Bill Conrad's Blog - Posts Tagged "college"
My Eternal Struggle With Grammar Continues
Sorry, it has taken so long to write another blog. Life gets busy. The good news is that my second and third book are in the editing/publishing process. Yay! The bad news is that my eternal struggle with grammar continues. When I last wrote about my struggle, I was trying to overcome the perils of the coma and the quotation mark. On the coma, I still haven’t completely figured where they should go. Lots of different opinions in this matter. I understand most the logic behind where to properly place them. The problem is that using them correctly makes my sentences read awkwardly. In that area, I still do my best, but my editor has to make many changes.
With quotation marks, I still follow the same format. Bob said in a deep voice, “Do this.” Often, I read in other books: “Do this.” Said Bob in a deep voice. I find that style confusing as I want to know who is speaking. To me, this reads like the lights are off and somebody starts talking in a monotone voice. When they stop talking, the lights turn on and it is revealed to be the main character. Then your brain puts it all together and you fill in the fact that the main character HAD a deep voice. Somewhere there is a smart reader thinking, “I knew it all along.” While the rest of us are thinking, “Ahh, now that makes sense.”
I have added a new wrinkle to the quotation mark mystery. My characters in one story are telepathic. I decided not to use quotation marks. Bob thought to Jane, There are no formal rules about telepathic thoughts because there is no such thing. For me, this is my style choice and at least to me, I think it reads well. I also think it allows the reader to feel like they are really inside the heads of a telepath. It’s also really cool to set yourself apart when you write.
Another issue is how to deal with exclamation points. One, two or three? I also struggle with italics. I use them to show a book or movie title. I also use them to emphasise a word or show when a character is thinking. Overall, I use these two writing tools like bullets in a six-shooter gun. Pick your targets carefully!!! Wait, that was wrong. Pick your targets carefully!
Overall, I think that my writing has improved. I use contractions more often and I pay more attention to my non-book writing. I also think a lot about what I am reading and I’m now finding a lot more mistakes than I used to. Overall, I can see a huge improvement.
I did fond an unlikely helper in my struggle. The addition module to Microsoft Word, Grammarly. It comes in two parts. The first is a free grammar checker and the second part offers “tips” that strengthen your writing. I was reluctant at first, but I installed it. It is a really slow interface and this presents a major issue. The problem is that while using Grammarly there is a huge delay after you make a change. Grammarly also disables Microsoft Word’s internal spell check. I find that after you make a Grammarly pass that you have to go back over your work with Grammarly again to find out what it missed. Then turn Grammarly off and go over it with the Microsoft Word checkers on. Often these second efforts reveal many misspellings and other issues that cropped up in the first Grammarly pass. What they need is a little icon that indicates, “Hey, I’m off doing my checking. So, go get yourself a cup of coffee while I think. I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
My first use showed over 1600 issues. It took a week to go through it all. Most of the issues were obvious. However, there were some issues that really improved my sentences. The majority of the issues were words that should be combined with hyphens. The other area of concern were words that were spelled correctly, but they were the wrong word. IE, “It’s two late.” Grammarly also wanted a lot of comas added and words moved around. I think the result was stronger and it saved at least 2 hours of professional editing time. I didn’t pay for the “tips” addition because this was $30 per month and I wanted to see what I was getting before I paid.
Was it worth it? I think so. When you present a stronger document to an editor, you have much more control over the process. The editor acts less like a hardcore worker and more of a manager. This allows the editor to do what they do best and I think it makes for a stronger end result. In that area, I think Grammarly is a really great tool.
I did learn something important. The spell check and grammar check in Microsoft Word are really basic. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think Microsoft is now aware of this. Hopefully, they will make some improvements.
Will Grammarly ever replace editors? Absolutely not. In the future, AI will get much better. The result will be better products like Microsoft Word and Grammarly. However, I feel that AI will only address issues in the mechanics of a document. It will be difficult to use AI to address style, fact check, logic, and flow. For example when a character uses slang or bad English, “Who dat over dere?” Or, “WWII ended on September 2, 1955.” An incorrect date could lead to endless complaints about an otherwise great document.
One of the things I do is repeat a thought. “Bob walked out the door. It felt good to be outside. Bob was now through the door.” I have no idea why I write like that. I probably get all wrapped up with emphasizing an important point and end up writing about it too often. It’s probably the engineer in me. The point is that the sentences are perfectly valid. Microsoft Word and Grammarly would never identify the issue. A good editor would catch issues like that.
I do have an interesting history with grammar programs. Long ago, there was a standalone DOS program that would take a word processing document and check it for grammar. I cannot remember the name. I recall that it was not a popular program and the company went away. After the program ran, it would insert comments like: This is a big, big {missing comma} big problem. You would then look through your document and find the {} marks to make the change. I was not too impressed with the program and I always thought that the program used a random number generator to add comments. However, I diligently used it for several papers.
