writing

Britannica blunders 1

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged language Shakespeare usage vocabulary writing on by

The once-respected name of Britannica has really sunk. In an article on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, they misquote and misinterpret the most famous line of the play, while thinking they’re correcting a misconception.

The most famous line of the play, “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”, is often misinterpreted. The archaic word wherefore does not mean “where”, but “why”, rendering the modern English translation as “Why are you, Romeo?”

That’s not what the line is! It’s “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” with no comma. Juliet isn’t asking why Romeo exists. She’s asking why he’s Romeo — meaning why he is Romeo Montague, a member of an enemy family. The next lines make this clearer: “Deny thy father and refuse thy name, Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”
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“Writer Beware” blog

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged business scams writing on by

This is still, at least officially, a blog by a writer for writers. This week I came across a blog that will interest anyone who writes for money: Writer Beware. It presents worthwhile information on scams that writers may encounter, as well as advice on dealing with publishers, agents, and so on.

I encourage people to use RSS feeds rather than social media sites when possible to follow blogs and news sites, so here’s the RSS link, which should work with any RSS reader (I’ve subscribed to it with Leaf).

The attack of the singularized plurals 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged grammar language writing on by

English includes many nouns that end in “-um” or “-on” and are pluralized by changing the ending to “-a.” They come from Latin and Greek respectively. Examples include “medium,” “datum,” “ovum,” “criterion,” and “phenomenon.” As with everything else, the language isn’t consistent; we have museums, not musea; morons, not mora; polygons, not polyga. I wouldn’t complain if the language regularized the endings of all these words. “Bacteriums” and “phenomenons” would sound weird at first, but we could get used to it.

What’s happening instead is that people turn the plurals into singulars. With some words, like “data” and “media,” the change has been firmly established. Others are substandard but turn up often, like “a bacteria” or “a phenomena.” Recently I saw a writer friend who should know better talking about “a criteria.” This doesn’t make the words any more regular, since double-pluralizing “medias” or “datas” is still frowned upon. It leaves us with words that are the same in the singular and the plural.
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Villains

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged fiction writing on by

Villains make stories exciting. They add an element of danger, giving the hero an adversary to overcome and the reader someone to hate. But who exactly counts as a villain? Is it any character who does bad things? This question came up in my mind when discussing the question of whether the opera Carmen has a villain. Is it Don Jose? He murders the protagonist. Is it Carmen? She leaves a trail of ruin, but that’s not her intention. Here I’ll put a few thoughts together.

First try: A proper villain does bad things with bad intentions. But do the intentions have to be bad? The classic example of the righteous villain is Javert in Les Miserables. Throughout the novel, he pursues Jean Valjean in the belief that he’s hunting down a dangerous criminal. He can’t grasp that Valjean has greatly changed, and when the truth hits him … well, that’s a spoiler. Is he a villain? Gottesmann in my The Magic Battery is similar, and I had Javert in mind when I created him. He thinks that letting just anybody use magic is too dangerous to allow, and he won’t allow the conviction of an innocent person, but his campaign kills a lot of people.
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Recollections of Ergo

This entry was posted in History Writing and tagged education history MIT writing on by

Ergo: The Campus Voice of Reason. That was the name of our paper. Like all college students, we were more confident we were right than we should have been, but we stood apart from the crowd. As an organization, we were never “liberal” or “conservative” in the popular sense of the words. Our position was libertarian, strongly influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Ergo challenged university administrators, the campus left, politicians, and academics. My association with Ergo helped me to develop a framework of thought that I still go by. My views on what is important and how to achieve it have changed, and so have some of my conclusions, but my basic principles have changed very little.

Ergo came into being during a time called the “sixties,” which lasted from about 1965 to 1975. The founder was J. R. M. Seitz, who allegedly acquired all the parts necessary to build an Atlas missile (except the nuclear warhead) on the open market. It was the time of the Vietnam War and urban riots. It was a time of protests and violence. People marched and occupied buildings. Some thought that totalitarian Communist states were a great idea. Others just wanted the government to stop drafting people and sending them into an undeclared war on the other side of the globe. Once I was punched in the nose, and another time the sweater I was wearing was set on fire. I can’t count the number of times I was called a fascist. Interesting times.
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The numbering of musical works

This entry was posted in Music Writing and tagged music writing on by

The other day while driving, I heard a familiar-sounding piano sonata on WCRB. It was one I’d heard before, in fact one I was familiar with. I could accurately anticipate the music, which was obviously Mozart’s, in some spots. But I couldn’t place the damn thing! When I reached my destination, I stayed in the parking lot and kept the radio on to the end. The announcer said only that it was Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 2.” This wasn’t very helpful, since there are different numberings in different editions.

The numbering of musical works is tricky in general. For many composers, there are generally accepted numbers, but Mozart’s sonatas aren’t the only case where there’s confusion. Schubert’s symphonies are usually numbered 1 to 9, even though No. 7 is just a sketch. The “Unfinished” is No.8 and the “Great C major” the 9th in this scheme. Some lists, though, have just eight symphonies. They make the “Unfinished” the seventh and the C major symphony the eighth, or vice versa.
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It’s Black History Month, not Black Advertising Month

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged history writing on by

Looking around the Internet and stores, the most obvious signs of Black History Month are ethnically targeted marketing. That’s what advertisers do, I guess. But the original idea was a good one: call attention to people whom older histories tended to ignore.

Writers might get some ideas from looking at black historical figures they admire. Let me just list three:
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Prescriptivism or consistentism?

This entry was posted in Commentary Writer ethics Writing and tagged grammar language writing on by

Recently I replied to an online point that said that if the US enacts laws that enforce Christian views, the country will be a theocracy. I pointed out that all or nearly all European countries for most of history have met that criterion and that the USA itself was a “theocracy” by that measure until at least the 1960s. The person making the post rebuked me for being a “prescriptivist” and implied it’s consistent with being a libertarian.

First, it’s not a political issue. I don’t advocate laws requiring people to use words with standard meanings, except in legal documents. Aside from that, I’m not exactly a prescriptivist. I prefer to consider myself a “consistentist.” Whatever meaning you give to a word, stick with it and don’t conflate it with other definitions. If you want to use “glory” to mean “a nice knock-down argument,” don’t use it to mean “splendor” at the same time.
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What can you do with Steamboat Willie?

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged copyright law writing on by

What can you do with Steamboat Willie, early in the next year?

I won’t try to write a filk about it just now; answering the question is complicated enough in prose. You may have heard that “Mickey Mouse is going into the public domain,” but that’s true only in a limited sense. The first two released Mickey Mouse cartoons, Steamboat Willie and Plane Crazy, will enter the public domain on January 1, 2024, after 95 years. If you’re thinking of creating your own cartoons, drawings, fan fiction, or professional fiction based on them, you can do that legally, but you need to be careful. Mickey Mouse changed significantly over the years, and later versions of him, along with the vast majority of his cartoons, are still under copyright protection. In addition, Mickey Mouse™ remains a Disney trademark. If your work steps over certain bounds, you could hear from Disney’s lawyers.

Duke University’s website has a detailed article on what you can and can’t do. It’s not a substitute for a lawyer’s advice, but it’s a good place to start, and it could be enough if you aren’t creating stuff for profit.
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