Category: Language (Page 5 of 8)

I have this page-a-day calendar called Jeffrey Kacirk’s Forgotten English (although you can never tell what day it is based solely on looking at it because I’m always falling behind on my day-by-day reading). It has all kinds of interesting tidbits not only about old words and how they were used back in the day, but also about holidays and customs of the past.

My favorite entry was from early in the year. On Thursday, January 14th, the word was “Connecticutisian,” which was, as you might have guessed, is a Connecticut resident. This entry also mentions the term “Connecticuties,” which according to the calendar, was coined by American linguist Allen Walker Read and was “reserved for pretty girls.” I like to think of myself as a Connecticutie.

A recent entry noted that the first Sunday of September was once Grandfather’s Day, which referenced C.E. Humphry’s Manners for Women. In this book, it states “It used to be considered rude to conclude a letter on the first or second page. If our grandfathers or grandmothers did so, they almost invariably apologised for a brevity that in those days had the effect of curtness.”

The entry also notes that Samuel Johnson once wrote, “A short letter…is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation…”

I can hardly imagine a time when brevity was rude. Today, time is money. In a world of 140-character tweets, 160-character text messages, and 15-minutes of fame, it seems the opposite is true: longevity is rude and a waste of time.

I find myself falling into this trap, often apologizing to the recipient of an e-mail that runs longer than a couple of paragraphs. But really, what is wrong with a nice, long letter? Doesn’t that show that you care enough about the recipient to think that she might actually care to hear what you have to say? Or maybe it is selfish to expect someone to spend more than a few seconds reading your words?

What do you think? Does longevity show that you care? Or should I apologize for blathering on for too long?

I got a NOOK for Christmas last year (and cleverly named it Alcove instead of Cranny). No, it hasn’t replaced books for me, but I love it, especially for travel because it’s so portable. And I recently found a new use for it when I uploaded some of my own writing onto it.

It took some playing around to convert my Word document into a form that looked nice on the NOOK screen (for my first attempt, every two lines ended up on their own paragraph…readable, but a little wacky to look at), but it was worth it. I now have a way to see my writing with fresh eyes.

For all you nonwriters out there, let me explain. I’ve probably spent hundreds (no exaggeration) of hours staring at the manuscript I’m currently revising. And on my laptop screen, it pretty much always looks the same, no matter how many textual changes I make. Even when I got a new version of Word, the visual feel of the manuscript didn’t change much. And printing it out doesn’t really change the look of it much either.

(See, I still love a good ol’ book…and these are just the signed ones!)

As soon as I put those very same words in a different medium, the whole feel of the piece changed. It was more like I was reading someone else’s book because it didn’t look like the same old thing I had stared at for a million hours (maybe some exaggeration there).

I can’t make any changes directly on the NOOK version (I have to keep my Word version next to me for that), but I caught a bunch of little proofreading mistakes that I had missed on the Word version. And it’s not always a bad thing to not be able to immediately make changes because it forced me to just keep reading. That really allowed me to get a feel for how the story flowed as a whole, instead of considering each separate piece of it.

I think I’ll add this overview-type revision into my rotation of more hardcore revision/rewriting work. For one, it helped me catch those little mistakes. For two, it forced me to read without making changes. And for three, I got a little patter of excitement in my chest when I saw my humble little manuscript on the NOOK, just like all those real big published books!