Pains in the Published

As you can see from the title, this blog entry was inspired by “Pains in Public” by Andrew Holmes. With every page I read I kept thinking “I should write something like this about authors”. I know this may seem like an obvious statement to make, but I don't like reading unless it's enjoyable. Actually I've spent most of my life thinking that I simply don't like reading, when in fact it's just taken me most of my life to find something worth the effort. This post doesn’t just cover the written word that has been published though; it covers any written word which has to be read and really puts people off reading altogether. This can be anything from emails to … well, blogs. It is not my intention to insult or offend anyone; this is just a collection of what I personally find to be pains in the written word. You may or may not agree.


I’ve swallowed a dictionary (and it’s stuck in my throat)
Who can be bothered to read a book when you have to re-read every sentence after looking up the words in a dictionary? This is annoying because it has more to do with appearing intellectual than sharing a talent to bring enjoyment to others. Those who write poetry can sometimes be like this. For them writing is an intellectual exercise designed to impress, rather than an expression of thought or emotion. A classic example is a poem I read about depression. The author shall remain anonymous, and I just hope she never reads this blog – other wise I could be adding hate mail to my list of pains in the written word. The poem was very dramatic as it described the bony hand of death pushing the author into the abyss of despair, and the “racking spasms which chafe and gnaw”. P-lease. When I was depressed the only spasms I had were caused by my irritable bowel syndrome. Is it me, or is that kind of poetry really boring? (Except the bit about falling “down, down, down” into the pit, “down though the abysmal hollows of sufferance”, which considering the poem was about the very serious subject of depression, had me crying with laughter) Although the piece was very “poetic”, it was obvious that the writer didn’t have a clue what she was writing about. Well, as I’ve probably said many times before, I’m not a writer of any kind, but here is my effort about depression, full of feeling and meaning…

Man, I feel like crap.
The End


Let’s go all around the houses… (Or “Would you accompany me on this vast literary journey, which takes us through several English country sides, so that we can admire the beauty of nature on our way to our destination?)
These ones are closely related to the “I’ve swallowed a dictionary” type, because they also use ridiculous words that your average Joe Public wouldn’t use in every day speech, but also it takes them forever to say it. So, instead of saying something like: “Although it was a sunny day, it was cold and damp enough to take your breath away”, they might say: “As the sunlight seeped in though the opening of the curtains, its brilliance reflected off each tiny particle of dust hovering in the air, illuminating them like fragments of faceted diamonds. A hazy mist could be seen over the dew covered fields, and a cold dampness peculiar to that time of year filled the air and asphyxiated all who inhaled the unwelcoming atmosphere.”
For these ones, the content itself is not really important, but how the content is written. Indeed the story could be total cack, as long as it’s written beautifully. I once started reading a book and never got past the first page, because that whole first page was spent describing the scenery and the weather, and I started to wonder if there were any characters in the story at all, or if the whole book was going to be a very fancy weather forecast. Can you imagine that? “For those who live beyond the hills and valleys of Yorkshire, currently shrouded in a blanket of freshly fallen snow, which glistens in the moonlight and lays undisturbed like the skin of a gently perspiring virginal young maiden in deep slumber; you may experience the wrath of the skies, with lightening like flashes of anger, lashing against the darkness like a horse whip, and forcing the rain to gallop ever faster to the saturated ground…” By the time the weatherman had finished giving the weather forecast, we’d be in a different season.


The kewl ones
Of course, at the other end of the scale are those who wish to appear clever in quite a different way. Evryfin they rite has 2 b re-spelt as if th Inglish langwij woznt gud enuf. I can understand that in writing text messages words may have to be shortened to save having to send 50 texts at a time, but why do these people continue writing this way in every other area of life? Message boards, emails – they all become a nightmare to read. You know, I had heard that this kind of spelling was even finding its way into school work. But the re-spelling which seems totally pointless to me is when the words are exactly the same length, just spelt wrongly, like “kewl” instead of “cool” or “woz” instead of “was”. It doesn’t seem very efficient to me, it just means you have to learn two languages instead of one.


