Arlene Miller's Blog, page 16

Drunk on Words

A Guest Post from Lorraine SegalAbout Lorraine Segal

After surviving the ’50s and ’60s, as well as twenty years in toxic academia as a professor, Lorraine Segal was inspired to start her own business, Conflict Remedy, happily teaching, coaching, blogging, and consulting around workplace conflict transformation. She is addicted to reading novels and enjoys walking in beautiful Northern California, where she lives with her wife. Her cartoon muse, Bookie, insisted that she write her memoir, Angels and Earthworms. For more information go to https://BooklingPress.com

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In my eighth grade English class, we were supposed to read as many books as possible. Mr. Townsend had his own paperback library in the classroom and he

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

encouraged us to borrow. And we each had to keep a vocabulary notebook. When we came across a word we didn’t know in one of the books, or in a newspaper or on the radio, we had to write the word down, look up the dictionary definition, and quote a sentence which used the word in context. I found the process fascinating, and this began my lifelong love affair with words.

To this day, I love words and synonyms. In my professional writing and speaking, I do my best to use direct, simple, effective words, but when I’m feeling giggly and free, I use lots of the words that I used to call “big,” polysyllabic and complicated, because I get drunk on words!

Post-Mr. Townsend, I don’t think I formally studied words or meanings very much, at least in English, until graduate school. It was more of an organic process. Reading a novel, coming across a word I didn’t know, puzzling out the meaning from context, later encountering the word again and getting more ideas about the meaning. I will say that I enjoyed TV’s Jeopardy because I almost always knew some of the answers, partly because of my vocabulary, and partly because I have a huge grab bag of trivia about history and culture from reading so many novels.

And my two cents . . .

I guess being drunk on words is better than being drunk on some other things! I, like Lorraine, also love words. However, I remember as a student, I didn’t think I had much of a vocabulary. I don’t know when this changed, but I am pretty OK in that category now. Of course I always read a lot, but when I encountered a word I didn’t know, I think I might have been too lazy to look it up. However, I could sure spell well, probably because I read so much and once I saw a word, I could visualize it and “see” how it had been spelled.

I know we did a lot of spelling in grade school, and I think we did a lot of vocabulary after that. Of course the SAT exam has quite a bit of vocabulary. When I taught 7th grade English, I included a ton of vocabulary. We studied Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes. There was no spelling or vocabulary textbook, but I gave the students words of the day and spelling/vocabulary tests. They needed to know how to spell the word, its part of speech, its definition, and how to use it in a sentence. Some of them did pretty poorly most of the time. They didn’t study. 

I will never forget the day one of my top students in my advanced class brought me a word I had never heard of: defenestrate, which means to  throw someone out of a window. I quickly added that word to their vocabulary list and to the list for years to come!

And speaking of Jeopardy, I used to watch it from time to time, but for the past year I have been a steady watcher. I watch while I exercise, and I record it in case I should miss it, I am a lost cause most of the time on the history and geography, but I can sometimes ace a word-related category! 

This month I started doing a Word of the Day of new words added to the dictionary recently. You can see it if you follow me on Twitter or we are connected on LinkedIn or Facebook. 

For a while I was doing a daily crossword puzzle.

I am not so great at Scrabble, which I rarely play, so maybe with practice…

Oh, and I play Wordle.  Every. Day. I am pretty good at that. 

 

 

BOO! Halloween Trivia and Such…

DID YOU KNOW?

The pumpkin is a fruit because it has seeds, and it is in the same family as the cucumber.

Illinois produces 40% of the nation’s pumpkins.

The average household gives two pieces of candy to each trick or treater. 

Dracula means Son of the Devil.

Jack O’Lanterns were originally made of turnips.

Transylvania is in Romania

Nineteen people were hanged during the Salem witch trials.

$300 million is spent on pet costumes for Halloween annually.

Halloween is the second largest consumer holiday. Of course, Christmas is the first.

Halloween originated in Ireland.

