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Discussions about writing, peer reviews, word games, and writing contests (re: "volleyball") for amateurs.

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Aunflin
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Post by Aunflin »

And again I must ask: who wants to read a novel (other than "literary people") that makes them feel like crap--whenb we already feel like crap from living in the real world?

It seems that people are brain-washed into literary taste--the weak ones.
"A writer's chosen task is to write well and professionally. If you can't keep doing it, then you're no longer a professional, but a gifted amateur." L. E. Modessit, jr.
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Post by Kvetch »

While I don't read many books that make me 'feel like crap', since I read to escape (I do read a few dire books, mainly in search of balance), I DO go out of my way to listen to depressing music - perhaps the reason people read such books is the same reason as I listen to the musc - although I'm not sure why I like listening to ose music
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Post by mccormack44 »

I don't ever choose to read a depressing book, but sometimes I start one that turns out to be depressing, but is so well written that it holds me. I don't think I need depressing fiction for balance. I think upbeat fiction is my balance; the news brings enough depression — who needs more?
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Post by Kvetch »

I meant balance of genres - I mainly read SF&F, but I try and make sure I read books in other genres (Crime, biography, etc.) to avoid losing my sense of perspective. It seems that quite a few of the books tat i read under this category are rather grim
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Post by felonius »

Aunflin wrote:And again I must ask: who wants to read a novel (other than "literary people") that makes them feel like crap--whenb we already feel like crap from living in the real world?

It seems that people are brain-washed into literary taste--the weak ones.
mccormack44 wrote:I don't ever choose to read a depressing book, but sometimes I start one that turns out to be depressing, but is so well written that it holds me. I don't think I need depressing fiction for balance. I think upbeat fiction is my balance; the news brings enough depression — who needs more?
There's a dark side to each and every human soul. We wish we were Gandalf, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Sauron in all of us.

It's not an either/or proposition.

We're talking about dialectics, the good and the bad merging into us. You can run but you can't hide. My experience? Face the darkness. Stare it down. Own it. Nietzsche again: being human is complicated. So give that ol' dark night of the soul a hug. And howl the eternal yes! :deviate:

I thought this dropping was appropriate today, given some of the most recent thread comments. Anne Bernays on teaching the craft of writing:
You can teach almost anyone determined to learn them the basics required to write sentences and paragraphs that say what you want them to say clearly and concisely. It’s far more difficult to get people to think like a writer; to give up conventional habits of mind and emotion. You must be able to step inside your character’s skin and at the same time to remain outside the dicey circumstance you have maneuvered her into. I can’t remember how many times I advised students to stop writing the sunny hours and write from where it hurts: “No one wants to read polite. It puts them to sleep.â€
Last edited by felonius on Mon Oct 15, 2007 2:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by mccormack44 »

Again, an interesting quote. When you reach me with these quotes, you're reaching a reader, NOT a potential writing. I never particularly wished to be a writer — and I found in my copyediting career that I'm a rewriter (in the authors own voice) when necessary, but never a writer.

Back to looking on the dark side — at the top of you post and inferred in the quote. I may be wrong (and I hope I'm not being smug — so easy for us to be smug), but I don't feel that I need fiction to bring me to face the realities of life and of my own failings. I hate it when I get angry; I try to control the anger, because I say really cutting things that go far beyond what I really believe. But I do get angry. I don't hate me for it, but I do try to put things right, because life is better that way.

And — for me, mind you — prayers of confession and contrition help me to face my darker emotions and turn myself to "paths of light" as often and as successfully as I can. Which, of course, isn't always.

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Post by felonius »

Rosellen Brown today:
To be reminded of the difficulty of things - to be taught the inescapable complexity of the world - frequently makes one unfit to be a smiling moral arbiter. The writer may organize the chaos of our lives a little, which makes the questions clearer, but that has nothing to do with the provision of reductive anwsers or people who always respond "appropriately."

I have nothing against lovable characters; there are a great many wonderful ones out there, and no one ought to go out of his or her way to deny a character's best qualities for the sake of being called "uncompromising, hard-edged." But our first obligation is to create interesting, suggestive, realistic, possibly even challenging situations, set our character down in them and see where they go. Which may not be the way you wish they could; rather it is the way, given who they are, they must go.

