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| 02 May 2003 |
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Day Three of the Great Novel Edit
Finished up going through the novel with Word's spelling and grammar tool last night. Now, I've always known that Word really honks in that department, but I had yet to realise the extent to which it honks. Goodness! Of course, I guess until you've run through a 708-page work, it's hard to guess just how terrible Microsoft's programming is. Don't get me wrong--I'm grateful for what it does do well. My typing is not the best, and the ability of the program to capture the accidental lack of two spaces (or the occasional additional spaces) between sentences is truly a life-saver. I've also a tendency to hyphenate compound words what don't need hyphenating, and it is a help with that as well. Yet, that doesn't absolve Word in any way. When a grammar tool freaks out over a sentence for the simple reason that it is a "Long Sentence," you know you've got problems. The English-speaking world does not its language to get simpler, nor its sentences shorter. Yes, I recognise that there are times a nice simple phrase is in order (I also prefer the punchiness of fragments in my writing when the need is there)--as my wife would say: "Economy of phrasing!" But to flag a sentence merely because it's long? People could do with encountering more sentences that they have to read several times before they can ferret out the meaning. They could do with having to pause to look up a word at least once a page (preferable once every few paragraphs). But then, we live in the era of text messages which are about as comprehensible to me as binary (though, I must say, binary has a certain elegant charm to it).
I'm no programmer. Perhaps this is the best they can do, given the admittedly funky rules of English and the tendency for individuals to break said rules according to their own styles. But Microsoft has made some pretty amazing programs, I'd say (though I suspect their programmers aren't allowed to create anything that isn't at least mildy frustrating to the user). You'd think they could do a little better with their grammar checker.
Okay, rant over. On to the future. I've got a bit more to do in the way of formatting--must make the text look terribly ugly by changing all my italics and bolds into underlines and squiggly underlines, which I have been assured is the way publishers want the manuscript to look. It really rakes on my aesthetic sense, though. I understand why it's gotta be that way, but man, I really find it unpleasant to look at. Oh, well--personal qualm. No matter. After that, I shall begin to read, and hope that I find little to fix as far as the language goes and no plot holes. Mostly, though, it'll be really nice to revisit the beginning of this story. Haven't been there in a while. |
Jelly Pinched Wolf 9:46 AM
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