark, somewhat like the upside-down question-mark in Spanish, used to signal a change that you can't otherwise see (hear) coming. It's nothing like the Canadian 'eh,' which is used used when seeking agreement or acknowledgment. (Nice fish, eh? Colder 'n a well-digger's ass, eh?) When Canadians (in Northwest Ontario, anyway) want to signal a change of subject, or to introduce one, they do it the same way as Americans -- "Hey, so, well, anyway, dude, like, you know..."

One of my pet peeves is when English nazis start correcting internet exchanges based on misspellings or occasional awkwardness; we're not writing essays, we're actually doing something like a speech function, but on a keyboard. I was very pleased to see that when one of the non-native-English speakers used the word "censor" to mean "sensor," nobody bothered to correct him, although it did result in some mildly funny plays on words. But there was no question what he meant, and being a prig about it wasn't going to help; and, if he's interested, sooner or later he'll figure it out.

Every successful novelist I know will occasionally make a there-they're-their error, or a to-two-too error, because at the novel level, you're not thinking so much about spelling as about the sound the story makes in your mind; your fingers spell the sound. And sometimes, the fingers get it wrong, the dumb *******s (or, as Quentin Tarantino would say, "basterds.")

JC
 
A few months ago the Miami Herald had a color illustration across the entire width of the top of the first page of an inside section of the paper. With yellow hand drawn lettering against a mostly red part of the drawing was the title of the piece: FUKU.

Just exactly how are you supposed to pronounce that?
 
Though I do not have anything to contribute to the discussion of the topic, I must say that it is very fascinating. I spent my entire lunch break reading this thread! 🙂
 
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