Spelling Grammar Words Language

 

 

We started a discussion in the comments on certain word usages….

Villages, Reginald Hill, and Pictures of Perfection

Reginald Hill a great one for using obscure words, and I had mentioned ‘wrack’ and ‘desert’ used in a specific and unusual way. Everyone had a lot to say.

One of the matters I mentioned was that when I was writing for a US magazine, I used the word spelt - as in 'he spelt it wrongly' and there was a furore online, people claiming this word didn't exist except as a grain. I'm sure I asked some grammatically-minded Americans to adjudicate, but can't remember any outcome.

I feel there is a distinction: 'He spelled it wrongly' means he always spelled that word incorrectly. 'He spelt it wrongly' means 'on this occasion.' It is a similar construction to learnt, dreamt, and even dwelt, which is definitely archaic.

It's good to remember that online furores over word use have been going a long time. Some (the more polite) of my commenters back then would fit right in on Clothes in Books comments. I can't remember the details, but I'm pretty sure when I first saw the long list below the line I assumed it was about something controversial in the article, but absolutely correctly they had all focused on a verb.

When I started this blog, if anyone had told me that the comments would end up like this, I would have been so happy. I do love a proper discussion where everyone weighs in, good-naturedly as always.

I loved this book as a child - a textbook my mother had brought home from the school where she taught. I read it over and over

I try to be very relaxed about other's usage, while liking to preserve distinctions, and I try to use what I consider the right word and arrangement myself. I see it as a hobby that I know about disinterested, minuscule, semi-colons, possessive pronouns with gerunds, and what a gerund is, the difference between practise and practice (UK only), use of hopefully, longueurs.

But - I'm sure my writing is full of times where I break my own rules, and I am as gentle with myself as I am with others. Writing for a US magazine for a long time helps with this, because there are differences which I didn’t always remember. 

The placement of punctuation marks in relation to quotation marks I really had an issue with. I am always amazed that even in the US the UK system is known as ‘logical punctuation’: Americans have deliberately chosen a convention which is not logical? I’m sure someone will bravely defend.

 

There's a Margery Allingham book where the spelling of ‘judgement’ gives a clue. I would say it is definitely a personal choice rather than a meaning. And there is an Agatha Christie book where there is discussion of enquiries vs inquiries. Somewhere lost in the mists of my memory there is a thriller in which a serial killer has been hypnotized into misspelling words in their messages, the same letter is omitted - I always thought this was a fabulous plotline and I wish I could remember the name or author of the book. Anyone?

Then there is Ian Fleming. When his publishers tried to argue him out of using a certain word, he replied “Do please let me leave this in if only to make my readers read at least one of my words twice over.”

It wasn’t a rude word, just an unknown one, and he certainly made me look closely at it – you can find my investigations in this post:

Thunderball by Ian Fleming–Part 2

 I concluded it didn't really exist, but am open to discussion.

I have read a lot of books, and thus come across a lot of words, so actually I really like it when someone surprises me with a new one, so long as I don’t think they are being pretentious.

I recently read a book called O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker. It’s a great favourite with some people, though didn’t particularly do it for me. But I was delighted to learn something new:

The heroine Janet has annoyed her mother with her choice of dress for an upcoming event:

 ‘Never. Never. Never,’ [her mother] said aloud, surprising herself.

Janet leered at her. ‘Tricolonic anaphora’, she remarked in her most irritating, pedantic voice.

I had no idea what that meant, didn’t remember ever having come across it.

Anaphora is this:

The use of a word referring back to a word used earlier in a text or conversation, to avoid repetition, for example the pronouns he, she, it, and they and the verb do in ‘I like it and so do they’. Compare with cataphora.

So this is cataphora:

the use of a word or phrase that refers to or stands for a later word or phrase (e.g. the pronoun he in ‘he may be approaching 37, but Jeff has no plans to retire from the sport yet’).

Tricolonic means something is repeated three times for rhetorical effect.

I don't think I get this 'never never never' as tricolonic anaphora, as it doesn’t seem to avoid repetition, nor does it refer back to anything else. But I’m sure an expert reader can put me right.

The one thing I am sure about is that you should never be too prescriptive, for various reasons, but hugely because you will only get caught out. I have an enormous amount of writing online, and it must contain many errors & infelicities, small and large.

I always think of Nancy Mitford, who was the Queen and Dictator of what was U and non-U, ie posh and not. There was a long famous list of words which were lowerclass, with a matching list of the U equivalents.

In 1951 she wrote to her good friend Evelyn Waugh about republishing her early novels, and says this about Pigeon Pie, first published long before U and non-U came into consideration:

I say, it’s full of mirrors mantelpieces handbags etc don’t tell my public or I’m done for

 A lesson for us all there….

Grammar. - NYPL Digital Collections

I couldn't spell that word because I love you - NYPL Digital Collections