Colons
Julian Flood
Sorry, I've lost the original post where someone says they love colons and
semi-colons. I've tried searching, but the thread mutation rate here is so
high I hardly know where to start.
I always have trouble -- punctuation is not a high value activity to my
subconscious, so I tend to scatter it around at random. Any tips?
--
Julian Flood
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf.
Mind the diddley skiffle folk.
Ide Cyan
>
> Sorry, I've lost the original post where someone says they love colons and
> semi-colons. I've tried searching, but the thread mutation rate here is so
> high I hardly know where to start.
>
> I always have trouble -- punctuation is not a high value activity to my
> subconscious, so I tend to scatter it around at random. Any tips?
If anyone does have any tips, they'll be helpful to more than one
person. :-)
Brenda
Ide Cyan wrote:
Semicolons separate two bits that could be freestanding sentences; I am rather
prone to comma splices and find that what those commas were trying to do is grow
up to be semicolons. Colons separate bits that cannot: as used here, for
instance.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD, from Tor Books
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
joy beeson
>Semicolons separate two bits that could be freestanding sentences; I am rather
>prone to comma splices and find that what those commas were trying to do is grow
>up to be semicolons. Colons separate bits that cannot: as used here, for
>instance.
How-to-use-punctuation books are prone to examples in which colons are
stuck in where no punctuation is needed at all -- typical example:
->To make a kite, you need: paper, sticks, and string.
Better example of introducing a list:
->To make a kite, you need three things: paper, sticks, and string.
(Real kite-makers will note that I left a bunch of stuff out. Will
this be a fork in the thread?)
(and what is name for the way I used a colon for real?)
Colons are also used to introduce sub-titles:
->I want to get rid of my copy of _Safe Riding: Staying Alive on Your
Motorcycle_.
They also have mathematical uses that escape me at the moment;
something to do with ratios.
--
Joy Beeson
j beeson at global two thousand dot net
PWrede6492
<jul...@argonet.co.uk> writes:
>I always have trouble -- punctuation is not a high value activity to my
>subconscious, so I tend to scatter it around at random. Any tips?
I think there's a difference between British and American usage, but I don't
know what it is.
For American usage, Karen Elizabeth Gordon's THE NEW WELL-TEMPERED SENTENCE
does a really good -- and amusing -- job of laying out the uses and misuses of
punctuation. I don't know if it's available in England, but you can surely
order it through Amazon.com. The way she describes semi-colons is as a sort of
muted period, to be used when a period would be appropriate grammatically, but
is more of a break than you want (because you want more connection between the
two sentences or clauses). Some of her example sentences:
"I'm very ocular in my reading habits; take *away* your books on cassettes!"
"That incorrigible sensualist, Samuel Johnson, wrapped in a peignoir and a mild
euphoria and at work on his dictionary, bounces little words up and down on one
knee; Scheherazade sits on the other knee, smoking Turkish cigarettes and
interrupting his noble labors with her own retellings of classic children's
tales."
"Days are in disorder; nights clump around the bar."
You *could* put a period in place of each of those semi-colons, but it would
change the impact of the sentences, because they wouldn't be connected any
more.
I've also heard of people using a read-aloud test: if you read your prose
aloud, the places where you make the shortest pauses (or briefly change tone of
voice) are the ones where you need commas; the places where you pause slightly
longer, but don't drop your tone of voice the way you would at the end of a
sentence are where you need semi-colons; and the places where you come to a
full stop, drop your tone, and take a breath are the places where you want
periods. You can see this very clearly if you read that first example sentence
twice, first as written and second as if it had a period in the middle instead
of the semi-colon.
Using the read-aloud test, colons have the same full-stop, take-a-breath pause
that periods do, but without the drop in tone-of-voice. Consider these two
bits of dialog:
"I want one thing out of you. Money."
"I want one thing out of you: money."
Gordon's example sentences for colons include ones where, as with semi-colons,
the two halves of the sentence would make perfectly fine sentences all by
themselves, but the meaning or feel of the whole would change subtly. She also
includes sentences similar to the one above, where the colon is used for
emphasis, to set off the importance of something in a particular way. Some of
her examples:
"I've led a sheltered life: I've gone from one shelter to another."
"Pain stood in the way like a sheet of glass: you could walk through it, but
not without a certain noise."
"I'll level with you straightaway, Toots: I *was* standing by your man while
you were off renovating the camper."
And colons get used to introduce lists of things, and examples. For example:
"The baby vampire tries out his baby teeth on surfaces that are fun to
puncture: golf balls, plastic Coke bottles, baloons."
Hope that helps.
Patricia C. Wrede
Chuck Gee
>I always have trouble -- punctuation is not a high value activity to my
>subconscious, so I tend to scatter it around at random. Any tips?
>Julian Flood
Questions on punctuation should be researched using the following
publications.
1. The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
2. The Chicago Manual of Style
3. The Prentice-Hall Handbook for Writers
It also helps to read popular fiction published recently, so as to keep
up with current standards and practices.
That's my tip, such as it is.
Good luck!
William Burns
wrote:
>How-to-use-punctuation books are prone to examples in which colons are
>stuck in where no punctuation is needed at all -- typical example:
>->To make a kite, you need: paper, sticks, and string.
That's the informal form of:
To make a kite, you need:
a. paper,
b. sticks, and
c. string.
All military, well Canadian military, letters/memos use this format.
Now that I'm a civilian again, your second example . . .
>->To make a kite, you need three things: paper, sticks, and string.
. . . looks awkward, to my eyes. The reader should need no help in
counting:
You need paper, sticks, and string to make a kite.
I'd still use the former if writing instructions. Makes a handy
checklist for the reader. Or if reproducing military orders for story
purposes.
>They also have mathematical uses that escape me at the moment;
>something to do with ratios.
Map Scale: 1:50,000
Relationship: Dog:Human::Human:Cat.
The single colon stands for 'is to'. The double, for some reason,
'as'.
--
William
Year 2000: 30 Days To Go.
Rachael Lininger
Julian Flood <jul...@argonet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Sorry, I've lost the original post where someone says they love colons and
>semi-colons. I've tried searching, but the thread mutation rate here is so
>high I hardly know where to start.
Do you mean something really old? I know I waxed enthusiastic about them a
year or two ago.
>I always have trouble -- punctuation is not a high value activity to my
>subconscious, so I tend to scatter it around at random. Any tips?
I dunno. I'm mildly obsessive about punctuation, because I use it to
impoart meaning. Commas, periods, dashes, parentheses, colons, and
semicolons are all ways of stopping things, but they all work differently.
Commas are very soft, used to organize thoughts that go well together,
like a coordinating suit. Periods are a lot stronger, because they bring
one thought to a stop and then another one starts. Dashes are almost
cheerful--just a break gotta minute? here you go bye!--and parentheses
invite you to whisper (or snicker) in the corner. Colons are like litte
chutes that you send ideas through: thoughts go from one phrase to
another. And semicolons are places where a thought stops briefly, for a
minute, and looks around; and then everything proceeds as normal.
Not that anyone asked, but:
Paragraphs provide an elegant trellis upon which prose may flower.
Capitals denote impportance, or perhaps Self-Importance, O Reader.
Italics provide _emphasis,_ or control just _where_ the stress of the
spoken sentence should lie. Boldface is an abomination before the LORD.
Small caps lend a note of quiet distinction to any page, as do old-style
figures.
Berling is a sharp, crisp font, ideally suited to witticisms or novels set
in northern climes. (Note to Patrick--consider Berling for _The King's
Peace._ Please?) Goudy Old Style is so roundy and cheerful that I want to
slap it. Jenson has a rich air of old-fashioned elegance and competence,
and is sturdy enough to hold the weightiest pronouncements. Mrs. Eaves is
lovely, spirited, and has a coy habit of not being precisely where you
expect her to be, but perhaps is not quite suitable for pursuits that
require great stamina.
I could go on, but you probably don't want me to.
Can you tell I'm a visual writer (among other things)? :)
Rachael
--
Rachael Lininger | "It's good to know an assassin
lininger@ | you can hire with a can of tuna fish."
chem.wisc.edu | --Rocco da Mallet
Jo Walton
lini...@chem.wisc.edu "Rachael Lininger" writes:
> Berling is a sharp, crisp font, ideally suited to witticisms or novels set
> in northern climes. (Note to Patrick--consider Berling for _The King's
> Peace._ Please?)
It's set in damp cool Britain-equivalent, I think the temperature
only goes below freezing once in the entire novel. I don't think that
would count as Northern to someone from Alaska.
Goudy Old Style is so roundy and cheerful that I want to
> slap it. Jenson has a rich air of old-fashioned elegance and competence,
> and is sturdy enough to hold the weightiest pronouncements. Mrs. Eaves is
> lovely, spirited, and has a coy habit of not being precisely where you
> expect her to be, but perhaps is not quite suitable for pursuits that
> require great stamina.
I like Cordial. I think :One For the Morning Glory: is set in a Cordial
variant.
Actually I like most sensible fonts, though I prefer a hint of a serif.
Caslonic Antique is the only one I actually detest, and it looks as if
I won't have to put up with that any longer.
> I could go on, but you probably don't want me to.
Oh, I don't know, I thought it was interesting.
> Can you tell I'm a visual writer (among other things)? :)
See David Owen Cruise's sig.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
David Owen-Cruise
<944251...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>:
>In article <827abj$gsr$1...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu>
> lini...@chem.wisc.edu "Rachael Lininger" writes:
>
[type]
>> Can you tell I'm a visual writer (among other things)? :)
>
>See David Owen Cruise's sig.
>
Oh, *that* little old thing?
It's a product of helping my friend the type designer move house shortly
after a couple of Usenet font discussions. He carved it in stone during
his MFA work.
I'm not at all a visual writer, and my design sense is sufficiently
astute to point out I'm no good at it.
--
David Owen-Cruise
"Letters are things, not pictures of things."
Eric Gill
Dennis L. McKiernan
why it's important. If you don't care how it sounds, then you don't
need punctuation.
Of course without punctuation the reader will read in a stream of
consciousness sort of way and things will tend to run together with no
stops or anything to give a clue as to what the hell this thing is
supposed to sound like and how will you ever spell focsl without them
little thingies which go after the o and c and s and l for it will
really be a word which makes no sense don't you know and then there wont
be contractions or preganant pauses or moments of silence or folks
crying out oh damn or other curse words which should be marked with
apostrophes and when independent clauses appear in the same paragraph
there wont be any divisions to let you know that they are independant
what better way to confuse the reader than to not use punctuations eh
including question marks and colons and commas and other such markers or
on the other hand you can throw in punctuations more or less at random
and then? you have, utter! confusion which might. be really an idiot;
thing to do" this :random insertion) of various] marks of. punctuation .
