Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Twitter Prose


Chris Vognar: Twitter's character limit sparks new style of short-form writing
Sunday, June 27, 2010
By CHRIS VOGNAR / The Dallas Morning News
EDITOR'S NOTE: After spending several months on Twitter, critic Chris Vognar is starting to think that those 140-character broadcasts might not represent the end of literature as we know it, as some have suggested.

I was once quick to mock Twitter as yet another sign of society's incredible shrinking attention span.

That was then. Now I find myself searching for the perfectly written tweet. And I'm not alone.

Twitter, the social media site founded in 2006, still has its share of haters. But more and more serious writers have embraced it as a viable forum for short writing. We're not talking about links, random shout-outs or celebrity spoutings, though those can all be fun. And you can keep the narcissistic navel-gazing that makes up much of the Twitterverse. I don't need to know what you did at the gym today, unless you're my personal trainer.

We're talking good, lean prose, the happy marriage between voice and format.

Look at it this way. Journalists count words to accommodate the news hole. Poets count syllables to make the meter sing just right.

Twitterers count characters: 140, including spaces. That's all you get for each tweet. So you make them count. This paragraph now has 138.

In Hamlet, the long-winded Polonius tells us that brevity is the soul of wit. He would have been great on Twitter in theory, if not practice.

"One hundred forty characters in certain contexts is quite a lot," says Roy Peter Clark (@RoyPeterClark), senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla., and author of the upcoming book The Glamour of Grammar. Clark, a relative Twitter newbie ("I'm not a Luddite, but I am the embodiment of an old-school late adopter"), points to the William Carlos Williams poem "The Red Wheelbarrow": "So much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens."

Eighty-eight characters, and literary immortality.

The goal is economy of style, accomplished, like most good writing, through vigorous editing. If you tweet, you know the drill: You've got a spot-on observation, deep thought or humorous nugget to get off your chest and onto the screen. You type away and you end up with, say, 220 characters. So you whittle, and you whittle some more. You work in a contraction or two. If you value the integrity of your writing, you avoid cute rhyme abbreviations ("Gr8!").

Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) is also a Twitter mocker-turned-addict. "I vowed I would never become a Twit," he wrote in a recent post on his blog at rogerebert.com. That was more than 10,000 tweets and 169,000 followers ago. But he follows only 142 people on Twitter, few of them famous, all of whose writing he admires.

"In reading comments from readers on my blog, I find some of them waste words getting up to speed," he wrote in an e-mail message. "On the other hand, I follow a few Tweeters who are awesome in the content and meaning they can get into 140 characters. I'm bored by routine links. In an ideal world a Tweet would be worth reading even without its link."

Even narrative writers are getting in on the act. In Japan, the Twitter novel is all the rage: The writer serializes a narrative in a series of tweets, ending each one with a #twnovel tag.

Closer to home, in Austin, Sean Hill tweets under the name @veryshortstory. If you thought Hemingway's "The Killers" was brief, then take a swim through Hill's bite-size narratives: "The power went out. The elevator stopped. In the dark you told me your fears and cried. The next day you fired me to keep your secrets safe."

The end.

As a movie critic I've been known to punch out critical observations from my couch. A recent Taxi Driver post: "I think Travis Bickle just needed a hug. And better advice on first date options. And maybe a less efficient arms dealer." When I put on my music critic hat, I take concert notes on Twitter. It's easier and more practical than scrawling in a notebook, and it leaves a sort of running review of the show before I write the actual review the next day.

A Twitterer, like a poet, can assume a persona for satiric effect. In a recent Time column, James Poniewozik (@poniewozik) paid tribute to some of the great made-up Twitter voices, including @BPGlobalPR, a dead-on spoof of corporate damage control; and @feministhulk ("HULK BELIEVE IN THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL PRODUCTIVITY OF GENDERBENDING. ALSO, IS JUST COOL").

"There's something funny about forcing the diminutive form of Twitter on behemoths and supervillains, like putting a gorilla in a propeller beanie," writes Poniewozik.

But writerly tweets don't have to read like comedy routines. Mary Karr (@marykarrlit) is both a best-selling memoirist (The Liar's Club , Lit) and an award-winning poet. Her publisher recently asked the Texas native to start Twittering, but, as she told me over the phone, "I'm not using it to say, 'I'm gonna be at Place X, buy my book.' I'm trying to disseminate the lines of poetry that keep me from wanting to pound my head against the wall."

