Late last night I was on my way to bed when I heard Jo’s voice calling down ‘carefully’ from the bedroom. I thought to myself – ‘sounds like trouble’ – Jo only uses her careful tone when she is about to tell me something I don’t want to hear.
“I’ve just been reading your blog…”
Immediately I knew what the problem was, Jo had found a mistake. Facts are facts and here they are: I left school at 16 and ran away to join the Navy, then I got married and had kids while working as a telecoms engineer. At the age of 38 I suddenly decided that I fancied writing stories. I’d always enjoyed writing daft things, and now I wanted to try and take it to another level. Let’s compare that to my wife, who stayed on at school to take A Levels before heading off to University for a degree and a career in teaching. The fact, therefore, is that Jo is infinitely more academic than I am and a million times more accurate with grammar. Jo spends her days teaching literacy and so cannot help but notice when her husband uses bad England. This is not a bad thing at all; she has earned the right to be better at English than me, in all fairness I’m probably better at electrical engineering than she is.
The point is that she will spot my mistakes.
Isn’t there a rule somewhere about wives mentioning their husband’s failures? I’m sure it’s supposed to be illegal? For a while I used to ask Jo to edit my posts before I published them, but this very nearly caused a divorce and so for the sake of a happy home, we decided it was better just to let me write and accept the occasional grammatical faux pas or blatant typo.
You see, I write because my head is full of daft ideas and I know I can create silly things, but technically I am aware that my knowledge of English is limited. This is why I know that I am a blogger, rather than a bona fide writer; I have a lot to learn before I can really call myself a writer. I left school a long, long time ago and haven’t read anywhere near enough to self develop so I’m really playing catch up. I prefer to let myself go and lose myself in writing, get the ideas down without worrying about the technicalities of writing. Let the story out – so to speak.
Sadly, it just doesn’t work like that.
As a blogger, we are not just the writer are we? A blogger is writer, editor, producer, publisher and distributor! So many hats and you have to take responsibility for all of them – not just one. At this point the majority of non family members who will view your work are all writers too, and if they have made the effort to come and read then they deserve a bit of effort. You guys, quite rightly, expect me to know when to use there or their or they’re or where or wear or ware or weather or whether or your or you’re or when to drop the grocer’s apostrophe - don’t you? English is such a tricky language. DAMN IT – WHY COULDN’T I HAVE BEEN BORN FRENCH?
In last night’s case, you probably expected me to know the difference between a miner and a minor didn’t you? No doubt it came as a surprise to anyone who read yesterdays post, before I edited it, to discover that a load of Chilean children were trapped down a mine. Jo spotted it immediately, as would most people I imagine. Sadly spell checker didn’t see it at all! I am so reliant on technology to spot my errors that it is scary. I need to go back to school, keep on practising and reading harder, or at least find myself an editor that I don’t also love.
UPDATE: should "yesterdays post" have been 'yesterday's post' ? Probably, I managed to sneak that one past Jo :-) I spotted one in an earlier Breeze yesterday as well, where "two Nun's were in a bath" - Nun's? That bloody apostrophe is a menace, I have removed the offending item but Heaven knows how many more I've misused and missed.
7 comments:
Well of course I noted the 'error' but work on the basis that if it is a blog written by someone else it cannot - by definition - be wrong.
I - like you - have not been able to convince my wife that this rule should apply in all cases.
And that's what wives are for.... ;)
See, I just thought you were doing a two birds, one stone type thing.
Maybe they were minor miners.
That would certainly add an element of risk with the miners being under 18.
Badger - I like your thinking.
Lori - that and cleaning the bathroom ;-)
Katie - hmmm I fear that could be difficult to sell, cute kids getting buried alive - somehow I suspect we could have funding problems ...
This was really funny. I agree with you. My mother-in-law is an editor for a newspaper. She also reads my blog. After a few corrections, I told my wife to let her know I'm a blogger not an editor. So I let my apostrophe's fly (like that one), (use my parenthesis (all of them) too much), and dangle my participles in chance I get. (I couldn't figure out a good sentence to show my dangling participle... oh, well.)
If it means anything to you, I don't mentally critique your grammar. But most of that is really because I'm not good with grammar anyway. So correcting your would be like the blind leading the blind. (Or American politics in general. You decided what fits there.)
I was so gripped by your plotline that I didn't even notice you're grammer or spooling.
Bloody nitpickers.
I'm with Kate on this one. I assumed it was a minor miner in the story. You know what assuming makes me.....
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