. . do'n't' you see -- which gi-ves meaning to the whole thing?
---Dennis
--
Dennis L. McKiernan ~ http://home.att.net/~dlmck
Latest release:
The Hel's Crucible duology: Into the Forge; Into the Fire
Other recent Books: The Dragonstone; Caverns of Socrates
Forthcoming: Silver Wolf, Black Falcon (June '00)
Brenda
Dennis L. McKiernan wrote:
> Punctuation tells the reader how you want the words to _sound_. That's
> why it's important. If you don't care how it sounds, then you don't
> need punctuation.
I have problems with this. I know how the words should sound, and when I
read them aloud they of course sound that way. But punctuation does not
somehow reproduce that flow and tempo and articulation. If I try to make it
do so, there seem to be one hell of a lot of commas in the prose, and the
copyeditor takes them all out anyway.
Rachael Lininger
>In article <827abj$gsr$1...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu>,
>Rachael Lininger <lini...@chem.wisc.edu> wrote:
>
>>I dunno. I'm mildly obsessive about punctuation, because I use it to
>>impoart meaning. Commas, periods, dashes, parentheses, colons, and
>>semicolons are all ways of stopping things, but they all work differently.
[Yes, you can use it, but please leave my name on it and don't let it go
anywhere that would lose my rights to it; I'm working on something about
that.]
>>I could go on, but you probably don't want me to.
Snip.
>Oh, yes I do! Hey I work for a preservation program and Goudy is just
>perfect for it (I don't use Old Style though unless the vanilla common
>computer version [Adobe's?] of Goudy is Old Style).
Yup. Sorry, but I hate it; it's entirely a personal thing. It has these
short little stubby cute descenders and the p's look like they are going
to flop over and rock back and forth on the baseline on their obnoxiously
cute puffy bowls. And usually, it's set wrong (I think), with too much
leading; when it works, it has a good deal less than most other fonts at
that point size.
>Different fonts give such a different flavour to a book, and sometimes
>distinctive ones work and sometimes they push the work over the top. Was
>it Ann Chamberlin's _The Merlin of Gilles Well_ that I was recently trying
>to read that the font styles (particularly the drop caps) seemed over the
>top? Mind you, I just couldn't engage with the book, and that was
>probably not the reason though it did stand out to me.
I haven't seen that. I'd like to. But take Steven Brust's _The Phoenix
Guards._ It was in, I think, Berkeley Old Style; some sort of
Venetian-derived font, anyway. And I think it looked wonderfully
old-fashioned. (I don't object to Goudy himself, just his signature font.)
>>Can you tell I'm a visual writer (among other things)? :)
>
>Yes, and you also just helped me identify myself as one. I'd always
>thought the flavours of fonts had strong and different effects and
>sometimes commented on particular ones, but I'd never realized quite how
>much I really do notice them. I'd certainly never written about the
>effects.
I used to study up about it, because I was setting chapbooks--an sf mag
for my school, and the poetry mag.
>I have done some book design, too, and fought some battles about
>fonts--though most writers/teeny-scale publishers I've worked with don't
>seem to care so very much. I wonder if many readers notice anything except
>in the very obvious cases.
I do, but I'm weird. Then again, I got that Katherine Blake book with all
the font changes. What was it called? :)
Rachael Lininger
>Dennis L. McKiernan wrote:
>
>> Punctuation tells the reader how you want the words to _sound_. That's
>> why it's important. If you don't care how it sounds, then you don't
>> need punctuation.
>
>I have problems with this. I know how the words should sound, and when I
>read them aloud they of course sound that way. But punctuation does not
>somehow reproduce that flow and tempo and articulation. If I try to make it
>do so, there seem to be one hell of a lot of commas in the prose, and the
>copyeditor takes them all out anyway.
I think that if you organize the phrases correctly with punctuation, it
helps the reader read it in a sensible manner, because they've got signals
as to what's coming. Take a really long sentence--if it's well-punctuated,
the reader can manage to read the whole thing and keep the modifiers and
modifiees stressed right so they sound like they go together.
The reason that I object to poor punctuation is that it makes me think
that this went with that when it really went with that other thing, and
now my mental voice using end-of-thought tones when there's more to say.
I have no idea if that made sense.
Dennis L. McKiernan
you want the _text_ to sound.
But that's neither here nor there.
Copy-editors sometimes really screw things up, even punctuation.
I always read my stuff out loud, and typically where I pause, there
goes a comma.
As far as other punctuation goes, the "rules" are reasonably
straightforward, though at times whether to use an em dash or an
ellipsis or a full colon is a tossup. Then I put in whatever _looks_
right.
I do use punctuation to make the "beat" of the words come out how I
want that rhythm to be.
I am like whoever it was who posted above and said that she wrote
"visually," i.e., the text not only has to _sound_ like I want it to
sound, it also has to _look_ that way, too.
---Dennis
Brenda wrote:
>
> Dennis L. McKiernan wrote:
>
> > Punctuation tells the reader how you want the words to _sound_. That's
> > why it's important. If you don't care how it sounds, then you don't
> > need punctuation.
>
> I have problems with this. I know how the words should sound, and when I
> read them aloud they of course sound that way. But punctuation does not
> somehow reproduce that flow and tempo and articulation. If I try to make it
> do so, there seem to be one hell of a lot of commas in the prose, and the
> copyeditor takes them all out anyway.
>
>
> --
> ---------
> Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD, from Tor Books
> http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
--
Beth Friedman
>On 2 Dec 1999 20:36:35 -0600, lini...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu (Rachael
>Lininger) wrote:
>>Can you tell I'm a visual writer (among other things)? :)
>
>
>http://www.ragnarokpress.com/scriptorium/ or possibly
>http://www.scriptorium.com/
It's the first one. I've actually been to the second one, but it's
unrelated; it belongs to the woman who wrote FrameMaker for Dummies.
>They have some excellent text fonts based upon old typefaces. Like
>True Golden or Galliard. And something that really fits to many kinds
>of fantasy: Folkard. All of them are trial packages, so some don't
>have numbers. If you can't find them, mail me and I will send them to
>you. They are about 25 Kb each.
Um, those aren't free fonts. Inexpensive, but not free.
I like their display fonts, but it drives me nuts that I can't get a better
feel for their text fonts. I can't tell much from just one line, especially
when it's juxtaposed with a bunch of other fonts next to it. I need a clump
of text.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Thomas Yan
> In article <829lb8$8nm$1...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu>,
> Rachael Lininger <lini...@chem.wisc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >I do, but I'm weird. Then again, I got that Katherine Blake book with all
> >the font changes. What was it called? :)
>
> (Rising to the bait) _The Interior Life,_ and as I recall you
> were one of the few people in the last discussion who could tell
> its font 1 from its font 2. *I* couldn't, except from context,
> and I wrote the damn thing.
if I recall correctly, those of us who are less perceptive
can distinguish them by looking at the e's: The first stroke
is flat (-) in one, diagonal (/) in the other.
--
Thomas Yan (ty...@cs.cornell.edu) I don't speak for Cornell University
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Lininger) wrote:
>I could go on, but you probably don't want me to.
Yes we do. It was beautiful.
>Can you tell I'm a visual writer (among other things)? :)
Well, go to Scriptorium web page.
They have some excellent text fonts based upon old typefaces. Like
True Golden or Galliard. And something that really fits to many kinds
of fantasy: Folkard. All of them are trial packages, so some don't
have numbers. If you can't find them, mail me and I will send them to
you. They are about 25 Kb each.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Dorothy J Heydt
>>fonts--though most writers/teeny-scale publishers I've worked with don't
>>seem to care so very much. I wonder if many readers notice anything except
>>in the very obvious cases.
>
>the font changes. What was it called? :)
(Rising to the bait) _The Interior Life,_ and as I recall you
were one of the few people in the last discussion who could tell
its font 1 from its font 2. *I* couldn't, except from context,
and I wrote the damn thing.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Leanne Phillips
Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <829lb8$8nm$1...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu>,
>Rachael Lininger <lini...@chem.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>I do, but I'm weird. Then again, I got that Katherine Blake book with all
>>the font changes. What was it called? :)
>
>(Rising to the bait) _The Interior Life,_ and as I recall you
>were one of the few people in the last discussion who could tell
>its font 1 from its font 2. *I* couldn't, except from context,
>and I wrote the damn thing.
I could, I could! But I wasn't here for the last discussion. :) I
could tell three distinct fonts.
-Leanne
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote in message ...
>>They have some excellent text fonts based upon old typefaces. Like
>>True Golden or Galliard. And something that really fits to many kinds
>>of fantasy: Folkard. All of them are trial packages, so some don't
>Um, those aren't free fonts. Inexpensive, but not free.
No, no, no. I'm not talking about their packages, but about their demo
fonts. The incomplete sets on "Font of the month" page. Unless they
removed it. I haven't been there for about a year.
>I like their display fonts, but it drives me nuts that I can't get a better
>feel for their text fonts. I can't tell much from just one line, especially
Well, you download the demo font and try it.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Lininger) wrote:
>I once saw the kerning chart a truly lovely small type foundry used, and
>it had thousands of words on it. If I were rich, I'd buy several of their
>fonts; alas, they ain't cheap. But the quality shows. If anyone is rich
>and looking, do check out www.tiro.com, or Tiro Typeworks in Vancouver.
There was an interesting page, Fontaholics Anonymous, listing various
free and commercial font pages. But it suddenly dropped offline and
never appeared again. The address was:
http://home1.gte.net/tiaralyn/fontmain.htm
Does anybody know what happened to them? I found another Fontaholics
Anonymous page, but it's not that. This one started mainly as a Mac
fonts page and is much poorer than the first one.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
joy beeson
>I'd still use the former if writing instructions. Makes a handy
>checklist for the reader. Or if reproducing military orders for story
>purposes.
Well I *am* an instruction writer, but the statement was "something
that fits the form" grabbed at random, not something someone might
actually say. I'm tempted to say that the "three" tells the reader
that there are three things to count off on his fingers. (More than
three, of course, call for the abc check list.)