Karr uses Twitter to fuse her own sensibility and enthusiasms as a poet and literature professor with the words of her favorite poets. Here's a great Karr tweet: "Shelley on Keats, dead at 25: 'Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth.' Like earth's a bauble swinging from a chain, keeping time." (That's 139 characters, if you're counting).

Clark, Ebert, Poniewozik and Karr all agree on one thing: Long writing isn't necessarily good writing. And Twitter doesn't allow for bloat. I've found that paring down my tweets has made my prose leaner. I chop out more adverbs than I used to.

"Having that calculator of characters really drives you to certain strategies which are probably good for writing in general," Clark told me. "You're more inclined to use nouns and verbs rather than adjectives and adverbs. You're more inclined to make sure every single word works. If I had written what I'd just said I would take out the word 'single,' because it doesn't do any work."

No one argues that Twitter will replace the novel. The point is that good writers find ways to adapt to and play with available technology. That's been happening since before the printing press. Whether you're just tightening your prose or creating a new genre of fiction, Twitter is another fun tool for the toolbox.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Furlough Day


If you have plans to go to Timberglen or any other Dallas public library on Friday, July 2, 2010, well change your plans.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Using Italics and Underlining



An Introduction

We use italics (characters set in type that slants to the right) and underlining to distinguish certain words from others within the text. These typographical devices mean the same thing; therefore, it would be unusual to use both within the same text and it would certainly be unwise to italicize an underlined word. As word-processors and printers become more sophisticated and their published products more professional looking, italics are accepted by more and more instructors. Still, some instructors insist on underlines (probably because they went to school when italics were either technically difficult or practically unreadable). It is still a good idea to ask your instructor before using italics. (The APA Publication Manual continues to insist on underlining.) In this section, we will use italics only, but they should be considered interchangeable with underlined text.

These rules and suggestions do not apply to newspaper writing, which has its own set of regulations in this matter.

Italics do not include punctuation marks (end marks or parentheses, for instance) next to the words being italicized unless those punctuation marks are meant to be considered as part of what is being italicized: "Have you read Stephen King's Pet Semetary? (The question mark is not italicize here.) Also, do not italicize the apostrophe-s which creates the possessive of a title: "What is the Courant 's position on this issue?" You'll have to watch your word-processor on this, as most word-processors will try to italicize the entire word that you double-click on.


Titles
Generally, we italicize the titles of things that can stand by themselves. Thus we differentiate between the titles of novels and journals, say, and the titles of poems, short stories, articles, and episodes (for television shows). The titles of these shorter pieces would be surrounded with double quotation marks.

In writing the titles of newspapers, do not italicize the word the, even when it is part of the title (the New York Times), and do not italicize the name of the city in which the newspaper is published unless that name is part of the title: the Hartford Courant, but the London Times.


Other titles that we would italicize include the following:

•Journals and Magazines: Time, U.S. News and World Report, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review
Plays: Waiting for Godot, Long Day's Journey Into Night
•Long Musical Pieces: Puccini's Madama Butterfly, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite (but "Waltz of the Flowers"), Schubert's Winterreise (but "Ave Maria"). For musical pieces named by type, number and key — Mozart's Divertimento in D major, Barber's Cello Sonata Op. 6 — we use neither italics nor quotation marks.
•Cinema: Slingblade, Shine, The Invisible Man
•Television and Radio Programs: Dateline, Seinfeld, Fresh Air, Car Talk
•Artworks: the Venus de Milo, Whistler's The Artist's Mother
•Famous Speeches: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Washington's Second Inaugural Address (when that is the actual title of the speech)
•Long Poems (that are extensive enough to appear in a book by themselves): Longfellow's Evangeline, Milton's Paradise Lost, Whitman's Leaves of Grass
Pamphlets: New Developments in AIDS Research
We do not italicize the titles of long sacred works: the Bible, the Koran. Nor do we italicize the titles of books of the Bible: Genesis, Revelation, 1 Corinthians.

When an exclamation mark or question mark is part of a title, make sure that that mark is italicized along with the title,

My favorite book is Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
I love Dr. Suess's Oh, the Places You'll Go!
(Do not add an additional period to end such sentences.) If the end mark is not part of the title, but is added to indicate a question or exclamation, do not italicize that mark.