I rarely have any idea how my people are going to react before they're in the thick of things, trying to find their way out. If I were to sand down their edges, I'd be making dolls; if I let their texture stay roughand their responses dangerously lifelike, I dare to think I might have resonant characters pocked and shadowed with complexity.

I suppose the first realistically flawed actors on the narrative stage were in the Bible. There is precious little perfection of character in the Old Testament. The miscreants may be punished, but few achieve what we in our century call self-awareness or self-consciousness, let alone remorse for their sins. Stories of malfeasance, starting with Adam, Eve and the serpent, have always been far better; if more provisional, ways than spotlessness of soul to stir an audience to attention and meditation.
I like the passage, but I disagree with her on the first realistically flawed characters on the narrative stage. For them I think we can look to the oldest written stories in the world, the body of texts known as The Epic of Gilgamesh - compiled around the time that Stonehenge and the first Egyptian pyramids were being built.

Legends we know from the Hebrew Bible - the Garden of Eden, the Flood - appear in Gilgamesh in earlier forms, along with other tales perhaps deemed too racy for inclusion.
Last edited by felonius on Fri Sep 28, 2007 10:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by mccormack44 »

Again, an interesting quote.

I'm sure this is true for many writers. I find "perfection" boring (see Emily Loring), but I sense that the author is extolling grittiness for the sake of the grit. That's wrong, just as writing "morality" for the sake of morality is wrong.

The point about the characters forcing their will on the author has been stated by so many authors, it must be true. On the other hand, the characters have been developed by and are developing in the format of the author's mind, experiences, and personality. I'm sure that given a description of a character, two different authors would instinctively develop that character in entirely different ways.

And the "Mitford" stories are gentle and kind, but NOT about perfect people. I enjoy them very much, even though they're rather placid. I wouldn't want every novel to be like the Mitford stories, but I wouldn't want people to suppose that they weren't fraught with as much writer's pain as any other writing either.

Finally, as to the age of the Bible vs. Gilgamesh. I doubt if we'll ever know. Both were developed on the basis of oral tradition. The one with the older oral tradition would be the oldest, but we'll never find that out, nor do I think we should care.

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Post by Aunflin »

Well, I never said I liked reading stories with perfect characters--far from it. Perfection is suspect--a fallacy of the human mind. One man's perfection is another's imperfection.

I was just saying that I don't like reading depressing stories. I like seeing the characters struggle, go through hardships, make stupid mistakes, but I dislike it ending in a tragedy--very depressing. I like the stories where the good guys win--and yet everything is not quite what it seems. Maybe the good guy [cliche]paved the road to Hell with good intentions[/cliche] or saved the world for a day or two...

And I love the character to be realistic, though not perfect and good--nor totally evil. Both extremes are totally unrealistic in my mind. I just don't want to read about how so and so has so many problems, their life is terrible, and etc. and etc.--and they cannot pull themselves forth from their own tragedy--get over it!

I tend to be a bit manic/depressive. I'll be insanely energetic at one moment (and know not why) and horribly depressed the next... Most of the time I'm fairly well-balanced. But people will ask me: why are you acting so gloomy. The only answer I can supply is: I don't know. Yet, I can force myself to do whatever I need to with effeciency--it I have something to keep me occupied (work) then I can overcome my "dark" moments--and the manic thing always comes in handy: people always think I'm on drugs... :roll: :lol:

But that's why I dislike depressing storylines. I do *not* need help being depressed: being myself is enough--and often without reason. (Maybe that's why I drink too much...?)

Anyway, I've rambled way off course... /sigh....
"A writer's chosen task is to write well and professionally. If you can't keep doing it, then you're no longer a professional, but a gifted amateur." L. E. Modessit, jr.
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Post by mccormack44 »

I don't know that it's off course. That's my take on what I want to read, and is an adjunct to what I was trying to say in my post immediately above Aunflin's.

I've been saying since I read Tale of Two Cities in high school 60+ years ago, that Sydney Carton is NOT the hero of the story. He is a whining weak guy who made a romantic gesture (but nevertheless committed suicide as a way out). And, yes, he has a disease which modern readers recognize as such, but Dickens and his readers did not know of this disease. I feel we must judge Carton from the standpoint of the mid-Victorian times in which it was written.