The above paragraph is only an aside before expounding an insight that
came this morning while I was changing a semicolon into a colon in my
diary, and how *ever* did I write with a manual typewriter? (With
lots of x-outs and peckovers; I have a sample somewhere.)
A colon in the middle of a sentence means that the second half of the
sentence explains the first half! This includes the introduction of
an example, as I puzzled over in my first post, and the special case
of introducing a list:
> You need:
>
> a
> b
> c
> d
says that you need stuff, and then lists the stuff that you need:
statement and explanation.
This doesn't take in the ratio use, but Math tends to ignore the
English use of the punctuation marks it adopts. "/' means "end of
line" and multiple-choice in English, and "divided by" in Math.
"~" is a mark over a letter in English, and means "in the neighborhood
of" in Math. In English, math's minus sign means what "( )" means in
Math.
Rant on commas: you *don't* put in a comma to show that you've
stopped for breath. You put in a comma to make your meaning easier to
grasp. (Thus my impassioned defense of the serial comma: leaving out
the last comma in the series is like leaving out the Dan Henry mark at
the corner, and counting on the presence or absence of the mark
*after* the turn to clue the rider in: it works, but it isn't
polite.)
(Dan Henry mark: a special arrow used for bike tours, painted on the
pavement before, at, and after each turn.)
Beth Friedman
>In article <82adg9$e7e$1...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu>,
>Rachael Lininger <lini...@chem.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>
>>I've fiddled with the Scriptorium text faces, and I don't think the
>>spacing is smooth enough.
>
>I ought to have noted that this was about a year ago, and things may have
>changed.
Or not. I downloaded one of their free Web fonts (Onuava, I think) because
it claimed to be an easy-to-read monospaced font, and I'm on an ongoing
quest for the perfect monospaced font. It was unusable because the spacing
was so clunky -- on a monospaced font!
I guess I'll stick with Lucida Sans Typewriter, which is still the best I've
found.
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>"~" is a mark over a letter in English, and means "in the neighborhood
>of" in Math.
A quibble. Actually, it's a mark over letter in *Spanish*. And two ~'s
or a '~' over a '=' means "approximately equals" in Maths. At least
that's what they taught me in my high school. (I had pretty advanced
Maths. Derivatives, integrations, differential calculus, probability
calculus etc. The stuff people study at the university.)
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Lucy Kemnitzer
We put a tilde over a letter in English when the word is borrowed,
also, unless the medium doesn't allow it. So here, I write El
Nino, because I don't know how to make a tilde behave here, but in
handwriting or WordPerfect, the tilde would sit over the second n.
The English I speak and write has more Spanish borrowings in it
than some (um, what's the word for a language division smaller
than a dialect? How come Zeborah's on vacation right this minute
when I have this question? -- DARE claims that there's one dialect
for the whole West of the USA, and I don't believe this)
Lucy Kemnitzer
Rachael Lininger
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>We put a tilde over a letter in English when the word is borrowed,
>also, unless the medium doesn't allow it. So here, I write El
>Nino, because I don't know how to make a tilde behave here, but in
>handwriting or WordPerfect, the tilde would sit over the second n.
>The English I speak and write has more Spanish borrowings in it
>than some (um, what's the word for a language division smaller
>than a dialect? How come Zeborah's on vacation right this minute
>when I have this question? -- DARE claims that there's one dialect
>for the whole West of the USA, and I don't believe this)
Is the word you're looking for "idiolect"?
Anyway, it's good that Zeborah's on vacation. :)
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>We put a tilde over a letter in English when the word is borrowed,
^^^^^^^^^^
My point exactly. :-) I said it was a quibble.
>when I have this question? -- DARE claims that there's one dialect
>for the whole West of the USA, and I don't believe this)
Well, that's what I also was told, at the university. Midwest and
Pacific supposedly have the same dialect. And on my recent visit to
the States I haven't noticed any marked diferences between the way
people talk in St. Louis and Seattle. FWIW.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Thomas Yan
> In article <384a8f66...@enews.newsguy.com>,
> Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
> >what's the word for a language division smaller
> >than a dialect?
>
> Is the word you're looking for "idiolect"?
that's too much smaller:
an idiolect is specific to just one person.
--
Thomas Yan (ty...@cs.cornell.edu) I don't speak for Cornell University
Computer Science Department \\ Cornell University \\ Ithaca, NY 14853
(please pardon any lack of capitalization -- my hands hurt from typing)
Lucy Kemnitzer
But I do notice the difference between the way people talk in
South San Francisco, Watsonville, West Oakland, Los Gatos, and
Sacramento. And there are at least three black ways of speaking
in the West, different from each other if not different from some
other black ways of speaking around the country.
I read the DARE definition of the western dialect, and it hinged
on two or three phonemic consistencies, which I couldn't remember
enough background to evaluate. The differences I hear are more
numerous. I believe I must misunderstand what a dialect is: I
certainly don't think my observations are _better_ than those of
people who spend their lives doing this. But I also don't believe
that the things I hear are not real -- they must be something
other than dialects, is all.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
<vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>On Sun, 05 Dec 1999 16:18:31 GMT, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
>wrote:
>
>>We put a tilde over a letter in English when the word is borrowed,
> ^^^^^^^^^^
>
>My point exactly. :-) I said it was a quibble.
Well, no, I don't think it's your point: I think you were saying
that those borrowed words aren't English, but they are. The fact
that they are also and originally Spanish doesn't make them not
English. That's what I'm saying. It's the salient feature of
English, that so many of the words are recognizably from other
languages.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>On Sun, 05 Dec 1999 23:12:41 +0100, Vlatko Juric-Kokic
><vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>>On Sun, 05 Dec 1999 16:18:31 GMT, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
>>wrote:
>>>We put a tilde over a letter in English when the word is borrowed,
>> ^^^^^^^^^^
>>My point exactly. :-) I said it was a quibble.
>Well, no, I don't think it's your point: I think you were saying
>that those borrowed words aren't English, but they are. The fact
>that they are also and originally Spanish doesn't make them not
>English. That's what I'm saying.
Believe it or not, I had a discussion about exactly the same thing in
Croatian. Several times. :-( There were people saying that borrowed
words (in Croatian they have another, more telling name, "alien
words") are not a part of Croatian. I said yes, they were, because
they were used in Croatian. It's as simple as that. So we agree on
that.
OTOH, I think that a tilde is not a mark over a letter in English,
because it's not used in any other word except in those that were
borrowed into English. IOW, words that came with a tilde already
installed. So, the mark was not adopted into English, unlike the
words. Er, did I make it clear or did I fumble it? It's been a long
time since I studied it.
>It's the salient feature of English, that so many of the words
>are recognizably from other languages.
I like it immensely. Although English has much easier time with the
feature because it doesn't have cases like Croatian. BTW, did you know
that there's a Croatian word in English?
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Lucy Kemnitzer
If someone asked me this who did not know the answer, my response
would be "probably, but I don't know what it is."
What is it?
Lucy Kemnitzer
(I used to sing a Croation song thirty years ago in the days of
folk dancing at the Philadelphia Art Museum)
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>On Mon, 06 Dec 1999 22:46:19 +0100, Vlatko Juric-Kokic
><vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>>. BTW, did you know
>>that there's a Croatian word in English?
>If someone asked me this who did not know the answer, my response
>would be "probably, but I don't know what it is."
>What is it?
'Cravat'.
>(I used to sing a Croation song thirty years ago in the days of
>folk dancing at the Philadelphia Art Museum)
Really? How did it go?
Anyway, this reminded me of something I wanted to ask since the thread
about sandwiches.
Steven Brust's Easterners are, as far as I can see, very Hungarian.
(Names and cuisine are dead giveaways. :-)) Which reflects his
ancestry.
Charles de Lint's main characters are usually painters, musicians etc.
Which reflects his interests.
So how much of an author should enter a book? For instance, the
prevalence of artistic types in de Lint's books is starting to be
slightly grating. And I like his books.
vlatko
P.S. As this is another thread, we could change the subject. Will you
do it?
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Brenda
Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote:
>
>
> Charles de Lint's main characters are usually painters, musicians etc.
> Which reflects his interests.
>
> So how much of an author should enter a book? For instance, the
> prevalence of artistic types in de Lint's books is starting to be
> slightly grating. And I like his books.
>
Tolkien said of his Elves, that "they put all they love into all they
make." It is probably not possible for a writer to write a book and not
include a great deal of herself.
Also, from a practical point of view, it is easier to write about things
that you either already know well, or that you're dying to find out more
about. It's hard enough to write a book -- you might as well hook it up
to as many of your personal obsessions as you can, to help the process
along.
Holly E. Ordway
>Tolkien said of his Elves, that "they put all they love into all they
>make." It is probably not possible for a writer to write a book and not
>include a great deal of herself.
>
>Also, from a practical point of view, it is easier to write about things
>that you either already know well, or that you're dying to find out more
>about. It's hard enough to write a book -- you might as well hook it up
>to as many of your personal obsessions as you can, to help the process
>along.
Which really, really makes me wonder about Tim Powers. The injury/mutilation
rate of main characters in his books is nearly 100%. ;)
I wish he'd write another historically-based novel. Modern-day Los Angeles
and San Francisco (of _Expiration Date_ and _Earthquake Weather_, no spoilers
please, I haven't finished) just don't grab me all that much as settings.
Cheers,
Holly
Lucy Kemnitzer
<vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:48:01 GMT, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
>wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 06 Dec 1999 22:46:19 +0100, Vlatko Juric-Kokic
>><vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>>>. BTW, did you know
>>>that there's a Croatian word in English?
>>If someone asked me this who did not know the answer, my response
>>would be "probably, but I don't know what it is."
>>What is it?
>
>'Cravat'.
>
>>(I used to sing a Croation song thirty years ago in the days of
>>folk dancing at the Philadelphia Art Museum)
>
>Really? How did it go?
there are most likely _numerous_ errors in this:
"Pjeivai mi pjeivai, sokole
shala sokolei
Kosto si sinoc pjeivao
shala pjeivao"
and two or three more verses. A friend in high school said it was
"sing to me, falcon(or some other bird), like you sang to me last
night," and there was a part about walking around near a
sweetheart's house and going to sleep outside, I think.
We sang it without accompaniement at the end of the night, dancing
very slow during the singing, then silently through a swift but
gentle part, and then quietly out the door (if we happened to be
in a room instead of outside at the Museum).
