|
|
writer
@ Dunedin
<<I know from experience that the spell/grammar checker is not perfect, but it is a start.>>
That's the reason why you shouldn't use it. They never will be perfect, nor is it possilbe for them to become perfect someday. A program should not patronise a human being.
BTW, I've already said that I'm no native speaker.
It can be very boring and annoying if someone constantly wants to show something with much babbling instead of telling. You must know when to tell and when to show.
Another advice would be to reread your own texts several times, over a longer period of time. So you may reread -- maybe more than one time --it the next day, then, after that, the next week, the next month, maybe a year ... and many times in between.
You also need to print your texts ... you don't recognize some errors on the screen, but you instantly recognize them on paper.
Your texts will get better with each such iteration.
<<<
@ Dunedin
<<I know from experience that the spell/grammar checker is not perfect, but it is a start. >>
That's the reason why you shouldn't use it. They never will be perfect, nor is it possible for them to become perfect someday. A program should not patronise a human being.
BTW, I've already said that I'm no native speaker.
>>>
People, and I am including computer programmers, find it very difficult to spot their own errors. So one way round this problem, is to get someone else to read your writing. Another technique is to try and read your writing out loud.
I thought the example that I gave of a spellchecker/grammar checker showed how effective machine checking can be. Although the spell checker / grammar checker did not pick up all the errors, it picked up a lot of the more obvious errors. Errors that the original person had made and not corrected. (A real life, practical example.)
I am a native speaker of English and I find a word processor helpful in automatically correcting simple typos, and the spell and grammar checker is helpful in bringing to my attention things that I might want to correct.
'Creative Writing' vs. 'Simple English'
If you are not a native English speaker, your understanding and comprehension may well be very limited. In which case the writer should use simple English. However if you want to write good English that will be read by native English speakers, you need to write in a way that is imaginative.
I am thinking particularly of short stories and novels, where people are reading for pleasure, not 'Instruction Manuals'.
The difficulty with a forum such as antimoon is that whatever you write is going to be read by a variety of different people. Also, something that I might mean in a light hearted way, such as: and I am including computer programmers, may be misinterpreted as a personal attack.
One thing I noticed about Uriel’s posts, is that she answers a question as simply as possible but using the correct technical language. In many ways I feel that Uriel is exemplary. However I do not feel the need to be exemplary. If you do not understand the joke, or what I am trying to say, then possibly someone else will.
If I was talking to someone ‘face to face’, I would be more careful to pitch whatever I said at their level of understanding. But at the end of the day, you have to have an element of good will.
Also, it is rather annoying to give good advice (for free) only to find that someone is ignoring what you are saying. That is the reality of teaching teenagers and immature people.
Question by all means, seek clarification, but if you are not a native English speaker, the likelihood is that you are not right!
Alternatively, you are expressing your experience, your feelings, which might not be shared by everybody. There is nothing wrong with expressing your experience, so long as you do it in a sensible way. (I have just been expressing my feelings.)
@ --
To: --
I realised that it was LaTeX (copyright), however 'latex' will work equally well in Google etc. (Normally people wear latex gloves and other items for personal protection.)
One of the points that I was trying to make is that LaTeX is a 'Typesetting' program and not a 'Word- Processing' program.
LaTex, is particularly suitable for 'mathematics'. I know it sounds very ignorant, but I am not interested in mathematics; or arabic, or IPA characters, cyrillic, even Cirth and Tengwar.
What I wanted to say:
Microsoft Word
Is excellent if you want to write in English!
MICROSOFT WORD IS EXCELLENT IF YOU WANT TO WRITE IN ENGLISH.
You can choose whether you want to write in British English, American English, South African English, New Zealand English, etc.
I hope you don't mind me asking, but what is 'Tengwar'? Only joking!
Original Question:
does anyone have advice on how i can become a better writing ... common responses would be 'read more' and 'write more' although i'm wondering if there is anything else ?
My Reply:
MICROSOFT WORD IS EXCELLENT IF YOU WANT TO WRITE IN ENGLISH.
I wouldn't trust Robin Michael if I were you. He has proven many times to be an inadequate individual. For example, he doesn't know how to capitalise correctly and he has a penchant for giving people gifts that aren't appreciated.
Microsoft Word
Following the link is an example of an article that is poorly written. I have reproduced the article below.