It is said that people born on Halloween can see and talk to spirits.

Pumpkins originated in Central America.

People in New England call the night before Halloween Cabbage Night. 

Lewisburg, Ohio, is home to the world’s longest haunted house.

And….Psycho was the first movie to show a toilet onscreen  – in 1960. So now you know!

 

Samhainophobia is the fear of Halloween.

Ailurophobia is the fear of cats.

Chiroptophobia is the fear of bats.

Hadephobia is the fear of hell.

Hemophobia is the fear of blood.

Herpetophobia is the fear of creepy crawly things.

Myctophobia is the fear of darkness.

Necrophobia is the fear of dead things.

Nyctohylophobia is the fear of dark wooded areas or forests at night.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th.

Phasmophobia is the fear of ghosts.

Placophobia is the fear of tombstones.

Pneumatiphobia is the fear of spirits.

Wiccaphobia is the fear of witches. 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

 

Hey! Where Are the Quotation Marks?

Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay

I can’t remember what I did yesterday, but I can remember exactly where I was sitting at a Redwood Writers (CA) workshop when I learned that some writers do not use quotations around dialogue. Actually, at this time one author was mentioned, whom I had not heard of. I think this particular author  used a hyphen or short dash at the beginning of lines of dialogue. I thought, “Oh, the horror!”  And life went on . . .

Several months ago, I read The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles. Excellent book. But I noticed there were no quotation marks to indicate dialogue. This was the first time I noticed I was reading something without quotation marks to indicate dialogue.  I don’t think there were dashes either. Just —  nothing.

Nonetheless I could read the book easily, and the lack of quotation marks did not bother me at all. Actually, it felt rather freeing not to have all those little marks in there. Shortly after I finished reading it, I spoke to a friend who was in the process of reading it. She didn’t even notice it had no quotation marks to indicate dialogue. At the time I figured it was because she was not involved in writing or publishing. 

When I was researching this post, I discovered that there are many books that don’t use quotation marks for dialogue — some of which I have read without ever noticing. And a few of them I read recently. 

Some of the more famous authors who don’t use quotation marks for dialogue are Samuel Beckett, Cormac McCarthy, E.L. Doctorow, and the forefather of this style, James Joyce (whom I read a while ago and choose to forget about).

A few of the books I have read and never noticed they were “quoteless” are Normal People by Sally Rooney, Groundskeeping by Lee Cole, and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (all of which I liked).

In the beginning, 1st-century scribes used the diple (>) to indicate a line containing noteworthy text. After the invention of the printing press, compositors used a pair of commas – or hanging commas – to indicate quoted text. Quotes have been in print since the 16th century.

However, not all countries and languages use the double quotes for dialogue. In the United Kingdom single quotes are used, with double quotes used for quotes inside of quotes — exactly the opposite of how we in America do it.  In France it is customary to use dashes.

So, why not use quotation marks to indicate dialogue? Most authors (including me) still do.

Some say eliminating the quotes is more elegant and actually easier for readers.Lack of quotation marks blurs the line between dialogue and description, allowing readers to insert more of their own interpretation.If you write well, the reader should be able to easily tell the difference between text and dialogue.The page looks cleaner without all the little marks.

However, if not done correctly, the lack of quotation marks can be a problem.

It can be annoying to the reader trying to figure out who is saying what.It is not the reader’s job to determine what is dialogue and what isn’t. Therefore, some readers might just give up.

 

…And then there is e.e.cummings and his lack of capital letters. But that’s another thing entirely . . .

 

 

 

The Mark of Gutenberg: A Reader’s Memories

Image by Sabrina Eickhoff from Pixabay

I am very  happy to present this guest post by my friend Bart Scott — lawyer, musician, and writer.

Bart Scott set out to become a college English teacher but blinked and wound up in law school. He practices criminal defense in Northern California, and considers the human failings that feed his practice to be both real and literary. He has also been known to sneak literary references into his briefings.

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

He plays blues, rock, and country music on guitar and is anticipating retirement from the law within the next year.

