How To Write Badly Well

Reminds me of True Grit

That's quality stuff, right there.

i love this blog. :D

Dunno what's funnier: This post, or the fact that every lit and writing teacher I've ever had *demanded* that we write this way despite every novel ever written to the contrary.

I don't get it what's so wrong about setting the story(*) in contemporary England?

*) or as you call them, lorries

As far as I know, "towards" is not a word. Well done otherwise :)

British English, innit.

Well, this has led me towards (sic) reading the entry for toward/towards in the New Oxford American Dictionary, which has the following “word note” box:

"It might seem pedantic to point out that toward is the correct U.S. spelling and towards is British. On the other hand, so many writers at all levels seem ignorant of the difference that always using toward is a costless, unpretentious way to signal your fluency in American English. It's the same with gray (U.S.) and grey (Brit.), though many Americans have been using these two interchangeably for so long that some U.S. dictionaries now list grey as a passable variant. This is not likely to happen with toward/towards, though—at least not in our lifetimes.
— DFW”

Assuming that DFW is David Foster Wallace (rather than some airport in Dallas), that’s good enough for me. As this seems to be a “gray” area, I’ll stick with “towards” on my stubbornly UK-English-centric blog.

This is funny, but not because of grammatical correctness. The dialogue's no more "grammatically correct" than you'd expect to find in an ordinary novel. It's just in a more formal register, which isn't the same thing at all, although a lot of people seem to think it is.

As I say though, this is funny.

plying the 'said' gambit i see... ;)

I don't know what would be worse, this or grammatically correct internal monologue.

Oh, *please* can we have grammatically correct internal monologue? If for no other reason than to bring out the grammar sticklers: I've missed them.

I'd been thinking of suggesting some kind of stream of consciousness post, mainly because that's what most of my emails seem to be.

This blog always makes my day.

Can I cast my vote for the grammatically correct internal monologue? Please, please, please!

Some of us aren't clever (meaning me). We can live vicariously through your blog!

Moopie didn’t stop dancing, but nodded, flicking sweat off her face.

Moopie?* Was anyone else thrown for a loop by that? Seriously--Moopie?


*Grignr?**


**If anyone gets that, I will be very, very happy.

Hienrichs, does it count if I recognise it because I read it the last time you mentioned it?

Hahaha! It would have been better if you wrote it like most people write; then again it would have made me cringe!

It does indeed, Antipodean. It's always nice to know when I've corrupted someone. *grin*

"I knew _whom_ she meant", surely? ("She meant _him_")

MTE, Andrew. It glares, it does.

*Inquiring.

It sounds akin to two sufferers of Asperger's conversing.

Eric Van Listbader writes like this. Naff.

I hate it when stuff like this happens in a book. Not quite to the extent that it happens here, but it's really jarring when a hardass mercenary who swears and uses all sorts of rough slang will suddenly ask "To whom should I give this?"

I dare you to read that paragraph without pictuing them with monocles.

Great remarkable things here. I¡¦m very glad to peer your article. Thank you so much and i'm taking a look ahead to contact you. Will you kindly drop me a e-mail?

Very Useful information Thank you!!
GRAPE™ it is a unique proprietary structured yet easy-to-comprehend framework to ensure accurate, dependable, and professional content that adapts to customers guidelines & industry standards and caters to a worldwide audience. TWB_ GRAPE™ Content Authoring Framework™ is devised and owned by TWB_ and is a patented process and a registered trademark. GRAPE™ | Grammatically correct, Readable, Accurate, Presentable, and Editable content