My brother's friend got hold of those cool shoes which I think
come from all over the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean --
with the curved toes and the woven bit like huaraches and the
stitching like moccasins. They sounded great in the silent
dancing part.
Lucy Kemnitzer
>vlatko
>P.S. As this is another thread, we could change the subject. Will you
>do it?
Somebody else aready did, but they didn't have the part about the
croation song.
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>
>
>Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Charles de Lint's main characters are usually painters, musicians etc.
>> Which reflects his interests.
>>
>> So how much of an author should enter a book? For instance, the
>> prevalence of artistic types in de Lint's books is starting to be
>> slightly grating. And I like his books.
>>
>
>Anyway, this reminded me of something I wanted to ask since the thread
>about sandwiches.
>
>Steven Brust's Easterners are, as far as I can see, very Hungarian.
>(Names and cuisine are dead giveaways. :-)) Which reflects his
>ancestry.
>
>Charles de Lint's main characters are usually painters, musicians etc.
>Which reflects his interests.
>
>So how much of an author should enter a book? For instance, the
>prevalence of artistic types in de Lint's books is starting to be
>slightly grating. And I like his books.
I read one, and thought I liked his writing, and started using him
as an example of what some of my writing was like, and then I
picked up _The Small Country_ (I think) and it was entirely too
precious, it made me think that Cornwall must be a very silly
place, which I am sure is not true.
I think the problem there is not that de Lint is infusing too much
of his other interests in his writing: I think his problem is that
he got bit by the cuteness beetle and he has only partly
recovered.
>
>
>Tolkien said of his Elves, that "they put all they love into all they
>make." It is probably not possible for a writer to write a book and not
>include a great deal of herself.
>
>Also, from a practical point of view, it is easier to write about things
>that you either already know well, or that you're dying to find out more
>about. It's hard enough to write a book -- you might as well hook it up
>to as many of your personal obsessions as you can, to help the process
>along.
As witness the frequent pleas for help with research we get here,
when people end up too far from what they know and love.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Brenda
Holly E. Ordway wrote:
> clo...@erols.com (Brenda) wrote:
>
> >Tolkien said of his Elves, that "they put all they love into all they
> >make." It is probably not possible for a writer to write a book and not
> >include a great deal of herself.
> >
> >Also, from a practical point of view, it is easier to write about things
> >that you either already know well, or that you're dying to find out more
> >about. It's hard enough to write a book -- you might as well hook it up
> >to as many of your personal obsessions as you can, to help the process
> >along.
>
> Which really, really makes me wonder about Tim Powers. The injury/mutilation
> rate of main characters in his books is nearly 100%. ;)
Well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, we hope. I look over my books and in
EVERY one there are nasty experiences with doctors or hospitals, and EVERY
protagonist throws up at least once. This in addition to the usual angst and
misery...
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
Or soetimes the cigar is kind of like duct tape: a universal
thingie that is always to hand. When I engage with an author for
the first time, sometimes I go on a spree of reading that author,
and when you do it that way, those "always" things leap right out
at you. Every author I've been able to read a bunch of all at
once has had things like that, sometimes little, like deLint's
habit of using the phrase "little say" (as in something like "I
had no house, little say a parlor" -- I made up that example), or
sometimes really significant, like the bad mother figures in
Cherryh.
I get self-conscious about mine, and try to suppress them, because
I worry that when someone notices them they'll think I'm
perverted, but I can't quite: they are so integral to my
storytelling.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Jo Walton
rit...@cruzio.com "Lucy Kemnitzer" writes:
> I read one, and thought I liked his writing, and started using him
> as an example of what some of my writing was like, and then I
> picked up _The Small Country_ (I think) and it was entirely too
> precious, it made me think that Cornwall must be a very silly
> place, which I am sure is not true.
:The Little Country:.
Don't get any information about Cornwall from that book. It made me think
he'd been there once for a week. In summer.
That's the only Charles de Lint I've read, and it left me very little
inclined to bother with any more, though I've been told since it's not
his best.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
Brenda
Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
And there are things that really are integral to the human experience. Everybody
worries about their health, sooner or later, just like everybody eats meals. This
is what I tell myself, anyway.
T. Kenyon
> wrote:
> >Well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, we hope. I look over my books and in
> >EVERY one there are nasty experiences with doctors or hospitals, and EVERY
> >protagonist throws up at least once. This in addition to the usual angst and
> >misery...
> Or soetimes the cigar is kind of like duct tape: a universal
> thingie that is always to hand. When I engage with an author for
> the first time, sometimes I go on a spree of reading that author,
> and when you do it that way, those "always" things leap right out
> at you. Every author I've been able to read a bunch of all at
Certain themes tend to run through people's fiction. In reading Flannery
O'Conner a few years ago, in chronological order, one story had a
character with grey metallic eyes, the next one's eyes were "lead," and
the next one had "pewter" eyes. Sometimes, we work in themes. Maybe it's
not so much the writer as the work.
TK Kenyon
"I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find
yourself up there."
-- Fred Allen
Brenda
T. Kenyon wrote:
Now eye color is one of those really minor things (very few plots turn upon eye
color) that make me think that's just an annoying writer tic. It is possible to
wonder whether that particular look fascinates the author unduly. What does his/her
spouse look like, eh?
Brenda
Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote:
> Hmmm, can you get too much of a good thing? FI, again, I like things
> Japanese. I like (non-sf) _Shogun_, I like SF stories that dealt with
> Japan, and that's certainly one of the reasons I like Cherryh's
> _Cuckoo's Egg_. Now, do you share my enthusiasm for that? If *you* do,
> how many others?
>
Well, to prevent reader tedium, and to keep your entire corpus of work from
looking like xeroxes of each other (can you say John Norman? I knew you
could), I think a prudent author should take care to parcel out her
obsessions, one per book. It helps if you have a slew of diverse passionate
interests, and are not just a one-trick pony.
I'm currently mining a costly and time-consuming mania for Antarctic
exploration and time travel. The previous book, I got Broadway musicals
(also costly) out of my system for awhile. The one before that gave me the
opportunity to really dig into memory and brain organization, and also
polyamory and group marriage. The one before that involved circuses and burn
therapy. And the one before -that-, which is going to come out in the
spring, slaked my thirst for Lunar colonies and NASA jargon.
I can only pray that my muse won't develop a overriding obsession with star
sapphires, or emerald-cut diamonds, or ocean-going yachts.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 19:53:43 +0100, Vlatko Juric-Kokic
><vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>>On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:48:01 GMT, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
>>wrote:
>>>(I used to sing a Croation song thirty years ago in the days of
>>>folk dancing at the Philadelphia Art Museum)
>>Really? How did it go?
>there are most likely _numerous_ errors in this:>
>"Pjeivai mi pjeivai, sokole
>shala sokolei
>Kosto si sinoc pjeivao
>shala pjeivao"
Nah, it sounds like it should sound *sung*. With lengthening of
vowels. A traditional folk song.
>and two or three more verses. A friend in high school said it was
>"sing to me, falcon(or some other bird), like you sang to me last
Strictly speaking, a 'sokol' (short vowels like in 'pot') is a hawk.
But it can be a falcon, too. Don't ask. :-)
>night," and there was a part about walking around near a
>sweetheart's house and going to sleep outside, I think.
Pretty good translation.
ObSF: Not like the one in _Dune_, when the "original" says, "Ima trave
okolo i korenja okolo...", and Herbert translates, "These are the
ashes and these are the trees", when it should be (literally),
"There's grass around and there're roots around."
>My brother's friend got hold of those cool shoes which I think
>come from all over the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean --
>with the curved toes and the woven bit like huaraches and the
>stitching like moccasins. They sounded great in the silent
>dancing part.
Ah, you mean 'opanci' (pl.), pronounced 'oppantsy'. The singular is
'opanak' pronounced 'oppannakk'. (Unfortunately, I can't reproduce
International Phonetic Alphabet on my keyboard. So this looks like a
transcription of Kifish. :-)) They used to sell them at the open-air
market in my hometown when I was a kid. Nowadays, you can only find
them on the oldest people in the remotest boondocks. Which are not
very remote as you can drive over Croatia in less than an hour at some
places. :-) But you get my meaning.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
>Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote:
>> So how much of an author should enter a book? For instance, the
>> prevalence of artistic types in de Lint's books is starting to be
>> slightly grating. And I like his books.
>Also, from a practical point of view, it is easier to write about things
>that you either already know well, or that you're dying to find out more
>about. It's hard enough to write a book -- you might as well hook it up
>to as many of your personal obsessions as you can, to help the process
>along.
Hmmm, can you get too much of a good thing? FI, again, I like things
Japanese. I like (non-sf) _Shogun_, I like SF stories that dealt with
Japan, and that's certainly one of the reasons I like Cherryh's
_Cuckoo's Egg_. Now, do you share my enthusiasm for that? If *you* do,
how many others?
As I said in the first post, this question occured to me during the
sandwich thread. The jump from sandwiches to Brust's Easterners'
Magyar cuisine and to his ancestry was inevitable. :-) In the
meantime, I read the essays and texts about writing on SFWA Web site.
(Nice work with the titles, BTW.) There's the -Grubby Appartment
Story- entry in "Turkey City Lexicon". It says: "Writing too much
about what you know." I think that de Lint writes a leetle bit too
much about what he knows.
(A friend of mine described him as "that New Agey guy". IMW, the
artist as an apex of creation. In touch with your inner self etc. That
might be the cuteness bug Lucy describes. Although some of his books
*are* good. Like _Trader_ or the two collections about Newford,
_Dreams Underfoot_ and _The Ivory and Horn_. Maybe nothing
spectacular, but good nevertheless. _Spiritwalk_ is also supposed to
be good, but they have only the sequel at my local English-language
bookstore. For the last year and a half. :-( )
OTOH, it might be the matter of themes. Although I think that TK
Kenyon is confusing themes and motifs to some extent. Or maybe I'm
confusing them. It doesn't help that half my books are on shelves and
the other half in boxes, so I never know what's where. Anyway, I think
it doesn't invalidate my question. Too much themes or too much motifs
or too much anything, it's too much.
OTOOH, what I look for in a writer and what I think is good for
writing is the erudition of Terry Pratchett's kind. It's been years
since I read first books of his and I'm still finding out what he
really meant with a throw-away fact or where he found it. Usually the
fact is hidden in an obscure reference work. Like "Nil Illegitimi
Carborundum". (Yes, this is a teaser. :-) I love teasers. YMMV, of
course. Exactly what I meant with Japan in the first paragraph.)