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         When I was a child growing up in suburban California, reading was something that distinguished, and divided, me from my peers. I was small, shy, and near-sighted. There was no team for which anyone wanted to choose me. I had a couple of friends, but I was not a social butterfly. The transition to bookworm was easy.

         We had a bookmobile from the local library that stopped right in front of our house every Wednesday. My mother—an avid reader to this day—would check out books for the five kids.

         I still remember the book that taught me the printed page was a richer world than the playground at Portola Elementary School. It was Kee and Bah: Navajo Children by Elizabeth Pack. My guess is that I was in third grade, and I sat on an overstuffed chair in the living room and read until 11:00, way past my bedtime. My mother must have perceived an English major in the making; she let me read until I finished the book.

         From then on, books were my thing. I had no need for kickball (at which I sucked) or other sports. Were there other sports? I wouldn’t have known.

         In the fourth grade, I read Van Loon’s The Story of Mankind. I recall only one aspect of the book: the preface. He wrote that if there were a huge rock in the wilderness, and every year a bird came to the rock to sharpen its beak, when the rock had been worn away, one day of eternity would have passed. I know the book introduced me to a concept of the arc of history, but I have no idea if it was another apology for white colonialism. The important thing for me was the awareness there were other people living different lives from the repugnant playground.

         Then there was The Travels of Jamie McPheeters, an adult bestseller about America’s westward expansion. The protagonist was in a wagon train traveling west, and the book offered rape, murder, and—at one point—a guy getting deservedly skinned alive. I was in fifth grade. In my book report I wrote, with no suggestion of irony, that I would not recommend the book for children.

         The books kept coming. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in seventh grade; all of Kenneth Roberts’s historical novels; the Constance Garnett translation of the Brothers Karamazov in eighth grade. In fact, by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I had read every novel Dostoevsky ever wrote. The Brothers Karamazov taught me an important lesson about the acquisition of knowledge. When I reread the book as an adult, I realized that the Grand Inquisitor chapter of the book, in which the inquisition prosecutes Christ, had a major role in forming my religious skepticism. See? All those book-burning morons are right.

         During most of my life, reading has been a solace and a source of intellectual expansion. When I was in the Navy, I discovered the library on my ship had a damned fine collection of apparently unopened books. I read the entire Alexandria Quarter. Later I went to a Navy school to become a clerk—not that I didn’t love swabbing decks, and, yes, we really did that. The chow hall (yes, that’s what we called it) was a bus ride from the classroom. My fellow students would dash out to the bus at noon to get their ration of shit on a shingle; I pulled out a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses and read as I walked to lunch. Leopold Bloom and the urine scent of cooking kidneys.

         It was thus a forgone conclusion that I would be an English major.  But I never pursued literature for the intellectual calisthenics. For me, reading was always an open window to other people’s lives, an expansion of perspective, a check on personal assumptions. The palliative for the risk of being an autodidact: the assurance that there would always be a voice in my head besides my own.

         And reading has allowed me to live in my head, a place that, for all its inconsistencies, is just fine by me. Does reading still divide me from my peers? I don’t know; I just know that I have an attention span of longer than 15 seconds. You kind of need that if you are going to read.

 

 

 

 

The Curse of Cursive

Image by Amanda Truscott from Pixabay

Can you write in cursive? Chances are you can. You may or may not do it often, but you probably are able to write it and read it. 

I taught in California from 2004 through 2015. Since I taught 7th grade, I assumed my students had been taught to write cursive in elementary school. And they had been. However, many of them would deny every learning it, and most of them would say they couldn’t do it — or if they managed to do it, they told me I wouldn’t be able to read it. Truth told, I usually could read it better than their printing. In 7th grade we had no established handwriting curriculum, but all five of us English teachers believed in teaching cursive. Most of us required cursive writing for things like in-class essays (this is before students had computers in the classroom).  One teacher wrote in cursive on the board — some students could not read it. During the last couple of years I taught, we were told we could not “require” students to write in cursive.  