There was one particular paper I did for my psychology class. This final paper was on the relationship between stress and humor. I did a lot of research, came up with logical arguments and presented my case. My professor pulled me aside one day and warned me that she had “great concerns over my grammar” and I needed to make a special effort for this final paper. I used the program, went over the document several times and had a friend with great grammar skills looked it over. He made many corrections. The result was a C with a comment that the subject matter was fine, but the grammar was dismal. As a final insult, she had scratched out a D grade and wrote a C grade.
As I was writing this blog, I decided to go back and look at the paper. I looked it over and there were some areas that needed improving. I ran it through Grammarly and it did find a few items. The items were not too severe and the mistakes were not outrageous. I needed a few commas and there were a few words that were in the wrong tense. However, in the context of a college student, this paper is not that bad. This confirmed what I thought at the time. My teacher was bat-crap crazy. I passed that class and that was all that mattered. For kicks, I put the paper up on my website.
So where does this leave me? I hope AI improves and I will keep using a professional editor. I think editors will always be needed and they are an important part of the process. The good news is that I am improving. The bad news is that I have a long way to go. “Is it less or fewer?” To me, it will always be less. Still got to work on that.
You’re the best.
April 08. 2018
With quotation marks, I still follow the same format. Bob said in a deep voice, “Do this.” Often, I read in other books: “Do this.” Said Bob in a deep voice. I find that style confusing as I want to know who is speaking. To me, this reads like the lights are off and somebody starts talking in a monotone voice. When they stop talking, the lights turn on and it is revealed to be the main character. Then your brain puts it all together and you fill in the fact that the main character HAD a deep voice. Somewhere there is a smart reader thinking, “I knew it all along.” While the rest of us are thinking, “Ahh, now that makes sense.”
I have added a new wrinkle to the quotation mark mystery. My characters in one story are telepathic. I decided not to use quotation marks. Bob thought to Jane, There are no formal rules about telepathic thoughts because there is no such thing. For me, this is my style choice and at least to me, I think it reads well. I also think it allows the reader to feel like they are really inside the heads of a telepath. It’s also really cool to set yourself apart when you write.
Another issue is how to deal with exclamation points. One, two or three? I also struggle with italics. I use them to show a book or movie title. I also use them to emphasise a word or show when a character is thinking. Overall, I use these two writing tools like bullets in a six-shooter gun. Pick your targets carefully!!! Wait, that was wrong. Pick your targets carefully!
Overall, I think that my writing has improved. I use contractions more often and I pay more attention to my non-book writing. I also think a lot about what I am reading and I’m now finding a lot more mistakes than I used to. Overall, I can see a huge improvement.
I did fond an unlikely helper in my struggle. The addition module to Microsoft Word, Grammarly. It comes in two parts. The first is a free grammar checker and the second part offers “tips” that strengthen your writing. I was reluctant at first, but I installed it. It is a really slow interface and this presents a major issue. The problem is that while using Grammarly there is a huge delay after you make a change. Grammarly also disables Microsoft Word’s internal spell check. I find that after you make a Grammarly pass that you have to go back over your work with Grammarly again to find out what it missed. Then turn Grammarly off and go over it with the Microsoft Word checkers on. Often these second efforts reveal many misspellings and other issues that cropped up in the first Grammarly pass. What they need is a little icon that indicates, “Hey, I’m off doing my checking. So, go get yourself a cup of coffee while I think. I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
My first use showed over 1600 issues. It took a week to go through it all. Most of the issues were obvious. However, there were some issues that really improved my sentences. The majority of the issues were words that should be combined with hyphens. The other area of concern were words that were spelled correctly, but they were the wrong word. IE, “It’s two late.” Grammarly also wanted a lot of comas added and words moved around. I think the result was stronger and it saved at least 2 hours of professional editing time. I didn’t pay for the “tips” addition because this was $30 per month and I wanted to see what I was getting before I paid.
Was it worth it? I think so. When you present a stronger document to an editor, you have much more control over the process. The editor acts less like a hardcore worker and more of a manager. This allows the editor to do what they do best and I think it makes for a stronger end result. In that area, I think Grammarly is a really great tool.
I did learn something important. The spell check and grammar check in Microsoft Word are really basic. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think Microsoft is now aware of this. Hopefully, they will make some improvements.
Will Grammarly ever replace editors? Absolutely not. In the future, AI will get much better. The result will be better products like Microsoft Word and Grammarly. However, I feel that AI will only address issues in the mechanics of a document. It will be difficult to use AI to address style, fact check, logic, and flow. For example when a character uses slang or bad English, “Who dat over dere?” Or, “WWII ended on September 2, 1955.” An incorrect date could lead to endless complaints about an otherwise great document.