Whew, I see I got bit by a long-windedness bug. That's all, folks.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
Since I believe Flannery O'Connor is a Southern writer (there's
somebody else I keep mixing up with Flannery O'Connor who is a
Southern writer, and I think FLannery O'Connor is too, but I'm
scared there's a third or fourth person I'm conflating and that
one of them is not) I would think that the thing being expressed
here is the very pale, very unexpressive blue eye you get on some
of the Scots-Irish type of Southerner -- I would think that eye
color could "stand for" a whole lot in this case, the most salient
thing being race, which is a big deal, of course.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Rachel Brown
> > >Well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, we hope. I look over my
books and in
> > >EVERY one there are nasty experiences with doctors or hospitals, and
EVERY
> > >protagonist throws up at least once. This in addition to the usual
angst and
> > >misery...
What I find really fascinating is when people in a writing group all have
similar things spontaneously crop up in their works in progress.
In a previous group of six, we once did a writing exercise in class and two
of us wrote vignettes prominently featuring a Swiss army knife. It got
really strange when a few weeks later, the same two writers brought in
outlines in which their protagonist was a woman with jaw cancer.
In my current writing group, three of our protagonists and one secondary
character (four different writers) suffer from post-traumatic stress
disorder. I know why I'm writing about it; it's probably the biggest
recurring theme in my writing. What I'd like to know is why everyone else
is as well. At this rate our characters ought to get together and form a
support group.
Rachel
High Queen of Procrastination
> > >Well, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, we hope. I look over my books and in
> > >EVERY one there are nasty experiences with doctors or hospitals, and EVERY
> > >protagonist throws up at least once. This in addition to the usual angst and
> > >misery...
> > Or soetimes the cigar is kind of like duct tape: a universal
> > thingie that is always to hand. When I engage with an author for
> > the first time, sometimes I go on a spree of reading that author,
> > and when you do it that way, those "always" things leap right out
> > at you. Every author I've been able to read a bunch of all at
>
> Certain themes tend to run through people's fiction. In reading Flannery
> O'Conner a few years ago, in chronological order, one story had a
> character with grey metallic eyes, the next one's eyes were "lead," and
> the next one had "pewter" eyes. Sometimes, we work in themes. Maybe it's
> not so much the writer as the work.
Ah, silver eyes... *swoons to a puddle on the floor* Invariably all my
male protagonists are dark haired with silver eyes (at least when I
first envision them) Later on I tack on different physical descriptions
(don't want to be *too* blatant... see .sig) that fit into the story
better. I mean, really, how many raven haired silver-eyed guys can be
running around in the world(s)?
And my future husband-to-be will wonder why I'm always shoving hair dye
and contact lenses at him. (^_~)
A. Hazard
The female protag tends to have dark hair with reddish highlights and
blue-green eyes. I've managed to ween myself away from this description
more readily then the silver-eyed male however.
--
"You are right, I am not the normal damsel in distress. I am the one who
throws over the prince to run away with the dragon."
- 'Angel of Music'
Searching for 1980's My Little Ponies, She-ra, Transformers, black
unicorns, animation cels, and raven haired silver-eyed guys named
'Damien'.
Dorothy J Heydt
High Queen of Procrastination <aha...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
>
>Ah, silver eyes... *swoons to a puddle on the floor* Invariably all my
>male protagonists are dark haired with silver eyes (at least when I
>first envision them) Later on I tack on different physical descriptions
>(don't want to be *too* blatant... see .sig) that fit into the story
>better. I mean, really, how many raven haired silver-eyed guys can be
>running around in the world(s)?
Depends on the genetics! I mean, if you dug shiny raven-black hair
and black eyes, and you set your novel in Asia, virtually
everybody would look like your dream person. The only problem is
that if you set that up you'll have no excuse to dwell on their
physical descriptions. It's like saying "Well, he's kind of
skinny and has glasses and shaggy long hair and a beard," or
"she's a little overweight and has glasses and long straight
brown hair," you've just described most people I know. Yeah,
yeah, raven hair and silver eyes like everybody else, tell me
something new...;..
Dorothy J. Heydt
(Whereas my heroes tend to be tall, dark, skinny, and somehow maimed)
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Brenda
Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <384F99D0...@gl.umbc.edu>,
> High Queen of Procrastination <aha...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >Ah, silver eyes... *swoons to a puddle on the floor* Invariably all my
> >male protagonists are dark haired with silver eyes (at least when I
> >first envision them) Later on I tack on different physical descriptions
> >(don't want to be *too* blatant... see .sig) that fit into the story
> >better. I mean, really, how many raven haired silver-eyed guys can be
> >running around in the world(s)?
>
> Depends on the genetics! I mean, if you dug shiny raven-black hair
> and black eyes, and you set your novel in Asia, virtually
> everybody would look like your dream person. The only problem is
> that if you set that up you'll have no excuse to dwell on their
> physical descriptions.
There's also the problem that, if everyone in the country has black hair, it
is no longer remarkable. (How often does one see descriptions of Americans,
remarking on their bipedalism?) The eye finds other distinguishing
characteristics to differentiate between people. (When my mother first
arrived in the US, she found it hard to tell white people apart. Her eye
had not learned to pick out the differences.)
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>There's also the problem that, if everyone in the country has black hair, it
>is no longer remarkable. (How often does one see descriptions of Americans,
>remarking on their bipedalism?) The eye finds other distinguishing
>characteristics to differentiate between people. (When my mother first
>arrived in the US, she found it hard to tell white people apart. Her eye
>had not learned to pick out the differences.)
I've heard this before, but I admit to having a little trouble with
parts of the concept. I can understand not being able to tell one
blonde from another, or one redhead from another, or whatever, but it
seems to me that there are certain variations among white people --
i.e., hair and skin color, and facial hair for men -- that are hard to
miss, even if they're unfamiliar. Am I wrong about this?
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 10/1/99
DRAGON WEATHER is now available -- ISBN 0-312-86978-9
Brenda
Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 15:35:59 -0500, Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> >There's also the problem that, if everyone in the country has black hair, it
> >is no longer remarkable. (How often does one see descriptions of Americans,
> >remarking on their bipedalism?) The eye finds other distinguishing
> >characteristics to differentiate between people. (When my mother first
> >arrived in the US, she found it hard to tell white people apart. Her eye
> >had not learned to pick out the differences.)
>
> I've heard this before, but I admit to having a little trouble with
> parts of the concept. I can understand not being able to tell one
> blonde from another, or one redhead from another, or whatever, but it
> seems to me that there are certain variations among white people --
> i.e., hair and skin color, and facial hair for men -- that are hard to
> miss, even if they're unfamiliar. Am I wrong about this?
>
I don't know. And now that my mother has lived in this country for 40 years or
so, she can no longer tell me -- she distinguishes between non-Chinese perfectly
well now. But she does say that when she first arrived here, all white people
looked alike to her.
T. Kenyon
> characteristics to differentiate between people. (When my mother first
> arrived in the US, she found it hard to tell white people apart. Her eye
> had not learned to pick out the differences.)
It's true! I was born and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, which is 5 hours
from the Mexican border, and on the west side of Phoenix at that, where
the Tolstoy Project settles people from war-torn regions. I was lazy
about intraracial differences among people because everyone in my
elementary school was of very different genetic backgrounds. (I'm 1/4
Native American and 3/4 Irish/Norwegian/Scottish/unknown.)
When I moved to Iowa and started teaching undergrad biology at the U of
Iowa, everyone in my classes looked alike. I had a table with 8 blonde
girls sitting at it, and I couldn't tell them apart to save my life.
Finally, one of them, Erin, dyed her hair red, and then I could cut her
out of the herd.
All those caucasians looked alike to me.
TK Kenyon
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Heydt) wrote:
>In article <FjW34.47491$oa2.4...@iad-read.news.verio.net>,
>Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>>On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 15:35:59 -0500, Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>>
>>>....(When my mother first
>>>arrived in the US, she found it hard to tell white people apart. Her eye
>>>had not learned to pick out the differences.)
>>
>>I've heard this before, but I admit to having a little trouble with
>>parts of the concept. I can understand not being able to tell one
>>blonde from another, or one redhead from another, or whatever, but it
>>seems to me that there are certain variations among white people --
>>i.e., hair and skin color, and facial hair for men -- that are hard to
>
>But Brenda's mother is Asian. (So's Brenda, for that matter.)
Yes, I know. I first met Brenda in 1974. I married one of her
college classmates.
>The combination of pale skin, round eyes, mostly brownish hair
>on practically everybody was confusing to someone who was used to
>seeing (if anyone) only an occasional person who looked like
>that.
Yes, which is why I specifically mentioned blondes and redheads.
Yeah, all us brown-haired honkies look alike; I don't have a problem
with that. It's not separating out the stereotypical Swedes from the
swarthy Italians that I find mildly puzzling. I did say _parts_ of
the concept.
>It's the old cliche' "All X look alike" for whatever X that
>you're not familiar enough with to notice the *little*
>differences.
And I don't see red hair as a _little_ difference.
Christopher B. Wright
Except that if you're from a culture where _everyone_ has the same color
hair, you don't notice hair color when you're trying to tell people apart.
The fact that someone has different colored hair might not even register as
something to look for if you've grown up simply not using hair as a
discriminating factor.
Of course the difference in hair color would be noticed, but noticing it and
using the difference when comparing the appearance of two people are
different things.
Christopher B. Wright (wri...@ubersoft.net)
Help Desk, the Comic Strip (http://ubersoft.net)
Brenda
Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
> Yes, I know. I first met Brenda in 1974. I married one of her
> college classmates.
>
Dear lord, has it been that long? I don't believe it.
Dorothy J Heydt
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>
>>....(When my mother first
>>arrived in the US, she found it hard to tell white people apart. Her eye
>>had not learned to pick out the differences.)
>
>I've heard this before, but I admit to having a little trouble with
>parts of the concept. I can understand not being able to tell one
>blonde from another, or one redhead from another, or whatever, but it
>seems to me that there are certain variations among white people --
>i.e., hair and skin color, and facial hair for men -- that are hard to
But Brenda's mother is Asian. (So's Brenda, for that matter.)
The combination of pale skin, round eyes, mostly brownish hair
on practically everybody was confusing to someone who was used to
seeing (if anyone) only an occasional person who looked like
that.
