A little evangelism

The number of people who look at this site has skyrocketed since I began mentioning it on Google+. At least three people a day now! One of my most loyal readers, Ann Marie Dwyer, has a blog called Momma’s Money Matters. It covers a wide variety of topics, articulately written, and it includes interviews of writers. I am pleased to say that hers is one of few sites on which I have not yet seen a typo. Not only that, but she has a page inviting her readers to plug their own blogs. I suggest you poke around the site and maybe become a reader. Here’s the page:

The Green Room

Take a look, and tell her I sent you.

Next post: back to grammar unless something else comes up.

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Most of the time The Writing Rag is about expository writing—writing to communicate information in a manner that causes the least amount of effort for your readers. One of my rules of thumb is that if your reader has trouble understanding, the problem is with the writing, not the reader. Business letters, instructions, technical writing, essays, and (in my opinion) good journalism fall into this type of writing.

Other useful kinds of writing exist, whose intent might be to amuse, inspire, motivate (cause action), persuade (cause belief), or cause any number of other effects in a reader. To accomplish these, someone might use poetry, short stories, novels, riddles, essays. You name the genre, the writer has a reason for exposing a reader to it. Obviously some writing formats fit into more than one purpose—blog posts, for example.

For completeness, I should remind you that sometimes the writer is the reader, and the purpose might be to clarify thinking, record events, or express feelings. For these purposes we have notes, journals, diaries.

One kind of writing has the goal of creating a mindset in the reader. This type of writing is the slogan. I am tempted to give a bunch of examples, but I’d rather let you suggest a few of your favorites in the comments.

A famous slogan: Do a good turn daily.

That one was suggested by Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting. I’m not going to tell you how to write an original slogan, but if you have a nicely codified way to write one, please share with all of us in the comments.

Instead, I must cop out. I found a website that creates a slogan for you. Type in something, click the button, and you get a slogan.  Here’s the link. Go play with it. http://thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi. They even give you a snippet of code so you can put a slogan you like on your website, with a link to their site, of course. Here’s my favorite, so far:

After trying a few, I figured out that they plug your word into a selection of existing slogans, some well-known, and sometimes with amusing results. How about

You’re in the Grammar Generation!

My apologies to that carbonated sugar water.

I suppose that’s one way to create a slogan: Take a popular meme and plug your own words into it. Some of my colleagues told me about the most interesting man in the world recently, mainly because I had never heard of him and I look like his brother. So I’ll offer his meme for a slogan base:

I don’t often write letters to the president, but when I do, I use good grammar.

My third invitation to comment: What can you come up with? Share.

While I’m quoting others’ work, I may as well post another quote. This list of writing rules is from Elmore Leonard, who, though I have never read any of his work, must be an okay guy, because his first name is my middle name.

I found this at http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/writing_rules.html. The article contains several other lists of writing rules; I feel the closest kinship to George Orwell’s rules, and not because his first name is my last name.

I frequently use the word “solecism,” meaning a mistake in grammar. It’s one of my favorite words (harrumpf). I also read A.Word.A.Day, written by Anu Garg. The word of the day a while back was “solecism.” Here’s the article. He includes a link to an audible pronunciation of the word, and an inspiring quote at the bottom. I left both of those out to help motivate you to click the link to the site.

A.Word.A.Day–solecism

solecism (SOL-i-siz-ehm, SO-li-) noun

1. A grammatical mistake or a nonstandard usage.

2. A breach of etiquette.

3. An error, inconsistency, or impropriety.

[From Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikismos, from soloikos (speaking incorrectly; literally, inhabitant of Soloi) after Soloi, an ancient Athenian colony in Cilicia where a dialect considered as substandard was spoken.]

“`Ah! Madam,’ said Ovid, `how great a solecism would it be both in a lover and a poet if he did not look upon his mistress as the sublimest object of his thoughts!’
Benjamin Boyce and Thomas Brown; The Adventures of Lindamira: A Lady of Quality; The University of Minnesota Press; 1949.

“But the AAUP’s (Association of American University Presses) guidelines go beyond correcting what it regards as solecisms to more drastic exercises in raising consciousness. Consider the traditional personification of ships as feminine. According to the AAUP task force, such usage is `quaint at best’ and should be avoided: `it’ is preferred. Along the same literalist lines, you should think twice before describing an important work by a woman scholar as `seminal’.
Speech Therapy; The Economist (London); Jun 3, 1995.

If you don’t subscribe to the AWAD email already, why are you still reading this post? Go subscribe right now. Then come back and don’t make any more solecisms.

This post has nothing to do with grammar, and it’s only a little bit about writing, in that it’s an example of such.

I discovered a graphic novel being written by one Ben Towle,  a fellow in one of my Google+ circles (Check out Google+ if you haven’t. Think FaceBook for people who look interesting to you. It’s full of interesting people, including, ahem, me.). The story is set in the Chesapeake Bay, in the (I hope fictional) town of Blood’s Haven, modeled, I think, on Cape May. It even mentions Annapolis, where I’m living right now. The art is pretty good, too, if you’re okay with wonderfully detailed artwork combined with four-fingered hands.

Here’s the first page, and the link to it.

I made it small on purpose. Click or follow the link below to see it full size.

http://oysterwar.tumblr.com/post/2845952789

Back to how to write well in the next post. Probably. The comic even has tai chi!