In 2010 Common Core standards were adopted by the United States Department of Education. Those standards did not mention handwriting at all. Common Core has since been dropped by or is dying out in many states. 

In 2016 fourteen states required cursive as part of their curriculum. Now, twenty-one states do. Here are those states:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia

Besides Delaware and Massachusetts, those states look to me to be conservative (or red) states. In a way it makes sense because cursive is not exactly progressive; it is more traditional.

Some states, like California, leave it up to the individual school districts whether or not to teach cursive. When I left teaching there in 2015, I believe it was taught in 3rd grade in my district.  Generally, in the states that teach it, cursive is taught between third and fifth grades. Some states expect competency by fifth grade. I began to learn cursive in second grade in Massachusetts back in the Dark Ages.

Why is there a controversy about cursive at all? We teach kids to print. And now, just about everything is done on a computer anyway. Isn’t keyboarding a more important skill to learn?

Opinions range on the usefulness of cursive. Some teachers say it is a thing of the past, and there are more important things to teach in a packed curriculum. Some say that cursive should be taught, as well as keyboarding; all the skills are necessary.

Aside from the obvious uses of cursive, like being able to sign a check (who uses checks anymore?) and being able to read original documents like The Declaration of Independence, there are several advantages to learning and using cursive:

Many studies have shown that writing in cursive improves comprehension and retention of the material written.Learning how to join letters in a continuous flow engages the brain on a deep level.Writing cursive enhances fine motor dexterity.Cursive gives children a better idea of how words work in combination with each other. College students who took notes on a laptop took more notes, often verbatim from the professor. Students who used cursive paraphrased what was said and had better recall of their notes.Cursive is advantageous to dyslexic students who can get confused by printed letters that look similar, like b and d, whereas cursive letters all look different. 

My personal opinion of cursive is – I love it. When I scribble something on my grocery list that hangs on the fridge, I use cursive. (Yeah, I know. I could just ask Alexa to add something to my list.) But when I neatly copy my list over again (because I am a Virgo), I will likely print. I am the secretary of two boards, so I need to take copious notes at board meetings. If it is a Zoom meeting, my computer is already occupied, so I can’t type the notes anyway, but it is much faster and much more accurate if I use cursive, and I always do. I rarely have taken notes anyplace with a computer.  And when I go to a conference — usually made up of authors and people in publishing — the numbers of  plain old paper notebooks always outweighs the number of laptops. 

Call me a luddite. And proud of it.  

 

 

 

 

 

Becoming a Freelance Writer/Hurricane Update and More

Hurricane Update: 

As you may or may not know, I live about 20 miles south of Tampa, FL. Ian was supposed to hit us directly. I do not live in a flood evacuation zone, but no one could talk about anything except the hurricane last weekend, so I had to take my head out of the sand regarding my first Florida hurricane. I made necessary preparations in case of loss of power and water: filling bathtubs and wastebaskets with water,  getting water to drink, having enough flashlights and extra phone chargers, etc. I do not, however, have hurricane shutters for my house. My daughter and son-in-law live three miles down the road, and they do have shutters (although there was a fiasco in the neighborhood with putting them up. They came with the fairly new houses, but people were given the size that belonged to other people in the neighborhood. It got straightened out in time.)

We were very lucky. The hurricane decided to change course a bit and came onto land about 120 miles south of us. Fort Myers, not expecting to be hit hard, was devastated. Tampa, predicted to get 10 or 20 inches of rain, probably didn’t even get five. There was no storm surge in Tampa Bay, and as a matter of fact, the wind sucked the water out of the bay.

However, it was still a major storm even here. And it went on to unexpectedly wreak havoc on Orlando and Kissimmee, inland. Now it is on its way up to the Carolinas, so everyone involved, stay safe. Even 20 miles south of us, houses had major damage. My daughter’s house and my house suffered no damage. Their fence is still up. My tree did not fall into my house, although it lost some small branches. However, both our neighborhoods had many trees down and are kind of a mess. 

