My son, Stuart, returned from being a camp counselor yesterday. He left practically right after graduating from high school and had missed an important piece of mail which came here for him from his step-grandmother. There was a neat little twist to the missive sent by my mother-in-law which Stuart noticed by virtue of a habit of his - a twist probably not noted by my step-son, Warren.
So I told Stuart that it would probably be a good idea if he were to send a note to Mrs./Dr. Patterson as a follow-up to the piece of mail. He came back with the idea that he would rather call because he found it rather difficult to put across a tone in print.
Hmmmm.
Something I tend to do when I'm writing is to sound out what I'm writing so that I can better write in a tone which will convey more of a meaning than just the printed word alone. I understand that human language depends as much on tone, timing and pauses as it does on the actual words... and that proper grammar or certain "standardizations" don't always do the trick.
My understanding drives the grammar police program and my editor mad. "You should reconsider this" or "Sentence Fragment" have popped up so often on my word processing program that I have come to ignore the warnings. I have problems even contracting certain words (contractin' is a no-no), which was fine for certain characters like the girl who played opposite of John Wayne in "True Grit", but when one is writin' 'bout a rough-hewn character who ain't got time fer bein' prim and proper 'bout usin' proper grammar 'n' spellin'. Granted, one of my projects was done from the point-of-view of a journalist (yes, I suppose the character would use nothing but perfect grammar to tell his story), but even with him, not everyone adheres to the so-called "rules" one hundred percent of the time.
Now, to be fair to my editor, I'm not going to complain. We have a symbiotic relationship wherein she likes the stories I write and I generally agree with most of the corrections she makes. One of these days, when I actually sell more than a handful of books, she and I will actually get paid real money for our labors.
But I digress.
In one sense, writing has become a lost art - at least it has with some of the younger people. Back in my day (assume a Walter Brennan type of voice) we didn't have quite the proliferation of telephones we do now, so, we were forced to write! (Drop the Walter Brennan voice). I recall a correspondence I had with a female friend when I was in high school in which I used a scatter-brained approach in the letters I wrote to her. Mis-spellings, you bet! Grammatical errors? Yup... They were printed, too, sometimes with a little bit of my cursive thrown in just for the hell of it. She wrote back in perfect cursive, and in perfect form. Both of us were correct in the way we wrote to each other. My missives were not necessarily as perfectly constructed as hers, but we were at least able to see into each others' personalities in the way we wrote. In the few times we would actually talk with each other on the phone (long distance was such a daunting thing in those days), we instinctively knew the others' voice simply by the tone we had put across in our letters.
The art is disappearing.
Sometime in the next couple of days, my mother-in-law will receive a phone call from my son thanking her for her kindness and generosity, put across in a tone which will be comfortable for him. His inflection will exactly match his intentions, suiting his purpose.
Good for him.
For me, it's back to the grindstone and sounding out whatever I'm writing. If it sounds good, I hit the "enter" button on my computer and keep going on. If it doesn't, well, there's always the "backspace" key.
Be Seeing You
bdharrell
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