One of the things I do is repeat a thought. “Bob walked out the door. It felt good to be outside. Bob was now through the door.” I have no idea why I write like that. I probably get all wrapped up with emphasizing an important point and end up writing about it too often. It’s probably the engineer in me. The point is that the sentences are perfectly valid. Microsoft Word and Grammarly would never identify the issue. A good editor would catch issues like that.
I do have an interesting history with grammar programs. Long ago, there was a standalone DOS program that would take a word processing document and check it for grammar. I cannot remember the name. I recall that it was not a popular program and the company went away. After the program ran, it would insert comments like: This is a big, big {missing comma} big problem. You would then look through your document and find the {} marks to make the change. I was not too impressed with the program and I always thought that the program used a random number generator to add comments. However, I diligently used it for several papers.
There was one particular paper I did for my psychology class. This final paper was on the relationship between stress and humor. I did a lot of research, came up with logical arguments and presented my case. My professor pulled me aside one day and warned me that she had “great concerns over my grammar” and I needed to make a special effort for this final paper. I used the program, went over the document several times and had a friend with great grammar skills looked it over. He made many corrections. The result was a C with a comment that the subject matter was fine, but the grammar was dismal. As a final insult, she had scratched out a D grade and wrote a C grade.
As I was writing this blog, I decided to go back and look at the paper. I looked it over and there were some areas that needed improving. I ran it through Grammarly and it did find a few items. The items were not too severe and the mistakes were not outrageous. I needed a few commas and there were a few words that were in the wrong tense. However, in the context of a college student, this paper is not that bad. This confirmed what I thought at the time. My teacher was bat-crap crazy. I passed that class and that was all that mattered. For kicks, I put the paper up on my website.
So where does this leave me? I hope AI improves and I will keep using a professional editor. I think editors will always be needed and they are an important part of the process. The good news is that I am improving. The bad news is that I have a long way to go. “Is it less or fewer?” To me, it will always be less. Still got to work on that.
You’re the best.
April 08. 2018
Creative Writing in College
In my third year of college, I took a creative writing class. There wasn’t a whole lot of structure and basically, the professor encouraged us to come up with short stories. I had written some minor works in the past and I even posted a few jokes on Usenet. Want to read one?
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/;-)/Bridg...
For me, this creative writing class was a big change because I was encouraged to write larger story arcs and this effort encouraged to push my creative limits. To help with this, the professor offered topic guidelines and tips for crafting great stories.
Not knowing what else to write about, I took characters (friends and family) directly from my life and put them into the most far-fetched situations that I could come up with. Because of a recent blog post, I decided to dig up these college creative writing stories from an old hard drive directory. At first, I was shocked. My grammar was atrocious and my spelling was worse. It was so bad that I wondered if somehow translating from the old DOS program Office Writer to Microsoft Office 3.0 to Microsoft Office 2016 had somehow dramatically affected my words. Last weekend, I happened to be in the attic and opened a box of my old college stuff. I had saved one of the stories and it had all the comments from the professor. I had no idea how bad my grasp of the English language used to be.
After I got over my shock, I was able to take an unbiased look at the content. What I had come up with was interesting and I had a real knack for dialog. I was surprised because I thought that writing good dialog was a recent occurrence. I also had a good flow and a real understanding of plot structure. I had talent back then? Who knew?
The story that I want to concentrate on for this blog is called “A Trip.” In high school, I would go bike riding into the canyon near our house. It was a great time in my life and I had a lot of fun. On one of those trips, I thought I was being chased and I hid for 10 minutes in a drainage pipe. Some men drove up and illegally dumped their garbage. This was a frightening experience because I couldn’t see what was going on and from the noise, they were making, I thought they were looking for me.
From that basic beginning, I whirled off an imaginative tale of a bike riding boy. I read the story twice and it brought me back to that simple time. I remember that joyful kid who had a vivid imagination and a bright future. I also remember how this kid completely understood how the world worked. He was going to bend it into submission with his great ideas. I suppose that all kids are convinced that “their generation will make it right.” [Lyric from Land Of Confusion by Genesis]
I read the story a third time and I could see my present personality peeking out. I could also see that I used to have a real negative streak. In college, I was becoming aware that this personality trait was getting out of hand and my friends told me the same thing. To address this negative streak, I forced myself to have a positive outlook. In the story, the character Randy clearly has that negative streak. He assumes that people will act a certain way and he looks down upon them even when they’re nice. If something bad happens, the world is punishing him. Everything is stupid and everyone’s a jerk. Except for Randy, he’s perfect. At the time, I thought this was cool to act and Randy was my alter ego. I remember those days and I’m really glad that I put in the personal effort to change. There’s no doubt that if I hadn’t put in this effort, I would have grown up a miserable person. What kind of woman would put up with a man like that? Reading this story made me proud of what I accomplished. It’s also proof that a person can change their life if they really want to.