But we are grateful.

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I am pleased to present a guest post by Amber Ramsey.

Amber is a career woman. She’s fierce, confident, and has the “can do” attitude we all strive for. Like most of us, she started out in the corporate world, but she found that her fire, spirit, and creativity were better suited to the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Amber has been on both sides of the desk, as an employee and the boss, so she has plenty of career advice to share.

 

How to Become a Freelance Writer as a Student or Recent GradImage by Jan Vašek from Pixabay

Freelance writing offers ample flexibility, making it a perfect career for students and those who have to manage their time wisely. As a freelancer, you can choose when and how much work you take on, making it easier to earn more when you have a lighter course load. 

Train Wisely

Many free and low-cost online training programs are available for aspiring freelancers, and social media accounts and YoutTube channels are filled with tips. There’s no need to spend a fortune getting ready to write. If you choose to work as an independent contractor for a content company, they often will include training so you can get paid while you learn. Seek out blogs and tips from other writers for more free information.

It’s also a good idea to polish your grammar, both when starting out and as an ongoing discipline. ( You can always each out to Arlene Miller, The Grammar Diva.)

Create Writing Samples

Along with a resume that lists your skills and experience, you will want to gather or prepare writing samples for potential employers or clients to see. If you don’t have any samples ready, you can write some that relate to topics you are interested in or topics that content writers are frequently hired to write about for blogs. You may also want to familiarize yourself with writing search engine optimization content and show your skills in that area.

Find Jobs

There are a few different ways to enter the freelance market. Job sites like FlexJobs, Fiverr, and UpWork allow you to find content-writing jobs that are already listed or to list yourself as a freelancer for others to seek out. These sites can also connect you with companies looking for part-time writers and have positions with a significant amount of flexibility.

On sites like Fiverr, where clients can hire you directly, it’s essential that you get good reviews. A great way to do this when starting out is by offering your services at a low price so that you attract more clients and garner great reviews quickly. Like everything else on the internet, you want to make sure you hack the algorithm and come up at the top of search results.

Organize Your Time

It can be easy to get overwhelmed when you’re juggling school, work, social activities, and other hobbies. Before you start freelancing, you will want to make sure you have a system in place to stay on top of everything. Try using a task manager like Trello or Evernote to get everything organized. Both of these programs allow you to keep track of due dates and offer other premium features that keep you on track. Eastern Washington University suggests making sure that you assess what a reasonable amount of work to take on is so that you can prevent burnout.

Get Your Paperwork Ready

You will want to create a business entity so that you can properly file your taxes with a tax ID number (EIN). An EIN will be unique to your business and help the IRS track your payroll taxes. It will make filing your federal and state taxes easier as well.

The tips above should have you on your way to starting your new career. Thankfully, with the content job market growing, ample opportunities are available for talented writers. As always, persistence and enthusiasm will help set you apart from the pack.

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IN OTHER NEWS:

Last week I had a lovely Zoom session with Robert Brandwayn, a language coach, musician, and artist from Bogota, Columbia. Our conversation will be on YouTube and his podcast when it is edited. I will provide links at that time. 

I am proud to say that The Best Grammar Workbook Ever     was the #1 book in the Adult and Continuing Education category on Amazon  for several days in September.  Thank you all for your support.

 

 

 

The Gift of Reading – Part 2

Last week you read a guest post from Lorraine Segal about the gift of reading she received in childhood.  Her words made me remember snippets of my childhood that involve books and reading. 

When people read my memoir, they tell me are surprised by how much I remembered. While I may not remember what I ate last night, I do remember things clearly from my youth — but really snippets that are clear as day, not entire sequences of memories. I may remember what I wore to a certain event, but nothing about the event itself.

