E-books are perfect for bibliophile germophobes. You may miss the old-book smell, random marginalia, and chance of finding somebody’s old photos and grocery list embedded in the pages of a library or used book, but you’ll never have to wonder where your e-book has been.
Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation is asking its Twitter followers to tweet their New Year’s resolutions, pledging what they will do this year to “create a #bravenewworldin2012.” I wonder if they happened to notice that Brave New World is a novel about a dystopian future society. Aldous Huxley created a nightmarish vision of constant sex, control and consumption … er … Maybe Lady Gaga’s followers could complete the irony and pledge to dial up some reading comprehension and literacy for 2012.
… and not about nobly starving for their art, either.
We’ve all seen or read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In this classic tale, the wealthy miser Ebenezer Scrooge is shown the worlds of the poor by three spirits, and is especially affected by the glimpse into the life his own underpaid clerk, Bob Crachit, and his son Tiny Tim. In the process, Scrooge becomes a better, more generous man.
Charles Dickens was undoubtedly scarred by experiences with poverty in his own childhood, and his entertaining stories were also sharp weapons for social reform in late Industrial Revolution England. He helped his readers see vividly what it was like to be poor.
Back in the day, poverty was bleak. And things haven’t improved much since. Here in BC, where child poverty rates and costs of living are both sky-high, a member of the provincial legislature (the Opposition party, natch) is spending the month of January trying to live on the welfare rate for a single individual, $610. His name is Jagrup Brar and he’s the MLA for Surrey-Fleetwood – a riding kitty-corner to the notorious Whalley/Central City area of Surrey.
He’s coming in for a hefty dose of criticism for the social experiment, perhaps mainly because of the high salary and pensions for MLAs in BC, which increased by a large percentage in the past few years while minimum wage and social assistance rates stagnated.
He’s hardly the first politician or writer – two professions whose members are usually drawn from the middle class – to journey into the realm of the poor and write about the experience. Some might call this exploitation, accusing writers of sensationalizing or othering (to use an anthropological term) people in poverty. I suspect this criticism is rooted in the fear: 1) that there are, in fact, different social classes, and 2) of trying the same thing.
But however uncomfortable it makes us, reading accounts of living among those of a different social stratum than ourselves makes us more compassionate people, and less judgmental of those whose struggles are different. Three of my favourite works on poverty are:
Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell (1933)
While not a biographical account, this book vividly describes the struggles of a young writer working menial jobs in Paris restaurants and being homeless and penniless in London. In the latter part of the book especially, the writer is confounded by the amount of going through the motions one has to do in order to receive charity, how doing such motions prevents him from getting real work, and how being branded an outcast by virtue of being homeless and in receipt of charity prevents him from getting out of cycle of poverty. But, as he famously writes, there is also ” a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, of knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have have talked so often of going to the dogs – and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it.”
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
The author, an established American writer with a bent for social reform, came up with the idea of leaving her comfy writer’s life and going undercover to see how people actually survive on minimum wage. Spoiler: they don’t. As Ehrenreich finds in stints as a waitress, hotel chambermaid, Walmart clerk and nursing home aide (a minimum wage job in the US), there are no special economies among the poor, and a host of costs, from having to rent by the month at expensive yet rundown motels when you don’t have enough funds for an apartment to having to eat convenience foods and fast food rather than cooking meals due to lacking a kitchen. Not to mention the everyday indignities of being a foot soldier in the minimum wage army – where labour is easily replaced and they don’t let you forget it. Ehrenreich doesn’t leave her writer’s skills behind, however, so this book entertains as it enlightens.
The Door is Open: Memoir of a Soup Kitchen Volunteer, Bart Campbell (2001)
This book is based on Bart Campbell’s journals of volunteering at a soup kitchen in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an area often called “Canada’s poorest postal code” and known for rundown hotels, dive bars, open drug use … You don’t have to look to find poverty and struggle here, it’s all right there in the open. As Campbell writes about the soup kitchen’s denizens and Brother Tim, the charismatic priest who runs the place, he covers a wide range of topics on life at street level: charity, drugs, prostitution, foster kids, alcoholics, police and prisons, Aboriginal people, flophouses. The stories and diary excerpts provide a window into this world, one that Campbell is aware of being not all that far away. Despite awakening readers to the feeling that there is indeed a system, riddled with good intentions, that keeps the poor in place, he also gives us a glimpse of the community that sustains people when they have little else to live on.