At the same time, I do admit that the whining and the suicide ARE a part of alcoholism, which makes Dickens an acute observer.

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Post by mccormack44 »

A quote form John Moore that appeared in the SF Book Club Magazine may be of interest to you writers.
I have a day job. Last week my Department Manager gave me a performance review. He congratulated me on the clarity and brevity of my reports. "They're everything we hope for in technical writing," he said. "But don't ever try to write a novel."

Indeed, I know more than a few people who believe that good writing should be difficult to read. They rave about novels that are "inaccessible" and "opaque." Myself, I hold an alternate view. I try to write novels that are like roller coasters. I want the readers to enjoy the ride, not puzzle over the construction of the track.
An author after my own heart.

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Post by laurie »

Mine too - which is why I had many a battle with my Lit. professors in college. :wink:
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Post by mccormack44 »

Lit professors:

I didn't have much trouble, because I kept my mouth shut (I wouldn't do that today). But I once got a GOOD grade because I said that Sir Walter Scott's Bride of the Lammermoors wasn't as interesting as the libretto for Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (which of course is based on Scott).
I'd known Lucia all my life (21 years at the time) and found it much more dramatic than Scott, who was all atmosphere and little action.

Scott, however, was never murky in the sense of the works Moore was referring to.

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Post by felonius »

Interesting stuff, Sue.
I try to write novels that are like roller coasters. I want the readers to enjoy the ride, not puzzle over the construction of the track.
Oh, come on. A little puzzling is great fun. Studying craftsmanship in general is fun - different people enjoy doing it in different disciplines. "Construction of the track" as phrasing made me smile in that it could be applied to the digital construction of an electronic music track as well as prose. I admit to being partial to each.

In my opinion I think the ideal to strive for is a little of both - a narrative that tells a compelling story with relative brevity but still leaves the reader mulling over vague mysteries of a moral or psychological sort, to paraphrase R.V. Cassill.

I don't believe stories should be difficult to read to be considered good, and I don't mean to wax didactical - but I do stand in respect to writers who craft compelling tales made even more compelling by their irony, subtlety, allusion, and the like. A to B just doesn't do it completely for me, even if it's a fun ride.

I also sometimes think that "atmosphere", if written well, can provide its own kind of "action" depending upon the character(s) sitting in that atmosphere and what they're thinking as they do so.

To paraphrase another writer, Pam Houston, it's when a moment of grace a story allows its characters comes so softly it feels almost accidental, though it's both complete and profound. Like water coming to its level behind a dam.
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Post by Darb »

It's also possible to carry the focus on atmosphere a little too far ... at the expense of content and substance. Chris Claremont is a good example.

Then again, some writers carry it off well ... like Steve Aylett. :)
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Post by felonius »

How can I not put up an Aylett quote after that?

Steve Aylett:
...the speeder put an arm about his shoulders and whispered in his ear, "Strong rules don't bend but break." Charlie was seeing things in the shadows. Was that guy over there examining a single raisin? Someone else seemed to be moving so fast he was taking out the garbage before it had been created. The floor was higher than it should have been. The tables were connected by barely visible strands of pizza. A little man cowered past a window, flinching under lightning. A guy at the bar was trying to remove his own face. Charlie could hear bugs creaking as they grew. The woman across the table slapped the drink out of Charlie's hand and said, "Egomania is never having to say you're sorry." The universe was filled with strange, garbled laughter.

"Wake me up!" Charlie shouted, standing quickly.

The woman overturned the table and approached him. The whole crew began bearing down on him like dinner guests. And it was as Charlie burst through the doors into blinding sunlight, the denizens of Beerlight baying after him like leather-winged demons from hell, that he remembered he was the Mayor.
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Post by mccormack44 »

Yes, that was FUN; a charming vignette.

Would I like the rest? I'd have to read some and see (and — as you'll notice elsewhere, I suddenly have too much to read). You may remember that I have a "thing" against blanket judgments and all-inclusive categories; I don't wish to make them myself. I DO admire some books that earn critical acclaim and I do hate others; I may be indifferent to the rest. The same applies to the genre books that don't get critical ratings or get rated only within genre discussions.

But I have to confess a personal bias toward a good story.