To save the world, Randy uses his imagination and this is the magic cure for everything. That Engineering mind. There’s always a solution, just analyze the logic. Some things never change. It occurs to me that Randy’s intelligence could be considered a blessing or a curse. I have known many people who were too smart for themselves. The term for these people is “smart slacker.” At times, I still recognize this trait and when it peeks out, it makes me ashamed. In these circumstances, I should be acting nicer and trying harder.
While the story needed major grammar and spelling fixes, it was a perfectly good short story arc that could have occurred. Well, I think it could have occurred. Taking a high-level look at this story, it made me proud of my early writing accomplishments. The words were emotional and it was clear that I drew from my best experiences. That’s what creative writing is all about.
Will there be any future creative writing for me? One day, I might write a book full of short stories. I have an interesting idea about Amelia Earhart and time travel. But for now, blogging and writing full fiction books are my only creative outlet. Writing this blog is bringing back fond memories of those times. Something to think about.
Read the story here:
http://interviewingimmortality.com/at...
http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/;-)/Bridg...
For me, this creative writing class was a big change because I was encouraged to write larger story arcs and this effort encouraged to push my creative limits. To help with this, the professor offered topic guidelines and tips for crafting great stories.
Not knowing what else to write about, I took characters (friends and family) directly from my life and put them into the most far-fetched situations that I could come up with. Because of a recent blog post, I decided to dig up these college creative writing stories from an old hard drive directory. At first, I was shocked. My grammar was atrocious and my spelling was worse. It was so bad that I wondered if somehow translating from the old DOS program Office Writer to Microsoft Office 3.0 to Microsoft Office 2016 had somehow dramatically affected my words. Last weekend, I happened to be in the attic and opened a box of my old college stuff. I had saved one of the stories and it had all the comments from the professor. I had no idea how bad my grasp of the English language used to be.
After I got over my shock, I was able to take an unbiased look at the content. What I had come up with was interesting and I had a real knack for dialog. I was surprised because I thought that writing good dialog was a recent occurrence. I also had a good flow and a real understanding of plot structure. I had talent back then? Who knew?
The story that I want to concentrate on for this blog is called “A Trip.” In high school, I would go bike riding into the canyon near our house. It was a great time in my life and I had a lot of fun. On one of those trips, I thought I was being chased and I hid for 10 minutes in a drainage pipe. Some men drove up and illegally dumped their garbage. This was a frightening experience because I couldn’t see what was going on and from the noise, they were making, I thought they were looking for me.
From that basic beginning, I whirled off an imaginative tale of a bike riding boy. I read the story twice and it brought me back to that simple time. I remember that joyful kid who had a vivid imagination and a bright future. I also remember how this kid completely understood how the world worked. He was going to bend it into submission with his great ideas. I suppose that all kids are convinced that “their generation will make it right.” [Lyric from Land Of Confusion by Genesis]
I read the story a third time and I could see my present personality peeking out. I could also see that I used to have a real negative streak. In college, I was becoming aware that this personality trait was getting out of hand and my friends told me the same thing. To address this negative streak, I forced myself to have a positive outlook. In the story, the character Randy clearly has that negative streak. He assumes that people will act a certain way and he looks down upon them even when they’re nice. If something bad happens, the world is punishing him. Everything is stupid and everyone’s a jerk. Except for Randy, he’s perfect. At the time, I thought this was cool to act and Randy was my alter ego. I remember those days and I’m really glad that I put in the personal effort to change. There’s no doubt that if I hadn’t put in this effort, I would have grown up a miserable person. What kind of woman would put up with a man like that? Reading this story made me proud of what I accomplished. It’s also proof that a person can change their life if they really want to.
To save the world, Randy uses his imagination and this is the magic cure for everything. That Engineering mind. There’s always a solution, just analyze the logic. Some things never change. It occurs to me that Randy’s intelligence could be considered a blessing or a curse. I have known many people who were too smart for themselves. The term for these people is “smart slacker.” At times, I still recognize this trait and when it peeks out, it makes me ashamed. In these circumstances, I should be acting nicer and trying harder.
While the story needed major grammar and spelling fixes, it was a perfectly good short story arc that could have occurred. Well, I think it could have occurred. Taking a high-level look at this story, it made me proud of my early writing accomplishments. The words were emotional and it was clear that I drew from my best experiences. That’s what creative writing is all about.
Will there be any future creative writing for me? One day, I might write a book full of short stories. I have an interesting idea about Amelia Earhart and time travel. But for now, blogging and writing full fiction books are my only creative outlet. Writing this blog is bringing back fond memories of those times. Something to think about.
Read the story here:
http://interviewingimmortality.com/at...