What can be done? I’m not sure but awareness is a start. By reading first-hand accounts, you start to blame people less and start looking at the systems and circumstances that create poverty, from mass layoffs to excessive bureaucracies to attitudes about welfare to bad luck to the simple fact that it takes a lot to swim upward in a downward spiral.
First they took us all to task for our font snobbery. Now they’re telling punctuation bar jokes. Whenever I visit McSweeney’s, I remember why I both hate (why didn’t I think of this? Because I suck!) and love (you’re so clever! Can I write for you?) this website. It kills productivity, sure, but it’s a high fibre source of brain humour. Heh. Heh.
Just in time for the non-denominational gift giving season, the Associated Press has published a style guide for common holiday terms. For example, Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, and Kriss Kringle (yes, two s’s) are all ways to refer to the jolly guy himself. But for whatever reason, “Xmas” as an abbreviation is frowned on upon. Well, merry (lowercase) Christmas to you, then. Love, Xine.
When you shave off the first syllable of moustache, it becomes stache, not stash, okay? If you ask me to look at your “stash” I’m going to expect to see coke and gold doubloons, not your hairy lip.
PS Here’s what happens when you tell your Youtuber husband his ‘stache is looking a little grey:
Check out my new article on Occupying Christmas by shopping and celebrating locally on New West blog Tenth to the Fraser!
As the Christmas shopping season arrives with Black Friday in the US, I can’t think of anything more ridiculous than camping outside of a store in order to buy stuff. Except for shooting, trampling or pepper-spraying your fellow shoppers in order to get at said stuff, of which there were many reported instances this year.
via Shopping locally this Christmas is a gift to the Royal City.
When even bike magazines can’t get the difference between peddle and pedal right, you know it’s time for another super-useful and majestically executed MS Paint usage cartoon.
The two words are commonly mixed up. To peddle (verb) means to sell something and to pedal (verb) means to work a device, like a bicycle, by pushing on the pedals (noun). If you’re not writing about riding a bicycle, chances are you want to use the verb “to peddle.”
And if you are referring to the person doing the action, chances are you’re talking about a “peddler” (someone who is selling something) versus a “pedaler” (someone who is pedaling); the second usage is fairly rare.
Today I couldn’t find the bus pass.
I had it last night when I got on the bus home, but this morning it was in none of the usual places: in the pocket of the coat I was wearing, in my purse, or on the counter where I drop things when I come in the door. It wasn’t under the pile of papers cluttering the counter, or next to the computer, or on the dresser. It hadn’t fallen under the mat with the dog dishes, nor had it drifted under the fridge. I shone flashlights into the shoes, riffled the junk bowl.
It was gone. $110 bucks down the drain. You can’t buy a bus pass in the middle of the month around here, so I guess we’d have to shell out for some books of tickets. Damn, damn, damn.
I had a feeling that I’d probably dropped it on my way into the building last night. Maybe when I pulled out my keys or went to turn off the music player on my phone, the little, valuable piece of paper in its plastic sleeve had gone whoosh, onto the ground. Someone would have picked it up by now if that was the case.
My husband was philosophical about it. “So, maybe somebody gets to ride transit for free for the rest of the month. Maybe our luck will come back to us next month.”
As it happened, just before embarking on the Great Bus Pass Hunt, we’d said the magic word to the dog (“Walk?”) so she was all up in my face too. A dog will only hold out for so long, so we walked down to the park, then back along the busy road to our apartment.
When we reached the front door of the building again, my husband said something about looking on the ground for the bus pass. We had just walked along the road I had walked from the stop last night, but was so involved with heeling the dog and keeping her calm with the traffic (she likes to chase and bark at cars, if she has her way) that I hadn’t even thought about the bus pass.
So I looked at the ground, and something glinted in the driveway. A small object, dense with print. Is that a plastic cover? I went over to look, only half-believing my eyes. It was my monthly bus pass, dropped on the ground just as I suspected, and apparently unnoticed by anyone else.
