Pronouncing years

My grandparents spoke of the first decade of the twentieth century from their own experience and they never said "nineteen-oh-one". It was "nineteen one".

"Oh" evolved as a way to pronounce telephone numbers, being more distinctive than "nought" on a crackly line. Its usage in pronouncing a year arose afterwards, incorrect because unnecessary: "nineteen-one" is unambiguous.

Unfortunately we cannot say the same of 2001. "The year twenty one" sounds like "the year twentyone". I am happy to say "two thousand and one" for I am not in a hurry.

I prefer to say "the world-wide web" than "double-you double-you double-you". there are far fewer syllables.

Before decimal currency came in to the UK in 1971, the old pennies were spelt "d" - abbreviation for "denarii" and pronounced penny or pence. For some incomprehensible reason, the public after decimalization consented to call the new penny a "pee": one pee, two pee, half-pee (now obsolete). Why?

The apostrophe

It’s easy to give it its due.

So why don’t we? All we have to do is remember that one sentence above and know how to apply it.

Why don’t we? Because we desert what we once knew, what we were correctly taught, and follow the ignorant till we too become ignorant models for others to copy.

We are reaching a point where everything is lowered to the standards of those on the outside, knocking to come in. Am I a snob? No. I believe there should be an open door, but on entering you should receive kindly instruction and retain it confidently. I’m speaking of the door into literacy.

Internet-linked computers have given public literacy to millions whose English composition would never before have been seen publicly in print. Those millions have assumed that Microsoft spell-checker is all the tutoring they need. The risk is that schoolteachers don’t teach orthography and punctuation any more, or teach it wrong; or that we think the majority must be right.

The “rules” of political correctness are further examples of how we copy one another’s poor usage. You might say that a person makes up their mind, but to me that will always be incorrect. As I’m male I will say that a person makes up his mind. A woman could say her instead of his and a balance would be maintained that way.

I note the increased use of partner as if husband or wife were taboo words like nigger. Partner is no good in many contexts because it might mean business partner. Though they never married, in common speech I refer to my son’s wife alias my daughter-in-law. They’ve been together ten years and have two children of their own, my grandchildren. They are married in every sense but the legal one, which doesn’t concern me, since I am not an official.

Magical reading

Yesterday I went to a discount bookshop to buy some paintbrushes - they have a cheap art department as well - and my eye lit on a book about angels: a recent compilation of people's anecdotes from around the world. In each one, a helping angel appeared. The stories had the ring of truth. Sometimes the angel appeared in a dream. In others, he or she would appear at the scene of an accident to comfort or save life, then disappear without trace after being witnessed by none but the narrator. It wasn't always the narrator who saw the angel: in fact the stories varied widely. I glimpsed at it and then went upstairs for the paintbrushes. I was drawn to the book once more as if by magnetism and read some more. So I bought it: Walking with Angels by Carmel Reilly. I have read other angel books. I'm not keen on those which stray beyond the writer's personal experience. Some of them are not personal at all: there are many unscrupulous writers who are merely in it for the money.

The other thing I'm reading is the first Harry Potter book. I've never opened one before, though my children - now grown up - have been reading them since they first came out. I have to admit that the world is right. The writing is of the highest quality and I'm hooked. Progress is slow because I read aloud to my beloved: not that she couldn't read it herself, but it's one of the things we do, and that way we really savour books.

Sword or Cymbal

The swordsman’s blade becomes as if welded to his arm. The tennis-player commands the ball with her eye, and it speeds as if willpower alone directs it, not the precision of legs and arms and racquet and balance. Thus must the writer’s soul connect to the pen or tapping fingers.

A year ago, I would hope to capture in pastels or photos an essence of clouds, trees and distant hills, plagued always by a sense of detail which distracted from that essence.

Now I feel confident to conjure the effect in words alone. What is the desired effect? This is the mystery. How do I know what I want to say before I have found the words? Is some wordless tongue being spoken within me for which I seek the English? What goes on inside the artist---to know what will be conveyed before it has been made concrete and sensual? Sure, language is of the senses, or it cannot be conveyed.

There can be no style without something to say. Integrity matters. My words must map to some reality, inner or outer, or nothing will redeem them. If there is no necessity in my writing it will be lifeless. There must be love for my brothers and sisters and cousins in all the “kingdoms”---animal, vegetable, mineral.

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”

[1 Corinthians 13:1]

Style

Huge subject for a few minutes.

Am I referring to your few minutes or mine? Mine in the first instance. But if I do not hold dear your time and attention---bad style!

Note my first paragraph above is a sentence without a main verb. I could have started thus:

It is a huge subject for a few minutes.

or even

Writing style is a huge subject for a few minutes.

Yawn-worthy!

Suppressing the redundant is the essence of style. Obviously I mean good style, but "good" was redundant too.

We have covered these rules:

Be brief
Prune
Illustrate
Exemplify
See reader's viewpoint

There's more but I have another rule: don't be exhaustive.

Orthography

I went on about litter in another blog. The literary equivalent of dropping litter is misusing it’s.

Its It’s either due to ignorance or carelessness that the human animal drops it’s its mis-spellings. When I find myself offended and disturbed by litter I tell myself it’s natural and search for some usefulness in its occurrence.

Misusing it’s when it occurs in a person who’s whose native language is English denotes a person who was not drilled properly at school, which seems to include most Britishers or Americans under a certain age; or a person who leans on spell-checkers or peers.

If you are driving in a foreign country without having drilled yourself in which side to drive, it may be an acceptable makeshift to copy other drivers.

However if the number of those as uncertain as yourself increases to a certain threshold, watch out round the next bend!

Stringing words together

Twenty-five years ago, I bought The Art of Writing, a volume in the "Made Simple" series. It had been written ten years earlier and has an out-of-date feel now. So what? I feel out-of tune with the age too. Browsing through it again recently, I discovered many shortfalls, the worst being its lack of guidance on writing sentences.

You'd think that The Art of Building a House would have a chapter on bricklaying, or how to build the walls out of mud and wattle. But a book on laying bricks---or even making them---would not tell you how to build the whole house.

I have no idea how to write a book, though I have written one to someone else's order, which was not very satisfying. Long ago, I planned an erudite volume, to be called Seer and System, whilst commuting to work on London's Underground. All I had was ideas. I was defeated by structure and could not even write an attractive sentence.

I have since realised that my default style, the thing that comes naturally, is to start afresh every time and to stop after about 500 words. What seems natural is a little piece of prose that hands over to the reader's imagination very soon, after being painfully truthful about my experience---the only thing I know.

So blogging suits me perfectly. It's immediate, informal, small-scale.

In writing, every sentence can be a miniature work of art. I don't mean overwork it till you are bored, or till the reader thinks you are trying to be clever. Play with word order. The beginning of a sentence is one hotspot and the end is even hotter. Manipulate the word order to put the most significant part of your statement at the end.

Be aware of repetition, I mean use it to your advantage, as in a tune; but control any re-use of same word or phrase which jars the eye and ear.

Look at your writing critically, as soon as your sentence is complete; but also hours or days later.

Blogging is great: you get free critics.

I don't know if a writing course would truly help. Blogging is a training to write, and it could go on for life. But you need a good eye and ear, not to imitate the bad writing of others, and not to betray your own soul. You must be tuned to what delights you.

And then you have to work on delighting others too.

The written word

My grandmother taught me to read before I started school, using a Victorian primer, Reading Without Tears. I think she had learned from the same book.

The first pages introduced the capital letters as in my illustration making it easy to remember their shapes, even more so because of the quaintness.