It's the old cliche' "All X look alike" for whatever X that
you're not familiar enough with to notice the *little*
differences.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Lawrence Watt-Evans
>Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>
>> Yes, I know. I first met Brenda in 1974. I married one of her
>> college classmates.
>
>Dear lord, has it been that long? I don't believe it.
Yes, it's really been that long. And yes, it's hard to believe.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<wri...@ubersoft.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 22:05:34 -0500, Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 10 Dec 1999 01:56:19 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>>Heydt) wrote:
>>
>>And I don't see red hair as a _little_ difference.
>
>Except that if you're from a culture where _everyone_ has the same color
>hair, you don't notice hair color when you're trying to tell people apart.
>The fact that someone has different colored hair might not even register as
>something to look for if you've grown up simply not using hair as a
>discriminating factor.
Okay, that makes sense. Hadn't thought of that.
High Queen of Procrastination
>
> In article <384F99D0...@gl.umbc.edu>,
> High Queen of Procrastination <aha...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >Ah, silver eyes... *swoons to a puddle on the floor* Invariably all my
> >male protagonists are dark haired with silver eyes (at least when I
> >first envision them) Later on I tack on different physical descriptions
> >(don't want to be *too* blatant... see .sig) that fit into the story
> >better. I mean, really, how many raven haired silver-eyed guys can be
> >running around in the world(s)?
>
> Depends on the genetics!
And speaking of genetics, I'm beginning to believe that my genes are
dictating my favoring dark haired protagonists. Every family member I
ever met/saw pic of/researched has dark hair... even the ones who
married into the family. Part of my family is Asian, but that doesn't
explain why the other English/Irish/German/Spanish/mutt-y as possible
side makes a beeline for dark haired mates.
> I mean, if you dug shiny raven-black hair
> and black eyes, and you set your novel in Asia, virtually
> everybody would look like your dream person.
Eh, except their eyes would be dark colored. Light colored eyes are
rather rare in Asia (atleast the part where half of my family comes
from). However, there seems to be a slew of black haired/silver eyed
people over in the Ireland/Scotland area (at least according to the
fiction I've read.)
Plus, *everyone* doesn't have to have dark hair with silver/blue-green
eyes... only the protagonists. ;) So it would seem as if an army of
clones were marching through and starring in all my stories...
A. Hazard
Elizabeth Blatt
lawr...@clark.net wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 15:35:59 -0500, Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> >There's also the problem that, if everyone in the country has black hair, it
> >is no longer remarkable. (How often does one see descriptions of Americans,
> >remarking on their bipedalism?) The eye finds other distinguishing
> >characteristics to differentiate between people. (When my mother first
> >arrived in the US, she found it hard to tell white people apart. Her eye
> >had not learned to pick out the differences.)
>
> I've heard this before, but I admit to having a little trouble with
> parts of the concept. I can understand not being able to tell one
> blonde from another, or one redhead from another, or whatever, but it
> seems to me that there are certain variations among white people --
> i.e., hair and skin color, and facial hair for men -- that are hard to
> miss, even if they're unfamiliar. Am I wrong about this?
I emailed a friend of mine about this last night, being curious myself.
She's Asian, and had grown up in Singapore. In previous conversation,
she had mentioned difficulty in telling Caucasians apart from one
another. Last night, she said the reason why is that, when she first
moved here (about three years ago) she did not have an eye trained to
make personal distinctions based on hair and eye color; her
distinctions had been based on cheekbones, chins--facial
structure, not coloring.
She continued to have difficulty until she got her eye trained to
recognize people by hair color and so on: it was a matter of learning
new aspects her brain could use to tell people apart. Until then,
she had difficulty recognizing two of our mutual male acquaintances:
one is about 5'10", the other 5'5". The former is that ex-blonde
toasty-brown-haired person with brown eyes and tan skin; the latter
is true-blonde, fair-skinned, with blue eyes. To her, however, they
both started out as "pasty white boys, and one is tall."
--Elizabeth
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>In article <FjW34.47491$oa2.4...@iad-read.news.verio.net>,
>lawr...@clark.net wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 15:35:59 -0500, Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>>
>> I've heard this before, but I admit to having a little trouble with
>> parts of the concept. I can understand not being able to tell one
>> blonde from another, or one redhead from another, or whatever, but it
>> seems to me that there are certain variations among white people --
>> i.e., hair and skin color, and facial hair for men -- that are hard to
>> miss, even if they're unfamiliar. Am I wrong about this?
>
>I emailed a friend of mine about this last night, being curious myself.
>She's Asian, and had grown up in Singapore. In previous conversation,
>she had mentioned difficulty in telling Caucasians apart from one
>another. Last night, she said the reason why is that, when she first
>moved here (about three years ago) she did not have an eye trained to
>make personal distinctions based on hair and eye color; her
>distinctions had been based on cheekbones, chins--facial
>structure, not coloring.
Thanks. So that is how it works.
The idea of _not_ using color is fascinating and alien to me.
>She continued to have difficulty until she got her eye trained to
>recognize people by hair color and so on: it was a matter of learning
>new aspects her brain could use to tell people apart. Until then,
>she had difficulty recognizing two of our mutual male acquaintances:
>one is about 5'10", the other 5'5". The former is that ex-blonde
>toasty-brown-haired person with brown eyes and tan skin; the latter
>is true-blonde, fair-skinned, with blue eyes. To her, however, they
>both started out as "pasty white boys, and one is tall."
So color must register on some level, or they wouldn't be "pasty."
Laurel Amberdine
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote in message
news:3_944.47870$oa2.4...@iad-read.news.verio.net...
> On Fri, 10 Dec 1999 08:26:42 -0500, he...@cornell.edu (Elizabeth Blatt)
> wrote:
> she did not have an eye trained to
> >make personal distinctions based on hair and eye color; her
> >distinctions had been based on cheekbones, chins--facial
> >structure, not coloring.
>
> Thanks. So that is how it works.
>
> The idea of _not_ using color is fascinating and alien to me.
Indeed, I can hardly imagine it.
At the complete other end of the spectrum, is a nightmarish week I spent in
school without the aid of glasses or contact lenses. (I have truly horrible
vision.) All I could see was blurs of color. In early classes, I would
identify people by position and associate them with the colors of their
clothes. By the end of the day I could recognize most everyone. Then had
to learn it all over again the next day.
Even now this is an important association for me. Whenever my husband gets
new clothes, I find it disturbing for a few weeks.
-Laurel
A. C. Chapin
> I've heard this before, but I admit to having a little trouble with
> parts of the concept. I can understand not being able to tell one
> blonde from another, or one redhead from another, or whatever, but it
> seems to me that there are certain variations among white people --
> i.e., hair and skin color, and facial hair for men -- that are hard to
> miss, even if they're unfamiliar. Am I wrong about this?
Asian students in my father's classes are always saying how my brothers
(very tall, very blond, pale-eyed) and I (brown, brown, brown, and short)
look *so* much alike. It took a while before I could look past the cues
natural to me and see that we do all have very much the same nose, the
same chin, and the same mouth.
I want to see the story about the alien race that can't tell one
four-limbed critter from another and consequently can't tell the humans
from the aardvarks. Probably THBD.
AC Chapin acch...@virginia.edu www.cs.virginia.edu/~acc2a
Mathematicians, like ax murderers, achieve many of their
objectives by dissecting complicated structures and
manipulating their pieces. - Larry Gerstein
Christopher B. Wright
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT <ca...@aber.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:82rs8s$gn8$4...@dyfi.aber.ac.uk...
> Brenda wrote:
>
> >And there are things that really are integral to the human experience.
> >Everybody worries about their health, sooner or later, just like
everybody
> >eats meals. This is what I tell myself, anyway.
>
way to
> empty the freezer. People worry about their health to different degrees -
some
> die of a sniffle, others ignore broken bones.
>
Case in point, my wife and myself. My wife gets sick quite often (she works
with children); and any time she does she immediately starts loading up on
vitamins to try and head whatever it is off at the pass. I get sick from
time to time, but I usually ignore it unless it completely incapacitates me.
I avoid medicine unless I really can't function without it. It seems to be a
family thing; her family has a strong medical background (two nurses, one
pharmacist) and prudently go around taking precautions against illness. My
family has a strong theatre background (we all did theatre at one point in
time, two of us majored in it in college) and our theory is "if you're
violently ill, carry a bucket with you -- the show must go on."
Chris Wright (wri...@ubersoft.net)
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
>And there are things that really are integral to the human experience.
>Everybody worries about their health, sooner or later, just like everybody
>eats meals. This is what I tell myself, anyway.
It's not what they do, it's how they react to it. Meals, ATM, are just a way to
empty the freezer. People worry about their health to different degrees - some
die of a sniffle, others ignore broken bones.
Catja
Erin C. D.
Brenda wrote in message <3850331E...@erols.com>...
>
>
>Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 09 Dec 1999 15:35:59 -0500, Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>>
hair, it
>> >is no longer remarkable. (How often does one see descriptions of
Americans,
>> >remarking on their bipedalism?) The eye finds other distinguishing
>> >characteristics to differentiate between people. (When my mother first
>> >arrived in the US, she found it hard to tell white people apart. Her
eye
>> >had not learned to pick out the differences.)
>>
>> parts of the concept. I can understand not being able to tell one
>> blonde from another, or one redhead from another, or whatever, but it
>> seems to me that there are certain variations among white people --
>> i.e., hair and skin color, and facial hair for men -- that are hard to
>> miss, even if they're unfamiliar. Am I wrong about this?
>>
>
years or
>so, she can no longer tell me -- she distinguishes between non-Chinese
perfectly
>well now. But she does say that when she first arrived here, all white
people
>looked alike to her.
>
>Brenda
>http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
That's interesting -- one of the reasons why characters in anime have
brightly -- and differently -- colored hair, is to make it easier for people
to tell them apart. Most of them appear anglo to begin with (due to Betty
Boop's influence on japanese animation) and in the few anime where the
characters are oriental looking, they are given strikingly different
haircuts (which is nice, because it actually is hard to remember who people
are if you haven't seen them in a few episodes.)
Erin Cashier Denton
http://www.worldcontrol.org/theri
It's no better to be safe than sorry.
