A long-standing friend of mine has just bought a house more than sixty miles away from her job. She's thrilled about the new 'chez-moi' but worried about the commuting.
How will you make the transition? I texted the other day, in between emails and overdue edits.
'How will I make the train station?' she replied. 'I'm not quite decrepit yet...'.
We both laughed in an LOL kind way. Such misunderstandings happen every day. But I sometimes wonder how the mighty Shakespeare might have felt faced with the same situation. Or Graham Greene for that matter, or Ernest Hemingway ( who was known to have a difficult nature at the best of times.) Would their combined writerly genius have stood up to the test of text? Or auto-correct. Or any of the myriad inventions these days that are aimed at 'improving' our spelling and grammar.
Computers could write novels! screeched a newspaper heading the other day with enough resonance to make the publishing world take note. Of course they could. But could they write a good novel?
'It’s not hard to tell a story. It’s hard to tell good stories,' Tom Meltzer re-quoted in The Guardian recently. 'How do you get a computer to understand what good means?'
But back to the auto-correct. Even those of us who don't while away our time at the keyboard all day must have shouted No - that's not what I meant...' to the smug-looking screen as it churns out gobbledegook in the name of progress. Must we be told how to write?
I think my five-year-old granddaughter has the right idea:before she speaks, or puts pen to paper, she listens to her teacher. I sent everyone an Easter card,' she told me recently. 'But Miss Jones says yours is an original, not a duplicate.' Maybe she just likes big words. Or else she's been reading Hemingway.
How will you make the transition? I texted the other day, in between emails and overdue edits.
'How will I make the train station?' she replied. 'I'm not quite decrepit yet...'.
We both laughed in an LOL kind way. Such misunderstandings happen every day. But I sometimes wonder how the mighty Shakespeare might have felt faced with the same situation. Or Graham Greene for that matter, or Ernest Hemingway ( who was known to have a difficult nature at the best of times.) Would their combined writerly genius have stood up to the test of text? Or auto-correct. Or any of the myriad inventions these days that are aimed at 'improving' our spelling and grammar.
Computers could write novels! screeched a newspaper heading the other day with enough resonance to make the publishing world take note. Of course they could. But could they write a good novel?
'It’s not hard to tell a story. It’s hard to tell good stories,' Tom Meltzer re-quoted in The Guardian recently. 'How do you get a computer to understand what good means?'
But back to the auto-correct. Even those of us who don't while away our time at the keyboard all day must have shouted No - that's not what I meant...' to the smug-looking screen as it churns out gobbledegook in the name of progress. Must we be told how to write?
I think my five-year-old granddaughter has the right idea:before she speaks, or puts pen to paper, she listens to her teacher. I sent everyone an Easter card,' she told me recently. 'But Miss Jones says yours is an original, not a duplicate.' Maybe she just likes big words. Or else she's been reading Hemingway.
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| I reproduce this with thanks to my friend and grammar expert Wendy Guilbert for bringing it to my attention. |