First of all, I want to say that I am sure my parents — or at least my mother — read to me, but I don’t remember any of those books that were read to me. One of my first memories of books was of  a few books that we had in the house. I am not sure if they were bought for me or they were my mother’s books, since these books first came out in the early 1900s. First, there were a couple of Bobbsey Twins books. I just looked them up on Amazon, and the originals (hardcover of course) had green covers, which is exactly what I remember. I think I read them, but they were not my favorites, and I don’t know if we ever added to that small collection. The other book I remember clearly is Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I remember our copy had a glossy cover with a color picture of Rebecca. I couldn’t find the cover I remember on Amazon. I probably read that one, but it doesn’t stand out in my mind. Another book I had as a child, one that I think was bought for me, was Uncle Wiggly and His Friends, which according to Amazon, first came out in 1955, which makes sense. And the cover I remember is the one in this post and on Amazon. 

I was very close with my maternal grandparents, who lived around the corner, and I spent a great deal of time at their house. I remember a fairly small, narrow bookcase that was next to a chair I used to sit on in the corner of the living room. On the top shelf of that bookcase was a collection of classics — it looked as if it perhaps came from the grocery store when they used to give a new book out each week (am I dating myself?). I think among those books were Thackeray’s Vanity Fair,  Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Milton’s Paradise Lost. Little Women might have also been there. There were probably fifteen or twenty books on that shelf. I don’t know if I read any of them, but I used to look at them a lot. 

My cousin — who was closer to my mother’ s age — bought me my first two Nancy Drew books, The Hidden Staircase and The Secret of the Old Clock. I loved them and went on to read many, many Nancy Drew books. I tried reading one of them as an adult, and it wasn’t quite the same, but now that I am writing this, the urge hits me again to read a Nancy Drew book! (I just reserved one at the library – the print book, since reading it in e-book form just didn’t seem quite right.)

In fifth grade I had a couple of “boy” friends who introduced me to The Hardy Boys, so I read a couple of those too and liked them.

My best friend through elementary and junior high school  and I got into reading Poe and used to scare each other with our own Poe-like stories. We would say that the birds (probably pigeons) in the air were really bats. I remember The Masque of the Red Death, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Gold Bug, The Telltale Heart, etc.

I haven’t read science fiction in decades, but I did read it as a kid. I remember reading Heinlein and Bradbury — and Frank Herbert’s Dune at some point. Maybe I was older when I read that one.

I still like a good mystery — mostly cozy mysteries now– but I was a big fan of Agatha Christie in my youth and read a lot of her books.

Some of my favorite books from my preteen and teenage years were A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Good Earth, and especially Fifteen by Beverly Cleary. 

Poetry? e.e.cummings. I don’t read much poetry, and he is still my favorite.

And I cannot forget the magazines my best friend and I would read. Aside from the fan magazines, we read Teen and Seventeen, where we learned our first things about makeup and fashion. There were two famous models at the time: Colleen Corby, a brunette, and Teri Reno, a blonde. I would pretend to be Corby, and my blonde friend would pretend to be Reno.

In junior high and high school I started writing song lyrics (my ambition at the time was to be a songwriter), and I faithfully read Billboard Magazine. When I thought I might not become a songwriter after all,  I decided I wanted to write for Billboard Magazine; that is really what started my whole writing career — although sadly, I never wrote for Billboard. 

The awful things we had to read in junior high and high school at that time also stick in my memory. Evangeline by Longfellow: “This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks” (yuck). And Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (double yuck).  And David Copperfield wasn’t much better. In my high school in Massachusetts, The Scarlet Letter was banned, so we had to read The House of the Seven Gables. And Moby Dick, which I didn’t like. I do remember being put in a special reading club for more advanced readers, maybe in 10th grade? We read Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge Of San Luis Rey. For some reason, I never forgot that one. And my favorite book? At least from my “youth”? A Separate Peace by John Knowles, although I was a bit older when I read it. 

I like to read now as much as I ever did. Call me a nerd. And thank you for the compliment!