Did you enjoy Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain?

Names of Vehicles
Challenger
Titanic
Orient Express
U.S.S. Eisenhower (Don't italicize the U.S.S.)
H.M.S. Pinafore (Don't italicize the H.M.S. when you're talking about the ship. If you're talking about the light opera, then it's part of the title, H.M.S. Pinafore.)
We don't italicize names of vehicles that are brand names: Ford Explorer, Corvette, Nissan Pathfinder, Boeing 747.

Foreign Words or Phrases
If a word or phrase has become so widely used and understood that it has become part of the English language — such as the French "bon voyage" or the abbreviation for the latin et cetera, "etc." — we would not italicize it. Often this becomes a matter of private judgment and context. For instance, whether you italicize the Italian sotto voce depends largely on your audience and your subject matter.
Words as Words
Examples:

The word basically is often unnecessary and should be removed.
There were four and's and one therefore in that last sentence. (Notice that the apostrophe-s, used to create the plural of the word-as-word and, is not italicized. See the section on Plurals for additional help.)
She defines ambiguity in a positive way, as the ability of a word to mean more than one thing at the same time.

For Emphasis
Note: It is important not to overdo the use of italics to emphasize words. After a while, it loses its effect and the language starts to sound like something out of a comic book.

I really don't care what you think! (Notice that just about any word in that sentence could have been italicized, depending on how the person said the sentence.)

These rules do not apply to newspaper writing.

Words as Reproduced Sounds
Grrr! went the bear. (But you would say "the bear growled" because growled reports the nature of the sound but doesn't try to reproduce it. Thus the bees buzz but go bzzzz and dogs bark woof!)
His head hit the stairs, kathunk!
Frequently, mimetically produced sounds are also accompanied by exclamation marks.

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The Guide to Grammar and Writing is sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, a nonprofit 501 c-3 organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation. If you feel we have provided something of value and wish to show your appreciation, you can assist the College and its students with a tax-deductible contribution.

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Comma Use


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill


What this handout is about:
This handout offers seven easy steps to becoming a comma superhero.

Commas, commas, and more commas
Commas help your reader figure out which words go together in a sentence and which parts of your sentences are most important. Using commas incorrectly may confuse the reader, signal ignorance of writing rules, or indicate carelessness. Although using commas correctly may seem mysterious, it can be easy if you follow a few guidelines.

Beware of popular myths of comma usage:

MYTH: Long sentences need a comma. A really long sentence may be perfectly correct without commas. The length of a sentence does not determine whether you need a comma.

MYTH: You should add a comma wherever you pause. Where you pause or breathe in a sentence does not reliably indicate where a comma belongs. Different readers pause or breathe in different places.

MYTH: Commas are so mysterious that it's impossible to figure out where they belong! Some rules are flexible, but most of the time, commas belong in very predictable places. You can learn to identify many of those places using the tips in this handout.

You probably already know at least one of the following guidelines and just have to practice the others. These guidelines are basically all you need to know; if you learn them once, you’re set for most situations.

1. Introductory bits (small-medium-large)
Setting off introductory words, phrases, or clauses with a comma lets the reader know that the main subject and main verb of the sentence come later. There are basically three kinds of introductory bits: small, medium, and large ones. No matter what size they are, an introductory bit cannot stand alone as a complete thought. It simply introduces the main subject and verb.

There are small (just one word) introductory bits:

Generally, extraterrestrials are friendly and helpful.

Moreover, some will knit booties for you if you ask nicely.

There are medium introductory bits. Often these are two- to four-word prepositional phrases or brief -ing and -ed phrases:

In fact, Godzilla is just a misunderstood teen lizard of giant proportions.

Throughout his early life, he felt a strong affinity with a playful dolphin named Flipper.

Frankly speaking, Godzilla wanted to play the same kinds of roles that Flipper was given.

Dissatisfied with destruction, he was hoping to frolick in the waves with his Hollywood friends.

There are large introductory bits (more than 4 words). You can often spot these by looking for key words/groups such as although, if, as, in order to, and when:

If you discover that you feel nauseated, then you know you’ve tried my Clam Surprise.

As far as I am concerned, it is the best dish for dispatching unwanted guests.

