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Home  Browse All Articles Improve Your Writing Writer, Know Thy Language
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Writer, Know Thy Language |
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Written by Melody Hazlett Robinson
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Monday, 18 December 2006 |
Maybe you have heard it before, but I think it English is one of the most bastardized, difficult languages in the world to learn and use. It is a hodge-podge of French, German, Anglo-Saxon (which is itself a mixture of Briton, Danish and French), Spanish, and a myriad of borrowings from many more tongues. And that's just the core language. Mix in the colloquialisms, the regional words and phrases, and you add another level of absurdity.
Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other books of knowledge have attempted to collate and standardize English for the common person to understand. Modern technology has taken the idea one step further with computerized spell checking and grammar checking systems. These are invaluable tools, to be sure, but they leave much to be desired if the writer (or user) does not take the care to insure the words used are correct. Instead of relying on these mechanical marvels of artificial intelligence, a well-learned writer should once again rely on his own knowledge.
That's right, you should learn your language!
“I already know my language, you silly cow,” you bluster in an offended tone. Typographical errors and common misspellings aside, most of us do not know our language unless we have made a concerted effort to do so. Perhaps we're simply in a rush to summit an article, too tired after endless re-writes of a manuscript, too impatient to get it all over with to simply sit down and go through the words and sentences and paragraphs carefully. After all, isn't that what editors and proof readers do? So we consign our final responsibility to a group of individuals whom we hope are not too rushed, too tired or too impatient to catch everything we couldn't be bothered to correct.
Rein in your righteous anger at those statements for a moment. Think. Whose work is sitting on your desk, written in your words with your name as author? Whose responsibility is it if the correct words are used to convey the proper meaning rather than one the spell checker okayed because it, too, was a correctly spelled word even though it was incorrect for your meaning? Unsure what I mean? Here are two examples. See if you can spot the errors.
(1) “....The old guard (......) were still vital but the seeds they'd sewn were now bearing strange fruit in the guise of a more extreme, 2nd wave of darklings like (....).....”
(2) “No matter how far he searched, endlessly seeking across the length and breath of the land, he'd never found a more suitable mate then the one standing before him.”
I assure you, both the above instances will pass a spell check and a grammar check by a machine. Did they pass your muster?
We'll examine the second example first. Just how far is a 'breath' of land, hmmm? Six inches worth, maybe twelve inches if you exhale heartily on a cold day so it can be measured properly. Surely that should read 'breadth' as breadth is a slightly old-fashioned term denoting a distance, the full width between two points. And the word 'then' should have read 'than'. Both improperly used words are actually spelled correctly and valid in their own rights, just incorrectly applied in this sentence.
The first example is one that stopped me in my reading tracks on the back of a cd label. All I could envision was a troupe of little gnomes busily sewing tiny seeds. You guessed it, the word should have been “sown”, as in to sow (plant) a field with seeds and reap a harvest.
The casual reader may not rile at many of the mis-uses of the written language in books, magazines and articles today. I have been astonished at the number of web sites, paper brochures and conversational posts online where I've seen the word “the” misspelled as “teh”. In fact, that error now seems to be an acceptable substitute that many deliberately use to illustrate how “cool” or main-streamed they are with modern society.
In a sad commentary on 'modern life', our passive acceptance of the written word as being correct without fail lends itself to misconception and misdirection. Meanings become lost in translation since the original intent is never transcribed in order to be interpreted. Is this how you wish your work to be remembered - or misremembered?
All you need do is to learn and correctly use your own language. If need be, keep a dictionary and thesaurus on your desk or close to your keyboard or typewriter. Take the responsibility and allow your words to shine for the gems they rightfully are. After all, who knows what seeds you may sow for future generations.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 22 January 2007 )
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