Was it a stroke of incredible luck, as my husband said, a case of having “horseshoes up my @**?”
Or was it just being reminded to look for the right thing at the right time?
Sometimes my detailed editor’s eye comes in handy for more than just spotting typos.
It’s certainly been awhile since I last blogged here. I could tell you it’s because I was writing copy all day for FortisBC all summer, and coming home to proofread reports and articles for my freelance clients. Or because I was hard at work researching organic dining spots. But the real reason is, other than taking sanity-restoring bike rides, I’ve had my nose stuck in a book. An e-book reader.
I waffled about getting an e-reader in the past … you can’t take it where things might get messy (like a cookbook) and most e-readers don’t display highly visual books or magazine layouts very well (tablets are starting to change this, however). Then I got bogged down in deciding what kind to get – in Canada, the big three choices are Kindle, Kobo and Sony Reader. But on my birthday, the choice was made for me when my husband presented my with a lovely pink 5-inch Sony Reader, which I’ve accessorized with a matching pink case with a booklight.
And I am loving his choice. The Kindle is the big name in the e-book game, but you can only buy (some) content from Amazon and they don’t offer library borrowing capability in Canada (yet). The Kobo uses the more universal epub format as well as PDF, but I am personally conflicted on supporting Chapters/Indigo, having been a bookslave in that empire previously. The Sony Reader, as it turns out, offers lots of titles through its online store. And like the Kobo, Sony Reader lets you download public domain books for free from a number of sites (hello, Project Gutenberg) and borrow books from the public library.
Sony just came out with a Wi-Fi edition of the Reader, but I like my non-Internet-connected Reader just dandy. I download books to the software on my computer, plug in the device, and then transfer the content manually. Borrowed library books are automatically returned at the end of the borrowing period (up to 21 days). And as my local library recently found bedbugs in several books and had to shut down and fumigate, I am even happier to borrow virtual books.
The reading experience itself is great: no backlighting on the screen prevents eyestrain, I can zoom the text to granny-size large print, and I can turn pages by flicking my finger across the touch screen. The drawbacks are that all the books are in the same font and the design isn’t optimum – big gaps sometimes appear between words and every once in a while there is a random hyphen in a word, perhaps a line-break hyphen someone forgot to take out when reformatting the print edition. I believe some of these problems have been solved in the newer Wi-Fi Reader; I haven’t had direct experience with Kindle or Kobo.
Frankly, I was worried before about what e-books meant for the publishing industry, but I’m now a convert. And according to most released sales figures and trends, e-books are outselling hard copy versions in many categories. Of course, there’s some hand-wringing over whether everyone can afford a reading device to access the content (maybe that’s a weird Canadian quirk, throwing wet blankets on new exciting ideas and worrying about what it all means), but with e-readers coming down in price and content costing about half as much as hard copy versions, I think they’re here to stay.
At least a few Canadian publishers are acting like it, and Google Books recently opened its bookstore to Canadians.
I, however, will try not to let that pretty pink device distract me from blogging for so long again. Even if The Night Circus is totally amazing.
Anatomy of a Fake Quotation – Megan McArdle – National – The Atlantic.
All it took was one misunderstanding and the deletion of a couple of quotation marks for one Facebook status update to become a quote widely misattributed to Martin Luther King on thousands of Twitter feeds and Facebook statuses.
That, and the lopping off of the actual words Dr. King said, in order to fit within Twitter’s 140-character limit.
In the above article, an Atlantic blogger traces how, really quite innocently, the quote was altered and memed and repeated all over the Internet. And how a modicum of research and fact checking made it right again.
The second edition of the usage cartoons has been inspired by the fascinatingly endless coverage of the upcoming Royal Wedding. (Which admittedly, I plan to watch.)
In several news articles, both tabloid and mainstream, this huge event is described as an “enormity.” Enormity means something of large size, but in the sense that it is terrible. Enormous or enormousness is the right term for when you want to say something is very large. The distinction is subtle, and some are allowing the usage difference to be broken down by common usage, even the mighty Oxford dictionary. I think that’s an enormity. An enormous elephant of misused usage stomping on the Queen’s English? You decide.