 

 

The Gift of Reading

A Guest Post from Lorraine Segal Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from PixabayAbout Lorraine Segal

After surviving the ’50s and ’60s, as well as twenty years in toxic academia as a professor, Lorraine Segal was inspired to start her own business, Conflict Remedy, happily teaching, coaching, blogging, and consulting around workplace conflict transformation. She is addicted to reading novels and enjoys walking in beautiful Northern California, where she lives with her wife. Her cartoon muse, Bookie, insisted that she write her memoir, Angels and Earthworms. For more information go to https://BooklingPress.com

From Chapter 1 Welcome to Downey, Future Unlimited

Library Liberation

One of the big gifts I was given in childhood was the gift of reading. Both parents read out loud to my sister and me. My father, Henry, worked in downtown Los Angeles and he would go to the huge children’s department in the main L.A. library, and get the librarians to help him choose books for us. The librarians adored him; it was unusual then for a man to do this for his young daughters. He would bring the books home in his black metal lunch box, and I still remember the excitement and anticipation we felt to see what treasurers he had brought!

I read my first “chapter” book when I was very young, and I have been reading, mostly novels, with memoirs, self-help books, and other non-fiction thrown in, with delight and enthusiasm ever since. I once estimated the number of books I’ve read in my life and I’m sure, conservatively, it is well over 12,000. My Aunt Rose also sent beautifully illustrated hardback children’s books each year for our birthdays, like Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, A Little Princess, Black Beauty. Some of them I still have.

In my challenging childhood, books were my friends, my comfort, my escape, feeding my sense of wonder and offering a window on a bigger world. They were also my key to understanding other people and other cultures. I read an article a few years ago which said that people who read novels tend to be more empathetic because they enter into the lives, perceptions, and feelings of people very different from them. This is certainly true of me and explains why I can easily feel empathy for people who have had a very different life experience from my own. I probably spent time with someone like them inside a book.

I particularly loved historical novels and fantasy and science fiction, appreciating the bigger escape not only from my particular life, but my time, my world, and my American culture.

The public library in Downey was small and limited, but once I was old enough to go, I loved it. I read just about everything in the children’s section by the time I was nine or ten, and moved on to the few shelves of young adult books.

The young adult section had a system of labeling that involved putting small pieces of sticky white tape with red symbols on the spine. There was a rocket ship for science fiction books, two hearts for the teen romances, and a magnifying glass for mysteries. I read everything.

The first science fiction book I read was by Robert Heinlein. It was either Rocket Ship Galileo or Orphans of the Sky. My imagination was captured by these outer space adventures that involved kids. I still have a soft spot for well-written science fiction and fantasy.

Then, by age eleven, I switched to the adult novel section. I would start at the “A”s, and stop when I reached the maximum number of books I could take out. I read trashy novels and classics indiscriminately.

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I can so relate to Lorraine’s reading experiences, although I have no clue how many books I have read in my lifetime! (Do I count the ones I did not finish?). Next week, I will talk about my memories of childhood reading in The Gift of Reading Part 2.

 

 

 

One Word — Or Two?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Some words, usually indefinite pronouns that are compound, are sometimes written as two words instead of one:

everyonesomeoneeverythingsomethingnothinganyoneanythingsometimes (which is an adverb)sometime (adverb) / some time (adjective and noun)anymore (adverb)/any more (adjective and adverb)

When you write them as two words (every one), they become pronouns or nouns preceded by an adjective: every one (Every is an adjective here, modifying one.)

Sometimes (there’s one right there) these words should be written as one word, but in some cases, they should be separated.

Everyone = all the people/every one = each one separately

Here are some examples of correct usage:

Everyone is bringing only one suitcase.Every one of you should pack only one suitcase. Someone is at the door.Some one is generally not used for anything.Everything in your garden is beautiful.Every little thing in your garden is perfect. (Everything is generally used unless there is a word separating.)Something is wrong with the dog.Some creepy thing is under the table. (Something is generally used unless there is a word separating.)Nothing is wrong.No little thing will stop me. (Nothing is generally used unless there is a word separating.)Is anyone there?Any one of you can easily accomplish this. She thinks she can do anything.She complains about any little thing.  (Anything is generally used unless there is a word separating.)Sometimes I just feel like reading all day. Some times are just better than others.Come visit me sometime.I will come spend some time with you.I don’t ski anymore.Is there any more pie?