Today , I can understand the beatles very clearly.Each time I hear a Beatles song,I am delighted and proud becouse i have mademy childhood dream come true. I listen to many rock bands , all in English,and I listen every day ,sometimes forover seven hours a day.I ma constantly aware ofmy success with english because i cna understand the lyrics ofthe songs i listen to.and taht gives me pleasure and Satisfaction for many hours every day .
I will now run it through Microsoft Word and do a spell / grammar check (United Kingdom)
Today, I can understand the Beatles very clearly. Each time I hear a Beatles song, I am delighted and proud because I have made my childhood dream come true. I listen to many rock bands, all in English, and I listen every day, sometimes forever seven hours a day. I am constantly aware of my success with English because I can understand the lyrics of the songs I listen to. And that gives me pleasure and Satisfaction for many hours every day.
You can fix this type of test by writing a passage that can be easily fixed by Microsoft Word. Personally I am a little bit surprised by how well Microsoft Word coped with this passage. Normally it does not work so well.
I can see a couple of mistakes.
sometimes forever seven hours a day.
sometimes for over seven hours a day.
And that gives me pleasure and Satisfaction ....
And that gives me pleasure and satisfaction ....
<<I realised that it was LaTeX (copyright), however 'latex' will work equally well in Google etc. (Normally people wear latex gloves and other items for personal protection.)>>
Yes, 'latex' will work equally well in Google, because it seems that Google don't care about capitalisation.
(As I write this, my browser (Firefox) marked the word 'capitalisation' as wrong spelling. But that isn't wrong, its just british spelling. I don't like to be patronised it that way. I usually don't work with Firefox, so I unchecked the 'Check Spelling' field. But even to activate 'Check Spelling' by default is patronising.)
A program will never understand what's the difference between LaTeX and latex or between one grammatical form or another. The author itself is responsible for choosing the right form. If you use a spell checker, you end up using it automatically, so you don't learn. Moreover, you never can be sure if it has found all the errors you made. So, after having run the spellchecker, you think everything is correct but there still are mistakes the program didn't realise.
You also may learn the spelling prefered by the author of that program, not the one you want to use. Sometimes, you wish to deliberately use wrong spelling, so this is corrected even if you don't want it.
'Careful writing' implies that you care about your text, not a program.
<<One of the points that I was trying to make is that LaTeX is a 'Typesetting' program and not a 'Word- Processing' program.>>
Did I wrote something different? I pointed out that besides LaTeX, you need to use a text editor like the windows editor or Linux's nedit. This has the benefit that you see both, your source text with your comments and the typesetted form of the text, so you see how your text will look at the end. You will e.g. see problems with words exeeding the right side of the text column or incorrect hyphenisation. LaTeX provides a database with hyphenisation patterns, but for new words or unusual names of your characters, you need to give the correct hyphenisation by your own. Of course, if you use another language, you'll get different hyphenisation patterns according to the language selected.
<<LaTex, is particularly suitable for 'mathematics'. I know it sounds very ignorant, but I am not interested in mathematics; or arabic, or IPA characters, cyrillic, even Cirth and Tengwar.>>
Yours not being interested in mathematics does not mean that LaTeX isn't suitable for other things than mathematics.
Yes, LaTeX is meant for mathematicians to typeset there wildest dreams. But besides that, it is also best for many many other applications, in a wide variety of languages.
<<I don't like to be patronised it that way.>>
I don't like to be patronised in that way, of course. I doubt if a spell checker would have found that mistake. (I should have reread the text once more.)
Yes, LaTeX is meant for mathematicians to typeset their wildest dreams.
<<However if you want to write good English that will be read by native English speakers, you need to write in a way that is imaginative.
I am thinking particularly of short stories and novels, where people are reading for pleasure, not 'Instruction Manuals'.>>
The opener of that thread didn't say what kind of text he wants to write.
Even in short stories and novels it depends of the contents what style of writing one should use. The style you employ may need to change form scene to scene. Always being 'creative' or 'imaginative' may spoil the atmosphere of a scene. A good writer chooses the writing style according to the kind of atmosphere he wants to convey. He must know when to be e.g. lofty and when to stop with that.
A good exemple of that is the paragraph with the deep-frozen suns in Perry Rhodan 1230, Psychofrost, by Thomas Ziegler, see http://www.perrypedia.proc.org/wiki/Psychofrost_%28Roman%29
where the author stopped being lofty exactly in the moment where I thought that now it should be enough.
|