Lately I’ve become disillusioned with the whole social media thing. Though I’ve never understood Twitter, I’ve always liked Facebook as an easy way to “keep up” with what’s going on with the people around me. Until, that is, I noticed that it wasn’t really connecting me with anyone I really cared about.
That started me thinking, what is social media really good for? First of all, it makes one’s private thoughts and relationships very public. You have to behave yourself, refrain from saying inappropriate things, remember who is on your friends’ list before you type, etc. I go around saying inappropriate things all the time – in private, to friends, in the moment. Most of the things that come out of my mouth I wouldn’t say online. My friends and family might think I’m funny, but typewritten on the Internet, without context, it’ll look horrible. So there’s one reason to refrain from social media – the exhausting process of filtering my sassmouth.
That’s just me using social media on a resolutely personal level. I’ve taken a few courses in social media marketing and read innumerable articles on social media in business. Companies no longer want to just sell a product or a brand; they want to relate and engage with their customers and use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. to do it. And great, good for them. But going back to what I said about questioning who social media connects me to – I personally would prefer not to friend companies or brands or even celebrities. I don’t want to engage with my breakfast cereal or grocery store to “deepen my brand experience.” I don’t want a relationship with my local morning news anchors, and I’d like as little to do with politicians as possible, please and thankyouverymuch – especially when they’re in oily campaign mode.
The biggest reason I have decided to take a break from the social media whirl, however, is the currency of its world: attention. The getting and giving of. The anxiety of posting a status update, photo, review – or blog post – and wondering what kind of feedback, if any will come back. (Lots of people claim they don’t care about this part. I don’t believe them. Why share otherwise?) And then there is also the process of filtering through all the noise on one’s feed, thinking about what to give attention to. And trying not to pay attention, too – especially to all those “celebrities” who seem only to exist to get attention.
Social media has become a prime way to interact online today, and it has introduced me to some lovely people I might not have met purely by fluke back in the real world. But it’s not the only way to connect, nor necessarily the most important or useful or satisfying. So I’ve decided to become less lazy about connecting to people that I want to talk to. I’m phoning them and talking to them. I’m making plans to see them. I’ve popped off a friendly email or two. I’ve started writing things longer than a status update, things other than a Yelp review, things that aren’t designed for feedback. I feel happier already.
May all your words be golden and your bunnies be chocolate.
Computers are dumb. You’re smart. And in the frenzy of writing, it’s easy to make dumb human errors. So before hitting send, publish, or print, use your eyes, those of a friend, or your trusty neighbourhood editor to catch some common errors that can stop a reader dead in their tracks and derail your message.
Although it may flag the eternal their/there/they’re to help you with this common usage error, your spellchecker might not rescue you from embarrassing spelling goofs like “asses” (for “assess”) or pubic (for “public”).
Dangling modifiers may also lurk in your draft. A modifier is a word or phrase that describes (or modifies) a noun in your sentence, and should be placed as near to what it describes as possible. When the modifier is placed next to the wrong noun, the result can be unintentionally hilarious. For example, a letter to subscribers of a newspaper opened with the following: “As Canada’s leading national newspaper, you …” (I’m a newspaper?). Another example is this one my friend found in a textbook she was editing: “After he was assassinated, Khan went on to lead for 12 more years …” (all hail the zombie ruler Khan!). Fixing these requires some rewriting. (I think perhaps every editor keeps a list of funny dangling modifiers. Nerdy but true.)
Finally, look for common punctuation errors like apostrophes. Even normal, non-punctuation-obsessed people notice when an apostrophe stuck in the plural form of a word for no good reason. (Although perhaps the reason is decorative?) Some may even pick up on the subtle difference between it’s (contraction for “it is”) and its (possessive) or let’s (contraction for “let us”) and lets (verb). I wouldn’t want you to end up on the Apostrophe Abuse blog.
If you only have a little time to edit, focus on the big issues – spelling (it counts!), usage (using a given spelling of a word correctly), and sentence structure. A great resource for learning how to edit your own work remains The Elements of Style, the classic Strunk edition of which can be found online, or in a slim little volume at any decent bookstore.