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Post by felonius »

Couple of short ones today. First, Aldous Huxley:
All literature, all art, best seller or worst, must be sincere, if it is to be successful...Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers; and only someone with a mind like Shelley's can write Prometheus Unbound. The deliberate forger has little chance with his contemporaries and none at all with posterity.
And Mickey Spillane:
Those big-shot writers...could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.
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Post by felonius »

I've been neglecting this thread.

Okay. I should have posted this already. George Orwell's absolutely essential essay Politics and the English Language, written around 1946. I'm gonna post it in sections because it's quite long - but if anyone likes what they read and wants to continue before tomorrow just Google it - it's one of the greatest works of non-fiction I know.

/me blinks as I once again realize how funny it is that "Google" has graduated to verb status.

/me blinks again as I realize how funny it is that I'm actually writing using the "slash-me-such-and-such" convention. What happened here?

Title of upcoming novel: /ME, CLAUDIUS

La la la. Okay. Here's the first installment:
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.
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Post by nzilla »

That was a not un-good post, not un-felonius. :wink:
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Post by mccormack44 »

I agree with Orwell for the most part. I abhor sloppy language and sloppy thinking and do my best to avoid both.

On the other hand, we also need to beware of what Bob calls "French Academy" thinking. Precision is language is a very good thing, but language is a living being and it DOES change. I abhor the way advertising writers deliberately misuse the language, but some of those "misuses" are really accurate acceptances of the way language has already changed. An example "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should." This caused quite an uproar, BUT "Winston tastes good as a cigarette should" was already funny sounding to many an educated ear. The distinction was no longer important; and I'm not sure why it ever was.

We need to be consciously careful of how we use language. I once severely scolded some college-age youngsters for laughing because I use gay to mean light-hearted. It's fine by me for gay to be used to describe the homosexual life style — it's not demeaning like "fairy" and "queer." But giving a new connotation to a word should NEVER be allowed to drive out the older ones. That debases language.

On the other hand (is this the other other hand?), Google as a verb is fine; it's a new procedure in the relatively new processes of computer and Internet use and it needs a new word.

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Post by felonius »

mccormack44 wrote:We need to be consciously careful of how we use language.
You took the words right out of my mouth, Sue. As I've said before, the true nature of any culture or society is to be found in its language.

Politics and the English Language, continued:
I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad - I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen - but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)

2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder.

Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)

3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?

Essay on psychology in Politics (New York )

4. All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.

Communist pamphlet

5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream -- as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English." When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!

Letter in Tribune

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.
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Post by felonius »

Politics and the English Language, part 3:
I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:

Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc.,etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.
I love how he just throws it all on the table and says 'here it is.' Kind of like the way someone would dump a smelly bag of fish they didn't want. Go George. :worship:
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Post by Kvetch »

Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?),
Well *I* know what they all mean, and where they come from (apart from fishing in troubled waters, which I've never understood exactly, presumably because I'm not an angler. And I never use that). I do think they have some validity left - what better expression of solidarity is there than standing sholder to shoulder with some one? Somtimes these things become cliched because it really is the best way of saying something.

Mind you, I'm still not sure how campanology connects with modifying a routine.
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Post by spiphany »

Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc.,etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render.
This is a trend I deplore, by the way, as it encourages sloppiness; however:
I read something really fascinating on this subject not too long ago. This was in a book on linguistics, "The Miracle of Language" by Charlton Laird. Unfortunately, I don't have the book anymore, or I would quote from it, but the general gist of the argument was that traditional grammatical distinctions (between noun and verb, predicate and object) are breaking down in English. The part of speech to which a word theoretically belongs plays little role in how it is actually used. He describes this as a change from an analytical language (inflection-based, like Latin) to a distributive (in which word order conveys meaning). I'm afraid I'm not explaining this very well. Such examples as those above, though, demonstrate very well the tendency of our verbs to get mixed up with their predicates. (For example: In the phrase serve the purpose of, traditional grammar would require analysing purpose as the direct object of the verb serve, and of and whatever follows it would be considered a prepositional phrase. Interpreted that way, the sentence quickly starts to become nonsensical.)

I'm sure this wasn't what you had in mind when you posted this, but I thought it was interesting.
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