A Brief Clarification


The Observation Still Seems Salient Three Years Later

Reading Bill Walsh's obit reminded me how important it is to be kinder and gentler when playing with others:


(For those who may be wondering—no, the irony that George Bush was formerly the director of the CIA is not lost on me; not at all.)

Anyway. back to the point. In the spirit of giving, two clarifications (bonus round; yay):
  1. I do not hate sportswriters—I hate most sportswriting, a dark crevice from which seeps an unfamiliar ooze resembling English but that is truly a bastardization of language perpetrated by hacks. The only thing worse is literary fiction (see #2). 
  2. At least sports writing is not literary fiction, a bottomless dark crevasse from which weeps an all-too-familiar ooze resembling English but that is truly a bastardization of the language perpetrated by those who value MFAs over genius and technical expertise over storytelling. Literary fiction was created to reward hacks who are incapable of writing actual stories. I wish (I know—"it is my wish"—whatever) that all the literary fiction authors would become sportswriters. At least then they would have some redeeming literary content and quality to recommend them.
Uh oh, did I just slam all the literary fiction "authors"? Oops.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Original Stuff

Image
OK, it's  all  my original stuff when you visit here. But as they say, some  stories are more  original than others (nobody actually says that). Rather than one of my typical rants, screeds, or whiny complaints, however, this piece is a (relatively) serious short story I wrote for a writing contest on Vocal ( Ship of Dreams ): Sorry, it's been a while since I posted. I swear I'll be better from now on.  That is all. I hope you check it out and maybe even like it:  COLD STORAGE (Note: The theme of the contest is the Titanic. But don't worry; it's not a love story, and none of the protagonists are named Rose. I believe there is a contest entry that goes down that rabbit hole, though, if you're interested.)
Read more

Gettin' Laid While Lyin' Around

Image
Lies are what you tell so you can lay someone on the side. But more to the point, lay is transitive (i.e., it takes an object), whereas lie is not. This is further complicated because some idiot decided the past tense of lie should be lay, which also happens to be a present-tense verb. But back to how to know what to write. If you can lay something , it's lay: lay the book down, lay some bricks, lay your best friend's girlfriend. This use of lay is known as a transitive verb. It  transitions based on its meaning when combined with the object it affects. Even Ratt knew this, of course: With lie, there's no object: I'm going to lie down now, don't just lie there, he was lying on the bed. But note that in past tense, lie becomes lay: I lay there all day, NOT I laid there all day, BUT I laid (past tense of lay) the book down. In this usage, lie  and lay are called intransitive verbs—they don't have objects, so they don't change. Ex...
Read more

One Way or Another (and a Tip for Remembering the Difference)

Image
I mostly don't observe the difference between these two usages in everyday editing except when only two people or things are involved, although for formal writing or when someone requests that I stick to strict rules of standard written English, I revise accordingly: Use each other to refer to two people or things—e.g., "Edie and Bill didn't care about each other." Use one another to refer to more than two people or things—e.g., "The people of the village cared about one another." Why don't I care so much about the difference? For starters, most people reading or listening to the phrase will be able to determine the meaning from context, with each other being the predominant phrasing used by most speakers of American English (and probably UK English as well, but that's a guess). The second reason is because the distinction is tenuous in many cases anyway; to wit, in our second example, do the people in the village care about one another...
Read more