AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

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keithgood838
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by keithgood838 » Wed Oct 28, 2009 9:14 pm

The National Academy of Writing is launching an award this weekend to promote good writing.
In addition to naming those who write well, it will also shame nominees who write badly. Since
style will be the focal point of the endeavour I have decided t post hereon my manuscript take on the topic.
Forum members with little interest in the matter may prefer 'to look away
now':

STYLE
(If you've got it, it stands out a mile)

Conversely, a piece of writing that is clumsily constructed, and devoid of panache, is equally
limb-in-plaster obvious. One way to develop style is to let your imagination take wing, a bird
released from confinement. Dylan Thomas was an exemplary exponent: And nightly under the
simple stars as I rode to sleep, the owls were bearing the farm away, all the moon long I heard,
blessed among the stables, the night-jars flying with the ricks, and the horses flashing into the dark.


Or scud aboard the sonnet, High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee:

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of; wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.


As 'brevity is the soul of wit' so conciseness is the constant companion of clarity. Make every
word of your text pull its weight, avoid a long word when a short one will do the job and only use
a flamboyant one if it fits the meaning precisely and you wish to make the reader sit up and take notice.
Have fun creating original figures of speech.
Childhood memories are a rich source of inspiration for writers; however, we contend that most of literature, in all its forms,
is to some extent an emotional response to a personal experience, exemplied in the following verse by this writer, entitled Poem:

To me the word has always meant
emotional reaction;
first one's heartstrings are tugged,
then one launches into
the aerial liberty of literary action,
and afterwards wallows in the warmth
of soul-deep satisfaction.


Style, at the title hereto implies, is a distinguishing quality that will develop naturally. Correct grammar and spelling are the foundations on which your symmetrical structures will be built. Control of prepositions, those unruly members of the grammar family, is essential. Do not hesitate to end a sentence with a preposition, particularly as not to do so may result in an
inelegant or stilted sentence 'into what a fine mess you've got us'. For greater impact prefer the metaphor 'the news was a dagger to his heart' to the less dramatic simile 'the news was like a dagger to his heart'. Try to produce imaginative prose here vividly illustrated by Laurie Lee, from his autobiography, Cider With Rosie:

Those knots on the bedroom ceiling were the whole range of a world, and over them my eyes went endlessly voyaging in the primeval light of waking to which a child is condemned. They were the archipelagos in a sea of blood-coloured varnish, they were armies grouped and united against me, they were the alphabet of a macabre tongue, the first book I ever learned to read.

Humour, not an easy genre, is also a surefire route to your reader's heart:

'Stop!' The naked ferocity would have stopped a rabid dog in its tracks. 'What age are you?' 'Thirteen Father.' 'And is all those thirteen years has no one instructed you as to the proper manner of receiving the sacrament of Penance?'
So that was it. Most priests, even those who would have regarded Father Clarke as a speed fiend, allowed you to say the Confiteor privately before entering the box. It saved time. But Father Creedon was a reactionary: he favoured one-hour Masses and half-hour sermons; Lionel Barrymore could not have sucked more juice from a death scene than Credo did from
saying one Hail Mary. I began the Confiteor. 'I confess to Almighty God, to Blessed Mary ever Virgin, to Blessed Michael the Archangel, to Blessed John the Baptist, to ... And there I stuck. 'Begin again,' Credo said. This time, so paralysed was my brain from fear, I got no further than Michael the Archangel. I could no more have remembered the Confiteor than a Muslim could have recited a passage from the Talmud.
(Hugh Leonard, Home Before Night.)

Avoid what H.W. Fowler called 'Elegant Variation', a reluctance to repeat a preceding phrase by using what is known as a strained synonym. The most quoted example is by historian David Donald in a biography of Abraham Lincoln: 'If the president seemed to support the Radicals in New York, in Washington he appeared to back the Conservatives.' Such constructions were described by Martin Amis as 'the scurviest of all graces.'

SOME OTHER STYLISTIC DEVICES

LITOTES (pronounced ly-toe-tees). Understatement, the opposite of hyperbole: 'The guest of honour, who has an abiding love for West Cork, and is no mean singer himself.' SYNECDOCHE (sin-ek-do-kee). Figurative noun that substitutes a part for a whole and vice versa thereby achieving brevity, eg Treading the boards (stage). All hands on deck.
NOUN/ADJECTIVE COMBINATIONS. Frost-bright. Spectre-gray (Hardy). Time-poor. Bee-loud (Yeats). Enjoy creating your own versions.
IRONY. Conveying a meaning contrary to what is being said, a mild form of sarcasm: 'For Brutus is an honourable man.' (From Julius Ceaser by William Shakespeare).

Keith (Phew)
Last edited by keithgood838 on Thu Nov 05, 2009 8:08 pm, edited 7 times in total.