Lisa A Leutheuser
Erin C. D. <th...@worldcontrol.org> wrote:
>
> That's interesting -- one of the reasons why characters in anime have
>brightly -- and differently -- colored hair, is to make it easier for people
>to tell them apart. Most of them appear anglo to begin with (due to Betty
>Boop's influence on japanese animation) and in the few anime where the
>characters are oriental looking, they are given strikingly different
>haircuts (which is nice, because it actually is hard to remember who people
>are if you haven't seen them in a few episodes.)
>
But with anime, about the only way you can tell the characters
apart is by their hair and clothing. A friend of mine wrote and
published an Anime RPG and humorously called it "Big Eyes, Small Mouth".
Blond/light brown hair will get you a lot of attention in
Japan, but in Japan a light-haired person is surrounded by
a dark-haired population, so of course your hair is going
to be noticed.
Lisa Leutheuser
eal (at) umich.edu
http://www.umich.edu/~eal
PaulMmn
part):
>And colons get used to introduce lists of things, and examples. For example:
>
>"The baby vampire tries out his baby teeth on surfaces that are fun to
>puncture: golf balls, plastic Coke bottles, baloons."
>
>Hope that helps.
>
>Patricia C. Wrede
How 'bout lists with extra information? Would this be legal?
"The baby vampire tries out his baby teeth on surfaces that are fun to
puncture: golf balls, although the rubber band stuff gets caught in
his teeth; plastic Coke bottles, and you've never seen such fizz in a
nose; and balloons, although they tend to make his eyes real big."
--Paul E Musselman
Pau...@ix.netcom.nospam.com
PaulMmn
The Curmudgeon's Stylebook http://www.theslot.com/contents.html
I particularly like The Curmudgeon because he agrees that it's
"A_HISTORIC."
Links to assorted references
http://www.telapex.com/~tommyboy/egramlit.htm
--Paul E Musselman
Pau...@ix.netcom.nospam.com
On 2 Dec 1999 11:52:08 -0800, g...@user2.teleport.com (Chuck Gee)
wrote:
>In <na.0af8284969...@argonet.co.uk> Julian Flood <jul...@argonet.co.uk> writes:
>
>>I always have trouble -- punctuation is not a high value activity to my
>>subconscious, so I tend to scatter it around at random. Any tips?
>>Julian Flood
>
>Questions on punctuation should be researched using the following
>publications.
>
>1. The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.
>
>2. The Chicago Manual of Style
>
>3. The Prentice-Hall Handbook for Writers
>
>It also helps to read popular fiction published recently, so as to keep
>up with current standards and practices.
>
>That's my tip, such as it is.
>
>Good luck!
PaulMmn
signs and license plates and slap him silly?
Pretty fonts, but distinguishing 'Q' from 'O' from '0' from 'D' or '8'
from 'B' at Interstate speeds is almost impossible. I'd like to see a
semi-sans-serif font, with a little serif in the D and B, maybe more
style in the others to make them -=unique=-.
But I digress.
--Paul E Musselman
Pau...@ix.netcom.nospam.com
On 3 Dec 1999 20:48:11 GMT, owen...@umn.edu (David Owen-Cruise)
wrote:
>J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk (Jo Walton) wrote in
><944251...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>:
>
>>In article <827abj$gsr$1...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu>
>> lini...@chem.wisc.edu "Rachael Lininger" writes:
>>
>[type]
>>> Can you tell I'm a visual writer (among other things)? :)
>>
>>See David Owen Cruise's sig.
>>
>Oh, *that* little old thing?
>
>It's a product of helping my friend the type designer move house shortly
>after a couple of Usenet font discussions. He carved it in stone during
>his MFA work.
>
>I'm not at all a visual writer, and my design sense is sufficiently
>astute to point out I'm no good at it.
PaulMmn
On Fri, 03 Dec 1999 14:04:36 -0800, "Dennis L. McKiernan"
<dl...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Punctuation tells the reader how you want the words to _sound_. That's
>why it's important. If you don't care how it sounds, then you don't
>need punctuation.
> Of course without punctuation the reader will read in a stream of
>consciousness sort of way and things will tend to run together with no
>stops or anything to give a clue as to what the hell this thing is
>supposed to sound like and how will you ever spell focsl without them
>little thingies which go after the o and c and s and l for it will
>really be a word which makes no sense don't you know and then there wont
>be contractions or preganant pauses or moments of silence or folks
>crying out oh damn or other curse words which should be marked with
>apostrophes and when independent clauses appear in the same paragraph
>there wont be any divisions to let you know that they are independant
>what better way to confuse the reader than to not use punctuations eh
>including question marks and colons and commas and other such markers or
>on the other hand you can throw in punctuations more or less at random
>and then? you have, utter! confusion which might. be really an idiot;
>thing to do" this :random insertion) of various] marks of. punctuation .
>. . do'n't' you see -- which gi-ves meaning to the whole thing?
>
> ---Dennis
PaulMmn
On Fri, 03 Dec 1999 17:10:18 -0500, Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>
>
>Dennis L. McKiernan wrote:
>
>> Punctuation tells the reader how you want the words to _sound_. That's
>> why it's important. If you don't care how it sounds, then you don't
>> need punctuation.
>
>I have problems with this. I know how the words should sound, and when I
>read them aloud they of course sound that way. But punctuation does not
>somehow reproduce that flow and tempo and articulation. If I try to make it
>do so, there seem to be one hell of a lot of commas in the prose, and the
>copyeditor takes them all out anyway.
>
>Brenda
Alex Jay Berman
wrote:
What a lot of people forget is that there's another reason for the
"Big Eyes, Small Mouth" tendency in anime and manga--there's a
different visual vocabulary in Japanese culture that tends to come
across in its sequential art.
For all of us, certain bits of visual shorthand are immediately
recognizable--a grouping of teardops spaced across a character's
forehead (sweat beads) denotes anxiety. These are used when facial
expressions and gestures will not convey enough of the meaning.
In the Japanese visual vocabulary, many more of these shorthand
gestures evolved in an environment separate from their Western
counterparts--the gush of something out of one nostril (looks like
blood geysering forth) can denote lust; a bubble coming out of that
same nostril means sleep, just as surely as if a trail of "Z"s were
coming out of the character's mouth.
I meither remember nor know too many more of these, but I recall that
quite a few of these shorthand bits deal with nostrils and eyeballs,
something that necessitates big eyes to better show the shorthand bits
there (just like in simple cartoon strips), and small mouths, so as
not to overlap the bits issuing from the nostrils.
Alex Jay Berman
"I cannot believe that God plays dice with the universe."--Albert Einstein
"... but as a fiction writer, I _do_."--Alex Jay Berman
Lynn Calvin
wrote:
>In article <829lb8$8nm$1...@fozzie.chem.wisc.edu>,
>Rachael Lininger <lini...@chem.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I have done some book design, too, and fought some battles about
>>>fonts--though most writers/teeny-scale publishers I've worked with don't
>>>seem to care so very much. I wonder if many readers notice anything except
>>>in the very obvious cases.
>>
>>I do, but I'm weird. Then again, I got that Katherine Blake book with all
>>the font changes. What was it called? :)
>
>(Rising to the bait) _The Interior Life,_ and as I recall you
>were one of the few people in the last discussion who could tell
>its font 1 from its font 2. *I* couldn't, except from context,
>and I wrote the damn thing.
I can. I ended up rereading the damn thing, just because I went to go
look. And I was *supposed* to be cleaning up the kitchen.
Lynn Calvin
lca...@interaccess.com
UU Discussion also available on:
news://alt.religion.unitarian-univ for unmoderated discussion
UU-Community email list for moderated discussion on uua.org
UUS-L mailing list
Holding Lisa Hadler, Rich Puchalsky, and Richard Kulisz in my thoughts.
Lynn Calvin
Try going to a drug store and looking at the samples for hair dye. I
think what you'll discover is that in absolute terms, the color we call
red for hair isn't all that different from brown.
PWrede6492
<Pau...@ix.netcom.nospam.com> writes:
>
>How 'bout lists with extra information? Would this be legal?
>
>"The baby vampire tries out his baby teeth on surfaces that are fun to
>puncture: golf balls, although the rubber band stuff gets caught in
>his teeth; plastic Coke bottles, and you've never seen such fizz in a
>nose; and balloons, although they tend to make his eyes real big."
Yup. Colon and semicolons, all just fine in the above. Gordon covers it in
the part of the chapter on semicolons that I didn't quote.
Patricia C. Wrede
Michelle & Boyd Bottorff
>
> Strictly speaking, a 'sokol' (short vowels like in 'pot') is a hawk.
> But it can be a falcon, too. Don't ask. :-)
Because falcons are a veriety of hawk, perhaps.
Michelle Bottorff
Richard A. Brooks
My sister wanted a red-headed wig once. Haloween, I think.
I went to place after place and they'd try to give me brown. Got so I'd
say, "Like an orange crayon." They'd look at me like I was crazy.
Geoff Wedig
Shoot, I missed the original post, but I hae a baby vampire. When my
daughter (now 6 mos) was born, she'd attack and attach to anything flesh
when hungry, which was always, it seemed. The first occurance of this I was
sitting with her over my shoulder and said to my wife "She's hungry" and she
said "Are you sure" and I said "It's either that or she's a baby vampire
whose fangs haven't come in" She had attached herself firmly to my neck and
was sucking away.
Geoff
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
lca...@interaccess.com (Lynn Calvin) wrote:
> About "red" hair.
>
> Try going to a drug store and looking at the samples for
>hair dye. I think what you'll discover is that in absolute
>terms, the color we call red for hair isn't all that
>different from brown.
It's very different, although I couldn't quote you the
chemical reasons why. Red is the colour that it's most
difficult to get human hair to "take", and it's also the one
that fades most easily after you've dyed it.
Mary
Mare Kuntz
"Manic Panic" or "Punky Color". These are 6 week dyes of extreme
vividness. If you have a Sally's Beauty Supply or a Metro these are
good places to look.
-Mare, whose hair is currently enchanted forest green mixed
with lagoon blue.
On Sun, 12 Dec 1999 23:18:24 -0500, "Richard A. Brooks"
<rabr...@locl.net> wrote:
>Lynn Calvin wrote:
>>
>> About "red" hair.
>>
>> Try going to a drug store and looking at the samples for hair dye. I
>> think what you'll discover is that in absolute terms, the color we call
>> red for hair isn't all that different from brown.
Christopher B. Wright
Mare Kuntz <sunand...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:38553c73...@news.psu.edu...