Want to know if you're using palette, palate, or pallet correctly? Here's an at-a-glance guide. And even if you don't think usage counts and I'm stuffy for pointing it out, please enjoy the majesty that is MS Paint artwork
Bad usage drives me crazy. I just can’t take it anymore. So hopefully, this will be the first in the series of usage cartoons, taking on those tricky homonyms and helping you choose the right word for the occasion. That’s usage: picking the right word from a group of similar-sounding ones so your meaning comes across.
The Cooks Source story that exploded on the web this past week is one of victory for every writer whose work has ever been plagiarized. It started when Monica, a food writer, discovered that a previously published article she had written had appeared in Cooks Source magazine, edited but recognizable, without her consent. When she sent an email to the magazine asking for an apology and compensation in the form of a donation to the Columbia School of Journalism (where hopefully topics like copyright infringement are covered) she got this jaw-dropping response from editor Judith Griggs (as quoted on Monica’s LiveJournal page):
Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was “my bad” indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.
But honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free! [emphasis added]
It’s a masterpiece of passive-aggressive communication: hey, your article was there for the taking and we even edited for you! Be grateful!
But as bloggers soon revealed, Monica wasn’t only victim of the old copy-and-paste due to “tired eyes” scanning the “public domain” for material. They seemed to make it a regular editorial practice, in most cases failing to obtain the proper copyright permissions.
Writers took to the magazine’s Facebook page immediately, filling it with flames. Someone set up a fake Twitter account to organize notes around the scandal, and now there’s even a Youtube parody of Griggs’ letter to Monica. The Cooks Source webpage has been replaced by a long diatribe masquerading as a half-hearted apology with excuses (“…it was an oversight of a small, overworked staff. We have made a donation at her request, to her chosen institution, the Columbia School of Journalism … It should be noted that Monica was given a clear credit for using her article within the publication, and has been paid in the way that she has requested to be paid”) and defensiveness. The magazine claims it will now credit all sources and get proper consent for writing and illustrations, but I guess only when it’s convenient because “Cooks Source can not vouch for all the writers we have used in the past, and in the future can only check to a certain extent.”
Unfortunately, I don’t think Cooks Source has learned its lesson, focusing more on their own hurt and harassment more than the feelings and rights of people whose copyrights they’ve infringed upon. Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones out there who doesn’t understand that just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s free or for the taking. You’d think a publisher might understand copyright law better than the average content mill sneak or term paper cheater. I think almost any writer, myself included, who has put work on the Web somewhere has had it ripped off by someone. And boy, does it feel good to be able to call the offender on it, although usually it doesn’t go as public as this.
This is one case where it probably would have been easier to get permission(s) than forgiveness.
Like all advice, these rules for writing should be taken with a grain of salt. And then only from the writers you actually like: Ten rules for writing fiction.
I’m trying to particularly follow the oft-mentioned one about turning off the Internet while I write. Really, I am.
CBC News – British Columbia – Carr statue unveiling marred by bronzed typo.
News of an unveiling of a statue dedicated to Emily Carr, a famous BC artist known for her paintings of West Coast forests and coastal villages, got sidetracked by the glaring typo in the statue’s inscription:
Dedicated to honour BC’s best know citizen,
Pre-eminent painter and awarded writer, Emily Carr.
Hoo boy. The typo was spotted immediately at the unveiling – and contrary to the calls for “spell check!” by the husband of the artist who created the statue, “best know” would not be picked up a spell checker, because that tool doesn’t check the context of a word or its usage.
This could be just a comment about what a real human, trained proofreader can do – avoid costly mistakes like having to get a bronzed plaque redone – but it’s more than that. I mean, look at the clunky copy: “pre-eminent” – try famous or well-known; “painter” – artist would be more appropriate; and “awarded writer” – was she awarded to someone? No, she’s an accomplished writer, an award-winning writer – or better yet, an author.
As a copy writer, I can tell you that the fewer words you have to work with, the more work you have to do to make them count.
Let’s see if I can do this in 15 words or less (the above copy is 14 words):
Dedicated in honour of Emily Carr (1871-1945),
famed artist, author, and citizen of British Columbia.
OK, 16 words. But my line lengths are about the same. How’d I do?
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