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I have been making a conscious decision to try to accomplish something for a week at a time. One week it was as simple as deciding not to use a word I realized I had been using too much. This week I decided that I was going to write a blog a day for a week. Usually when I went through blog-writing periods I would write whenever something struck my fancy. Sometimes I would end up writing nearly a dozen blogs a week (although several of them were short). Before this week I averaged less than a blog a month over the last year or two.
When I don’t exercise my writing muscles I find it hard to just go. How do I write when nothing really comes to mind? Sometimes I just drop some stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes I have a nugget of an idea what I want to write, but, since it’s only a nugget, my writing is not so much linear as a stopper being pulled out of the sink and the water circling and circling and circling around the goal without just going straight to it.
So I asked people for ideas. Give me something to write about, I said. The first one was about “assholes at work.” I’ve written about co-workers plenty over the course of the years, but nothing has really happened recently that would be deserving of a blog (nothing beyond some of the same bitching I’ve already done).
The next request was to write about my grandfather. Honestly, I don’t have full memories of him, even though he didn’t die until almost my 11th birthday. I have snapshot memories of him, little seconds-long bursts of him, but nothing fully concrete.
The friend who had suggested the first one (assholes at work), perhaps annoyed that I nixed that idea, shot back with a few more ideas. I’ve touched on all of them previously, and nothing recently makes me feel like I can make a real blog out of them (which you can probably guess by reading this far, since I’m doing what my daughter did in school and padding with words before I finally get around to the point).
“People who cannot spell.” That was one of her suggestions. Honestly, I don’t have a problem with people who cannot spell. I’m not immune to it myself. I always want to add a “d” to “refrigerator” or remove the “e” from “ninety” or add the “u” to “forty.” It might not be politically correct to say, but some people just don’t have their intelligence wired to be able to. No, what I have a problem with is people who either make no effort to spell or, much worse, don’t believe it even matters.
Does it matter? Often, especially online, people suggest it does not. “As long as I get the point across, that’s all that matters.” But if you can’t or refuse to spell correctly, do you really get the point across. Not with me. For example:
The amount of grammer and usage error’s today is astounding. Not to mention spelling. If I was a teacher, I’d feel badly that less and less students seem to understand the basic principals of good writing. Neither the oldest high school students nor the youngest kindergartner know proper usage. A student often thinks they can depend on word processing programs to correct they’re errors. Know way!
I read that and I assume the writer is an idiot, especially considering the topic about which he or she is writing. I am able to easily dismiss everything he or she writes, because if he or she doesn’t care enough about what they’re writing to actually write it well, then they obviously don’t care.
But, you might say, I have spell check, so everything is just fine. Sure, unless you write something like “this is two crazy.” Spell check won’t catch that.
Of course, if I point these things out, I’m a grammar nazi. Of course, I, along with many of those accused of being grammar nazis, don’t go out of my way to correct people for each and every mistake. I understand that often it’s just that, a mistake (of which I am often guilty myself). What ticks me off is when it’s not a mistake, when it’s just someone going “eh, close enough”...or “close enuff.” If you put something online with glaring math errors or science errors or just plain old fact errors, someone would ding you on it and be right. If somebody dings you on grammar or spelling, he or she is a Nazi.
What really gets me is that so many people don’t seem to appreciate that language is beautiful. Even the coarsest of language has its own beauty. And when somebody uses that language the same way a toddler might treat a priceless vase, it’s the same to me as if they took a beautiful painting and ran a streak of shit down it. Yeah, you can see the beauty of the painting or a good ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of it, but really you just find yourself concentrating on that shit you see.
When I don’t exercise my writing muscles I find it hard to just go. How do I write when nothing really comes to mind? Sometimes I just drop some stream-of-consciousness. Sometimes I have a nugget of an idea what I want to write, but, since it’s only a nugget, my writing is not so much linear as a stopper being pulled out of the sink and the water circling and circling and circling around the goal without just going straight to it.
So I asked people for ideas. Give me something to write about, I said. The first one was about “assholes at work.” I’ve written about co-workers plenty over the course of the years, but nothing has really happened recently that would be deserving of a blog (nothing beyond some of the same bitching I’ve already done).
The next request was to write about my grandfather. Honestly, I don’t have full memories of him, even though he didn’t die until almost my 11th birthday. I have snapshot memories of him, little seconds-long bursts of him, but nothing fully concrete.
The friend who had suggested the first one (assholes at work), perhaps annoyed that I nixed that idea, shot back with a few more ideas. I’ve touched on all of them previously, and nothing recently makes me feel like I can make a real blog out of them (which you can probably guess by reading this far, since I’m doing what my daughter did in school and padding with words before I finally get around to the point).
“People who cannot spell.” That was one of her suggestions. Honestly, I don’t have a problem with people who cannot spell. I’m not immune to it myself. I always want to add a “d” to “refrigerator” or remove the “e” from “ninety” or add the “u” to “forty.” It might not be politically correct to say, but some people just don’t have their intelligence wired to be able to. No, what I have a problem with is people who either make no effort to spell or, much worse, don’t believe it even matters.
Does it matter? Often, especially online, people suggest it does not. “As long as I get the point across, that’s all that matters.” But if you can’t or refuse to spell correctly, do you really get the point across. Not with me. For example:
The amount of grammer and usage error’s today is astounding. Not to mention spelling. If I was a teacher, I’d feel badly that less and less students seem to understand the basic principals of good writing. Neither the oldest high school students nor the youngest kindergartner know proper usage. A student often thinks they can depend on word processing programs to correct they’re errors. Know way!
I read that and I assume the writer is an idiot, especially considering the topic about which he or she is writing. I am able to easily dismiss everything he or she writes, because if he or she doesn’t care enough about what they’re writing to actually write it well, then they obviously don’t care.
But, you might say, I have spell check, so everything is just fine. Sure, unless you write something like “this is two crazy.” Spell check won’t catch that.
Of course, if I point these things out, I’m a grammar nazi. Of course, I, along with many of those accused of being grammar nazis, don’t go out of my way to correct people for each and every mistake. I understand that often it’s just that, a mistake (of which I am often guilty myself). What ticks me off is when it’s not a mistake, when it’s just someone going “eh, close enough”...or “close enuff.” If you put something online with glaring math errors or science errors or just plain old fact errors, someone would ding you on it and be right. If somebody dings you on grammar or spelling, he or she is a Nazi.
What really gets me is that so many people don’t seem to appreciate that language is beautiful. Even the coarsest of language has its own beauty. And when somebody uses that language the same way a toddler might treat a priceless vase, it’s the same to me as if they took a beautiful painting and ran a streak of shit down it. Yeah, you can see the beauty of the painting or a good ninety-five to ninety-eight percent of it, but really you just find yourself concentrating on that shit you see.