> You're looking in the wrong place. What you want is something called
> "Manic Panic" or "Punky Color". These are 6 week dyes of extreme
> vividness. If you have a Sally's Beauty Supply or a Metro these are
> good places to look.
>
> -Mare, whose hair is currently enchanted forest green mixed
> with lagoon blue.
Warning about Manic Panic: if your hair is naturally dark it will NOT last
the full six weeks. I had a forest green mohawk for a while, and I had to
dye my hair "blonde" repeatedly before it would even last a week (for the
record, I could never get "blonde" -- only a light orange.)
Chris Wright (wri...@ubersoft.net)
Berry Kercheval
> Warning about Manic Panic: if your hair is naturally dark it will NOT last
> the full six weeks.
My son's blue hair comes from having his naturally brown hair
*bleached* first, and *then* dyed.
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
Another parent weighs in: my son bleaches and then dyes his hair
red. The red fades at a pretty steady rate, but it's not really
gone for about two months. Then he leaves it be for a while.
My daughter is only twelve, and therefore I can still tell her she
can't bleach her hair and so I do -- it's fine and tangly enough
already, thank you -- so when he dies her hair, the orange doesn't
go as deep and it fades a little quicker, but it's knockout while
it lasts.
Another thing they are doing to their heads is wearing what the
label calls "Dutch Boy caps" -- like the Greek wool fisherman
ones, black, without the ribbon on the brim -- I have always
called them Maxim Gorky hats because one like it appeared in the
movie of "My Universities" -- but they wear these hats indoors
and out, and they seem to attach significance to them, and it's
eerie because I had a cotton one just like which I wore all the
time when I was their age (well, from hers to almost his). But I
wanted to be Maxim Gorky, and they don't.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Sion Arrowsmith
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>Another parent weighs in: my son bleaches and then dyes his hair
>red. The red fades at a pretty steady rate, but it's not really
>gone for about two months. Then he leaves it be for a while.
A friend of mine bleached their (shortish, black) hair and dyed it
a fairly bright red/orange. Over the course of a few months, the
dye faded through pink, and at varying rates along the length, and
all the while the black was growing back in at the roots. The
porcupine effect when it was half-and-half was wonderfully
dramatic. (Shortly after, they got the non-black bits cut off.)
Er, what was the point of this thread?
--
\S -- si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk -- http://www.chaos.org.uk/~sion/
___ | "Frankly I have no feelings towards penguins one way or the other"
\X/ | -- Arthur C. Clarke
her nu becomeþ se bera eadward ofdun hlæddre heafdes bæce bump bump bump
Lucy Kemnitzer
<si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>In article <3855e12f...@enews.newsguy.com>,
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>>Another parent weighs in: my son bleaches and then dyes his hair
>>red. The red fades at a pretty steady rate, but it's not really
>>gone for about two months. Then he leaves it be for a while.
>
>A friend of mine bleached their (shortish, black) hair and dyed it
>a fairly bright red/orange. Over the course of a few months, the
>dye faded through pink, and at varying rates along the length, and
>all the while the black was growing back in at the roots. The
>porcupine effect when it was half-and-half was wonderfully
>dramatic. (Shortly after, they got the non-black bits cut off.)
>
>Er, what was the point of this thread?
I don't know what it _was_, but you know how in the science
fiction of the seventies and so, the people always had garish
hair, shiny things embedded into their skin, tattooed-on makeup,
and gaudy clothes? Remember that?
We live in the future.
But that's an old revelation, right?
Lucy Kemnizer
(and what is it I'm supposed to have? Not a personal jetpack,
that's the old old future. Oh: an eight-hour-a-week job and a
government chip in my head that won't let me think about certain
things, oh I'll go ahead and conflate some more, that won't let me
think about what the food is really made of)
Blanche Nonken
> >better. I mean, really, how many raven haired silver-eyed guys can be
> >running around in the world(s)?
>
> Depends on the genetics! I mean, if you dug shiny raven-black hair
> and black eyes, and you set your novel in Asia, virtually
> everybody would look like your dream person.
For some reason, this brings "Big Trouble in Little China" to mind. The
Bad Guy needs a woman with "eyes like creamy jade." The protagonist's
best friend just happens to be about to meet his betrothed flying over
from China, a woman with very rare green eyes.
<SPOILER ALERT>
Then the protagonist and his friend, while trying to deal with the fact
that the friend's betrothed has just been kidnapped right from the
airport gate, run into a lawyer trying to help a *different* woman who
had just arrived from China, and was trying to evade a gang trying to
kidnap *her* for modern Chinese prostitution/slave trade. It doesn't
occur to anyone that this is significant, but the lawyer is a woman of
Irish-American descent.
When the bad guy captures the lawyer trying to help rescue the betrothed
woman, he suddenly realizes that he has TWO women with jade green eyes.
Now in China this is probably about as common as <some metaphor I can't
think of right now portraying rarity in two matching desired objects>
but here in the US, it's not all that unusual.
It's a pretty fun movie, lots of adventure, far-fetched characters who
take themselves too seriously to be taken seriously, magic, and
improbable situations. We like it enough to have it on laser disk.
Blanche Nonken
> In article <384d8a42...@enews.newsguy.com>
> rit...@cruzio.com "Lucy Kemnitzer" writes:
> That's the only Charles de Lint I've read, and it left me very little
> inclined to bother with any more, though I've been told since it's not
> his best.
>
I'd recommend "Mulengro" - I think I got that right - the one about the
Rom. The other one I'd recommend is "Svaha." The others I enjoy
because I like most of his stuff, but those two I actually felt I
learned something.
Blanche Nonken
> In article <3858477e....@nntp.interaccess.com>,
> lca...@interaccess.com (Lynn Calvin) wrote:
>
> > About "red" hair.
> >
> > Try going to a drug store and looking at the samples for
> >hair dye. I think what you'll discover is that in absolute
> >terms, the color we call red for hair isn't all that
> >different from brown.
>
> It's very different, although I couldn't quote you the
> chemical reasons why. Red is the colour that it's most
> difficult to get human hair to "take", and it's also the one
> that fades most easily after you've dyed it.
True red is also a difficult dye to work with in pottery. Our red
pieces from The Whimsy Collection (back in college, when I worked in a
garage industry making ceramic wind chimes) were the most expensive. It
didn't take much in temperature fluctuation for something red to turn
out blotchy, clear, or solid black.
Blanche Nonken
> Gill was a wonderful person. I'm sure he's doing all the signwork wherever
> he is, only now he gets to use several more dimensions.
Are you talking about the author of "Forget all the Rules about Graphic
Design, Including the Ones in this Book?" I should go and re-read it;
it always helped me when I was stuck with my art, and maybe it'll apply
a mental prybar to my story.
joy beeson
And red is a difficult color to dye fabric and fiber. It's not as
difficult as black, but it's a good idea to wash read things
separately.
And, as I learned today, it's a bad idea to leave an ecru tablecloth
on the board while ironing a wet red handkerchief.
--
Joy Beeson
j beeson at global two thousand dot net
Julian Flood
> Gill was a wonderful person
Outed as an abuser of his daughters. Very good evidence, diary entries and
all.
He carved Ariel outside Bush House(?). Apparently he wore a smock with
nothing underneath, which made passers-by examine the pavement intently.
Also he made Ariel's naughty bits too big for the knobs at the Beeb and had
to trim them down. Bet that made him laugh.
--
Julian Flood
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf.
Mind the diddley skiffle folk.
TLambs1138
husband's work in the area) the only glass that Really Looks Ruby Red has gold
in it. Spendy, that stuff...
Jean Lamb, tlamb...@cs.com
Brenda
TLambs1138 wrote:
ObSF: "The Potters of Firsk," by Jack Vance. Very nearly a perfect story. That
man really knew how glazing and pottery works, -and- he can write!
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD, from Tor Books
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Blanche Nonken
> And, as I learned today, it's a bad idea to leave an ecru tablecloth
> on the board while ironing a wet red handkerchief.
And while we're on the subject of bleeding fabrics, you know those
striped Martha Stewart brand dishtowels KMart was selling some months
back? Don't EVER treat them as a "mixed light non-white." Never.
Ever.
If you wash your faded jeans with that dishtowel, it will give them a
shot of indigo to brighten them up.
Christopher Jorgensen
In article <38729b66...@netnews.netaxs.com>, mombl...@bigfoot.com
wrote:
>True red is also a difficult dye to work with in pottery. Our red
>pieces from The Whimsy Collection (back in college, when I worked in a
>garage industry making ceramic wind chimes) were the most expensive.
>It didn't take much in temperature fluctuation for something red to
>turn out blotchy, clear, or solid black.
I think this also has to do with the fact that there is gold in the
glaze which increases its price.
christopher....
--
El articulo es demasiado grande para su apartado.
Alma Hromic
<vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>Pretty good translation.
>
>ObSF: Not like the one in _Dune_, when the "original" says, "Ima trave
>okolo i korenja okolo...", and Herbert translates, "These are the
>ashes and these are the trees", when it should be (literally),
>"There's grass around and there're roots around."
<double take>
re-read pile, quick
somebody speaks SERBOCROAT in DUNE?
who? where?
i got really massive brownie points with a friend's kids when i proved
able to translate what the gelfling characters were saying in the
movie "the dark crystal" because they spoke my own mother tongue <g>
"you can speak elvish!" my friend's daughter said in awe. i suppose it
was a language that sounded sufficiently exotic and why bother
inventing a language when there's one there ready for the picking...?
>>My brother's friend got hold of those cool shoes which I think
>>come from all over the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean --
>>with the curved toes and the woven bit like huaraches and the
>>stitching like moccasins. They sounded great in the silent
>>dancing part.
>Ah, you mean 'opanci' (pl.), pronounced 'oppantsy'. The singular is
>'opanak' pronounced 'oppannakk'. (Unfortunately, I can't reproduce
>International Phonetic Alphabet on my keyboard. So this looks like a
>transcription of Kifish. :-)) They used to sell them at the open-air
>market in my hometown when I was a kid. Nowadays, you can only find
>them on the oldest people in the remotest boondocks. Which are not
>very remote as you can drive over Croatia in less than an hour at some
>places. :-) But you get my meaning.
>
they sell them in the city market in Novi Sad, where i come from. both
the traditional variety with the twisted toes and a modernised version
which you can wear as everyday shoes. i have a pair, they are DAMN
comfortable.
A.
***************
"The difference between journalism and literature
is that journalism is unreadable
and literature is unread."
Oscar Wilde