Abbr.
Abbreviations really annoy me. The only thing worse than reading an abbr. is hearing one being spoken, such as “ASAP” or “TTFN”. My Maths teacher (yes, I realise that "Maths" is an abbr.) always used to say "thou" instead of "thousand" and it was so irritating. I realise that sometimes abbreviations are necessary, again such as in writing text messages as one example, but in most areas they are completely unnecessary and rather than showing efficiency just show pure laziness in the use of the English language. One news article I read recently spoke of an “Ass Ch Con” – a what? It’s only through reading Police Blogs that I could hazard a guess that this was supposed to be an “Assistant Chief Constable”, but you can’t presume that Jo Public is going to know that. In fact, I did a search for “Ass Ch Con” on several websites for "Abbreviations and Acronyms", including Police websites which have an abbreviations page. They all came up with nothing. The abbreviation doesn’t appear to exist, except perhaps in a journalists note pad somewhere.


The writers who swear all the [bleep] time
I can’t tell you how much this [bleep]s me off. It’s so [bleep] irritating and [bleep] unnecessary. They’ll try to tell you that it helps them to get their point across, or that context calls for it in a scene where emotions run high – [bleeeeeeeep]! It’s more to do with their limited vocabulary and trying to give the impression that they’re:

• Individual – as in the case of teenagers trying to gain the respect of their peers and show the older generation that they won’t be confined by their rules
• “With it” – as in the case of people who want to show that they’re “in touch” with “life on the street” and they know “what’s going down”
• Still “with it” – as in the case of middle aged people trying to gain the respect of the younger generation
• “No nonsense” kind of people – as in the case with people who are insecure and unsure of themselves but want to give the impression that they’re confident and not afraid of anyone
• Funny – as in the case where a sweet old lady will blurt out an obscenity in a comedy sketch, to shock people into laughter. This sometimes works, but very rarely. This kind of attempt at humour is often overused or overdone.

Just to illustrate the point about having a limited vocabulary: recently a friend of mine was trying to explain to me how something had “gone wrong”. Due to children being nearby she leant over and quietly asked “What’s another way of saying f***ed up?” to which I replied “messed up?”


They are the five main styles or areas of writing that really annoy me, however there is another area of the written word that really annoys me, and that is misteaks or things that just are wrote bad. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know we are all imperfect, and I make enough written mistakes of my own, but surely something as important as news websites should be read by proof readers before being uploaded onto the net? Recently I came across an article on a news website about a popular comedy being shown at cinemas, which said in part: “The film has described as a "mockumentary" which follows Mr Cohen's travel across the US.” This obviously should have read “The film has been described…” or “The film is described…” not “The film has described…” That is just one example of regular findings of poor grammar on this particular news site, as well as numerous spelling errors.

There are other written things that I can’t/won’t read because they bore me to death (and I’m really not ready to die yet), such as “small print” or legal documents – very important but very boring; and instructions – again, very important but very boring, so thankfully I have Mr Man to speed read these things for me and then explain the gist of the content.

Thank goodness for the recent craze of Blogging. It has enabled me to find some reading material actually worth reading, and some of that has come from the most unexpected places – people who I actually know that have an amazing talent which I knew nothing about. I know some people may be bored by the endless amounts of Blogs available for reading, or maybe they feel it’s becoming a bit “old hat” or that every Tom, Dick or Harry is jumping on the “bandwagon”, but I feel that Blogging is something to be encouraged. It’s about time that we had a “fashionable” way of encouraging the art of writing, especially for the younger generation. Everyone wants to receive the compliment that their Blog is “well written”, or to have other “important” or “well educated” people show their admiration by linking to their Blog, and so I think this encourages people to try to improve their writing skills and think more about their style of writing. Surely, this has got to be a good thing.