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Marian
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by Marian » Wed Oct 28, 2009 11:30 pm

Phew indeed Keith! :wink:
I love descriptive writing, the kind that paints a picture that you always remember.
Dylan Thomas is one of my favourites, as is his house and workshed at Laugharne near Tenby that we have often visited. The beautiful view across the sea there must have been the perfect place for inspiration. His "fishing boat bobbing sea". (The times he was sober that was!)
Marian :wink:

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keithgood838
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by keithgood838 » Thu Oct 29, 2009 12:12 pm

Yes Marian, Dylan Thomas's writing is indeed magical.
I think he can lay claim to the epithet, unique, more
than any other writer in the history of literature.
Keith

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keithgood838
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by keithgood838 » Tue Nov 24, 2009 12:50 pm

ALL AT SEA?
(no need to be)

When the doomed ship foundered
in maritime malevolence
and sank below the waves,
hapless passengers floundered
and prayed for deliverance
from imminent watery graves.

Keith Good


Note. Here are dictionary definitions
to help you steer safe passage through
these tricky verbal seas. Founder:
to stumble, to subside, to fill with water
and sink. Flounder: to struggle with
violent and awkward motion, to speak
or behave in a blundering or incompetent
way. Flounder is also a noun that means,
a species of flatfish of the family
Pseudopleuronectes. (A mouthful in more
senses than one.)

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mariana44
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by mariana44 » Tue Nov 24, 2009 1:46 pm

Re "Founder" can also be used as a noun---eg--the "Founder" of a big business---so can you say he "Foundered" that business??

Does not sound right to me.
Mariana

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keithgood838
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by keithgood838 » Tue Nov 24, 2009 7:51 pm

Yes Marian(a), founder is also a noun, eg as the founder
of this forum, Michele can be said to have founded it -
God bless her for so doing. I merely drew attention to the noun,
flounder only, simply to make a humorous point and not
elaborate the matter unduly. The extent to which the two verbs
are wrongly applied is surprising. The context in which a business
is foundered would be when it goes bust. Eg 'the company
foundered under the floundering mismanagement of the CEO'.
Keith

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mariana44
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by mariana44 » Wed Nov 25, 2009 10:34 am

Thanks Keith for clearing that up.
Mariana

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keithgood838
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by keithgood838 » Wed Nov 25, 2009 12:43 pm

Thanks to you Marian(a) for making me aware
that founder as a noun and founder as a verb
are antipathetic: as a noun it is creative,
and as a verb it is destructive.
That thought hadn't occurred to me before.
Keith

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keithgood838
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by keithgood838 » Fri Nov 27, 2009 11:55 am

ENUMERATION
(figuring it out, literally)

Spell out numbers up to and including nine;
numbers thereafter to define
use numerals 10 to 999,999.
For big numbers (millions, billions, trillions) use small numerals
when referring to people and animals:
2 million brethren, 3 billion bunnies, 4 trillion songbirds.
For quantities of items without animation
use numerals in abbreviation:
£2m, 3bn barrels of oil, 4tn written words.

Keith Good

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keithgood838
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by keithgood838 » Sun Dec 06, 2009 2:07 pm

CHRISTMAS CRACKER QUESTION

What are alternative names
for a Manchester United team sheet
and the chairman's secretary?

A manuscript and an amanuensis
respectively.

Keith :)

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keithgood838
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by keithgood838 » Thu Jan 14, 2010 4:05 pm

NUANCE

These verbal twins are not identical:
whereas assume tends to be tentative,
presume is pronoid and positive,
although both convey the theoretical.

Assume tends to inhabit the past, and here and now:
'I assume you enjoyed the show.'
Presume embraces the present, future, and the how:
'I presume you'll enjoy the plot-twists in Othello.'

Thus Stanley was being precise (Doctor Livingstone, I presume)
by implying, 'I am being presumptuous, I know.'

Keith

Note. The verbs have other senses: to assume responsibility, a poise,
a position and so on. To presume upon someone's good nature;
missing, presumed dead et cetera. Pronoid means: the suspicion
that others are conspiring to help you, the opposite of paranoid.
(Using assume in the correct context will limit the verb's scope
to make an ass of u and me.)

Don Cooper
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by Don Cooper » Thu Jan 14, 2010 4:46 pm

I assume your assertions bear the weight of considered thought. :arrow:

I presume that selfsame thought presumes to assume we are remotely interested. :arrow:

Gloves off, Keith :wink:

Don
Matt : Smooth, but not Glossy...

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Marian
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by Marian » Thu Jan 14, 2010 5:16 pm

Easy Tiger! :wink:

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Lena & Harry Smith
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by Lena & Harry Smith » Thu Jan 14, 2010 8:59 pm

Watch im ref :wink:

Don Cooper
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Re: AUTHORS' ANNEXE (English Language Discussions)

Post by Don Cooper » Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:35 am

Keith, my good fellow. You lately described a Manchester United Team Sheet as a manuscript. A sheet of paper with 11 stick-men, 10 with their arms at their sides and 1 with arms outstreached-the goalie, I contend to be a drawing as opposed to a manuscript :wink:

Red Card ! Are you ******* blind, ref ! :lol:


Don
Matt : Smooth, but not Glossy...

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