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writers, all writers face the hazards of dishonest diction--language that is abused
to be indirect, unaccountable, and yet effective. Here are some ways to avoid
bastardizing our great language. You will even catch me at it, so don't feel badly if
you, too, have committed a linguistic crime or two.
One Freelance Writer's Peeves, Pets, and Playfulness
of tmi, too much information, I wanted to create something special
for writers to do, share, create, experience...online.
Check out the Tropes of the Month that are available
now--finally--and those we have to look forward to:
| January |
metaphor |
synaesthesia |
July |
| February |
allegoria |
hyperbole & circumlocution |
August |
| March |
allusion |
synecdoche & metonymy |
September |
| April |
personification |
aposiopesis |
October |
| May |
chiasmus |
oxymoron |
November |
| June |
irony |
epithet |
December |
Get an Editor, or Get a Different Day Job?
As a competing web content writer, I respect others' landing
the gig. But I also cringe at the quality, at what writing these
competitors get away with. Argggh. This is what I found the
other day, on a job board calling for freelance writers, a
passage I have left exactly as it appeared:
hi there,
I just looking for experiance as an editor. I need writers who are looking
to write for an online fictional newspaper based on real events. It'll look
good on you CV if you got experiance as online journalist and of course
you get free editing by yours truly. If your good enough you'll also get
put on the website. Its a non-profit hoobby website called the XXX times.
so email me if you want a brief. But hurry though I want the first edition
online by midnight sunday. Halloween.
How many editor errors did you find? Does expressing
disappointment and disdain about this un-proofed copy make
you and me grammar and spelling fascists? Does that make
us prejudiced against writers whose first language is not
English? No, but if we hired a chauffeur, would we accept the
company sending over a blind man? Well, we don't do well
with editors who tell us, "if your good enough...," either. Tsk.
I am just cryin' in my unemployment soup.
It makes sense, then, that to get business you need to show
quality work: spell-check...manually, for example. Or take up
housecleaning or something.
than words that to be kind must lie.
~ Aeschylus
1. Cut out the Clichés (from Fr., clicher,
"stereotypes")
a. Thick as a brick;
b. thin as a dime;
c. red as a beet
can be modified to more original similes. I worked with a guy
who used to order his tuna sandwiches with only a thin layer of
tuna, "as thin as a bee's wing," he'd say.
The trick to keeping language tight, honest, and fresh
is to keep the clichés away. One way to do this is to only use
clichés you know the origin of (and thereby know the proper
use of).
For instance, did you know that "rule of thumb" comes from an
old English rule that said a man must not beat his wife with any
instrument thicker than his thumb? Guess we won't be using
that cliché again.
2. Say Eeeuw to Euphemisms ("good sounds")
a. friendly fire
b. sweep and clear
c. restroom
are all nice ways to speak of not so nice actions or things.
Think, for example, of all of the variations of "draining the
lizard," "paying the water bill," and "seeing a man about a
horse." Sure, they are fun and funny in friendly circles, but in
expository writing or ad and web copy are actually phrases that
are used to "pull the wool over unsuspecting readers' eyes."
3. Re-write the Redundancy,Absolutely
Unnecessary Repetition.
Leave the repetition to effective description and poetry.
The one that still gets me is this one:
a. textbook (a book is a text and a text--in this case--is a book).
Others include
b. VIN number (the word, "number", is represented by the 'N').
c. three a.m. in the morning
d. In my mind, I think that the election was rigged. (We don't
need to tell people we think with our minds any more than we
should describe feeling we have inside--unless writing a great
song, of course)
Which one makes you nuts?
One more is from bushcalendar.com, whose people quote
George Bush:
e. "The education issue ought to be discussed about."
4. Stay Away from the What the? Language
manipulation
5. Give up the Ultimate in Deception--the
Gobbledy Gook:
... freelance writing becoming motions. A against writers group
outboard did. Was writer contract shall constructing. Withdraw they
freelance writing rates ... writing its. Chart travel writing freelance
tubes ... (2)
6. And Say "Ta-ta" to Tautological (Thinking
in a Circle) Writing:
This was in my horoscope today: There is inherent instability in
your situation and it needs to change in order to stabilize.
Yuh. I suppose in order to stabilize, something needs to be
stabilized. What a waste of time. Or, I should say, what was I
doing wasting my time?
Even if we take words seriously--if,
say, we write for a living--we still can
play. Check out these favorite game
sites:
Brain Food (This site offers a number of
games of many types, including logic,
lateral thinking, and word box games.
Etymologic (Dubbed the "toughest
word game on the web," this game
tests your knowledge of etymology
[the study of word origins].)
Technopropism Quiz (Infoworld's
Sandy Reed coined the term
"technopropism" to label those words
not caught by spellcheck. Try to
untangle the word play in this tough
quiz. It's up there in difficulty with
Etymologic.)
The Oracle of Bacon (This takes no
freelance writer, creative writer, or
college writer brain-power: you type
in a famous name and it returns a
declension of degrees from Kevin
Bacon that famous person is. My male
movie idol is Nic Cage. He is very close
to the great Bacon.)
mean," the March Hare went
on.
"I do, " Alice hastily replied;
"at least I mean what I say,
that's the same thing, you
know."
"Not the same thing a bit!"
said the Hatter. Why, you
might just as well say that 'I
see what I eat' is the same
thing as 'I eat what I see!'"
~ the doorknob and Alice, in
Lewis Carroll's Alice in
Wonderland.
prepositions to a speaker of languages other than English, when "on" is
a place-word logically used for a phrase like "on the island," "not in the
island"...but is not used for "many people on the world," but "in the
world"?
How about explaining...
idioms such as "going cold turkey," "close but no cigar," or "wearing the
pants in the family"?
(2) Guess where I found this dribbling drek? On a search for website writer freelance writer contract definitions. It was high on the
results list, too.
art in the RoxanneWrites HOME page for art credits section.