2. FANBOYS
FANBOYS is a handy mnemonic device for remembering the coordinating conjunctions: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So. These words function as connectors. They can connect words, phrases, and clauses, like this:

Words: I am almost dressed and ready.

Phrases: My socks are in the living room or under my bed.

Clauses: They smell really bad, so they will be easy to find.

Notice the comma in the final example. You should always have a comma before FANBOYS that join two independent clauses (two subjects and two verbs that make up two complete thoughts). Look carefully at the next two sentences to see two independent clauses separated by comma + FANBOYS.

If you do not have two subjects and two verbs separated by the FANBOYS, you do not need to insert the comma before the FANBOYS. In other words, if the second grouping of words isn’t a complete thought, don’t use a comma. Try reading the words after FANBOYS all by themselves. Do they make a complete thought?

You can read your own writing in the same way. Read what comes after FANBOYS all by itself. If it's a complete thought, you need a comma. If not, you don't.

3. The dreaded comma splice
If you don’t have FANBOYS between the two complete and separate thoughts, using a comma alone causes a "comma splice" or "fused sentence" (some instructors may call it a run-on). Some readers (especially professors) will think of this as a serious error.

BAD: My hamster loved to play, I gave him a hula-hoop.

ALSO BAD: You wore a lovely hat, it was your only defense.

To fix these comma splices, you can do one of four simple things: just add FANBOYS, change the comma to a semicolon, make each clause a separate sentence, or add a subordinator (a word like because, while, although, if, when, since, etc.)

GOOD: You wore a lovely hat, for it was your only defense.

STILL GOOD: You wore a lovely hat. It was your only defense.

TOTALLY GOOD: You wore a lovely hat because it was your only defense.

4. FANBOY fakers
However, therefore, moreover, and other words like them are not FANBOYS (they are called conjunctive adverbs). They go between two complete thoughts, just like FANBOYS, but they take different punctuation. Why? Who cares? You just need to recognize that they are not FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so—remember?), and you'll make the right choice.

When you want to use one of these words, you have two good choices. Check to see if you have a complete thought on both sides of the "conjunctive adverb." If you do, then you can use a period to make two sentences, or you can use a semicolon after the first complete thought. Either way, you'll use a comma after the faker in the second complete thought. Notice the subtle differences in punctuation here:

GOOD: Basketball is my favorite sport. However, table tennis is where I excel.

ALSO GOOD: Basketball is my favorite sport; however, table tennis is where I excel.

BAD: Basketball is my favorite sport, however table tennis is where I excel.

ALSO BAD: Basketball is my favorite sport, however, table tennis is where I excel.

5. X,Y, and Z
Put commas between items in a list. When giving a short and simple list of things in a sentence, the last comma (right before the conjunction–usually and or or) is optional, but it is never wrong. If the items in the list are longer and more complicated, you should always place a final comma before the conjunction.

EITHER: You can buy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in Los Angeles.
OR: You can buy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in Los Angeles.

BUT ALWAYS: A good student listens to his teachers without yawning, reads once in a while, and writes papers before they are due.

6. Describers
If you have two or more adjectives (words that describe) that are not joined by a conjunction (usually and) and both/all adjectives modify the same word, put a comma between them.

He was a bashful, dopey, sleepy dwarf.

The frothy, radiant princess kissed the putrid, vile frog.

7. Interrupters

Two commas can be used to set off additional information that appears within the sentence but is separate from the primary subject and verb of the sentence. These commas help your reader figure out your main point by telling him or her that the words within the commas are not necessary to understand the rest of the sentence. In other words, you should be able to take out the section framed by commas and still have a complete and clear sentence.

Bob Mills, a sophomore from Raleigh, was the only North Carolina native at the Japanese food festival in Cary.

Aaron thought he could see the future, not the past, in the wrinkles on his skin.

My chemistry book, which weighs about 100 pounds, has some really great examples.

To see if you need commas around an interrupter, try taking the interrupter out of the sentence completely. If the sentence is still clear without the interrupter, then you probably need the commas.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Blockade Billy


It's about a former Major League Baseball catcher who has all of his big league records expunged. This novella is only 92 pages long. It helps to know baseball terms. Stephen King writes about something other than horror. Hee-hee.

Friday, June 4, 2010

John Grisham Quote



"I love small-town obituaries because they print the full name of the deceased. And you can use that name in your work without getting sued, because they're dead. I have this thing with lawsuits."