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Online Dating and Grammar

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Okay. I have to admit I have done more than my share of online dating. And if I see an it’s instead of its, no capital letters, no periods, or any other grammar or spelling faux pas, I am off to the next profile. But is everyone like me? I would think so. However . . .

One study, by writing platform ProWritingAid, found that men prefer women with poor grammar and are slightly less drawn to well-written profiles. I cannot imagine that, and I think it is sad. Perhaps that is why I have had such bad luck with online dating. This same survey showed that male daters were 10% less likely to initiate a connection with good grammar girls.

But, on the contrary,  female daters between 18 and 34 years old were over 300% times more likely to go for a man who hadn’t made any grammatical mistakes; among all ages, women were 39% more likely to connect with a man who had a good grasp of the English language.

The study found that 63% of women say grammar is important, with 53% of men say the same. But those figures don’t reflect the reality.

Lisa Lepki, head of marketing at ProWritingAid, said: “Our hypothesis was that well-written, grammatically correct profiles would be marginally more attractive to daters,” but the results didn’t show that at all.”

Women did indeed prefer well-written profiles, and men received triple the matches if they used good grammar in their profiles.

But men seemed to prefer profiles that are badly written. Why?

Lepki asked, “Do men feel intimidated by women with good grammar? Or do they think they have a better chance with writers of poorly written profiles?”

Tina Wilson, relationship expert and founder of the app Wingman, believes  there are two possibilities:

 “One is the man is insecure and if he feels the woman has a higher intellect than themselves they would feel superior and more likely to be the dominant partner. This should, of course, be a red flag to any potential partner as if someone is so insecure they don’t want an intellectual equal or superior, they need to grow up before they start dating.”Wilson also thinks that men could also be interpreting more casual grammar as a sign that women aren’t taking themselves too seriously, which might be an attractive trait to them. “Perhaps male daters tend to prefer women who are more relaxed and confident within themselves,” she ventured.  

There are, however, varying degrees of errors: Big, obvious mistakes that stand out like a sore thumb – such as the word defiantly instead of definitely – will likely be noted.

So what is it that makes women prefer good grammar?

 Wilson explained, “Women on the other hand typically pay close attention to detail. According to our own statistics at Wingman, most women who receive a message starting with  ‘hey how r u?’ or any similar shortened words or phrases used in communications or put on a dating profile will firmly land the man in rejection territory.”

The Netherlands Study

A similar study was done in the Netherlands. This study found that spelling mistakes in a dating profile, such as writing teh for the or using iRRegulaR CapS, are perceived as signals of sloppiness or lack of care, which in turn affects the profile holder’s perceived attractiveness. The researchers from Tilburg University had thought that using informal digital communication styles – such as excessive exclamation marks or emoticons – would be seen as kinder. But in fact, those whose grammar was more formal were rated as warmer people.

Command of the written word has been rated highly in other studies of traits that people look for in potential partners. It may seem like a failure of imagination, but language errors can be interpreted as an indicator of poor education or being inattentive, clumsy, or ignorant.

This study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, had limitations. The sample was small —  all mostly “older adults” on one Dutch dating website. It may be that on dating apps serving younger demographics, a good grasp of literacy and convention might be rated less highly.

Linguist Gretchen McCulloch, author of Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language, has explored how written online communication has evolved its own rules, such as using all lowercase to seem relaxed: “If I say everything very formally [with standard capitalisation], then maybe that means I am standing on ceremony, am easily offended, and will be offended if you do, too.”

 To find love online, once you weed out those with bad grammar and spelling, what is most important is what happens.when you meet in person. My date will be the one with a book and a red pen!

Thank you to these two online articles. 

Yahoo News Article by Lauren Clark

The Guardian