Silly Saturday - by Mark Hudson - "The Texan"

This piece needs a little introduction.  At a recent Prompt Group meeting, we played with a prompt from Ursula K. LeGuin called "No Punctuation."  The objective was to write a piece with absolutely no punctuation, from start to finish, as an exercise in understanding the role of grammar in our writing.  Her recommendation, if you can't think of something to write for the prompt, is to pick something with action such as the beginning of a battle or the first day of a large sale.

Mark Hudson, one of our regulars, read this poetic piece of alliteration and we roared by the end of it.  As you read it, try reading it out loud:  it'll make a real difference.  He added a few periods and commas, but we'll let him get away with it - you'll understand when you read it.  Awesome job, Mark!

I hope you enjoy! -A. Catherine Noon

"The Texan"
by Mark Hudson

The landlord told me that I had to get out the Texans were taking over the country and turning America into a giant Texas Tex the Texan was textin’ while I was reading a textbook, telling me to turn in the keys to his totalitarian tyrannical trickery I located the landlady and lavished a loud rant AND rave revolving around rent, reporting resentment about relocation referring to repulsive ricocheting ranch hands robbing me of my remaining rights. I tore up the lease and responded that my lawyer would love to list my loft locally, leaving limited love for the lone star local, letting a lobotomy loom literally left of the line between the legally loony and lost in limbo. Tex took a taxi to town to tolerate a timetable to tell me to take off to Timbuktu, and take my towels, tubs of books, toiletries, tapes and cds, turntable and toys, and try and take the turnpike to temporarily turn off and don’t trick or treat on the way to Tor’s techno-thriller table-top tournament. Slowly I turned, inch by inch, step by step, inch by inch, step by step, and told Tex to take his ZZ Top looking self back home.

Grammar with R.J. Robertson

Language Evolves and Grammar Lurches Along:
On Keeping a Toehold on Stampeding Style

................

Part 1

by R.J. Robertson

"Many years ago a wise and cynical man 
proved that the way a person talks is 
the most important thing about him."
Robert A. Heinlein (in his, The Cat Who
walks through walls.)

Foreword:
I got this job because – having been educated before the era of “don’t inhibit a child’s self-expression” – I  thrust myself unwittingly into the role of Curmudgeon of Grammar in the Evanston Writers’ Workshop.  
                                                                                                                   
The C of G is not exactly a knightly title, you understand, but it does have one faintly noble perquisite: you get to criticize the work of writers better than yourself. I populated this role, without realizing what I was doing, by complaining about too many liberties being taken with English grammar in otherwise excellent work submitted for critique in the Evanston Writers’ group.            
                                                                                                                  
Unlike with the younger generation – most of whom seem to have learned English in the polyglot culture of popular media, modified by the linguistic license rampant in immigrant cultures thrown together in our large cities – I learned grammar from a gentle, but no-nonsense British lady who taught it in one quarter of my first year at university. It was a sacred mission for her, and it spread to us, her students, as she instilled the rules of English, and convinced us why our language needed its rules.                
                 
The latter point is well put in E B.White’s explanation of why he took up the cause pioneered by Will Strunk in The Elements of Style. White said, “If every word or device that achieved currency were immediately authenticated, simply on the ground of popularity, the language would be as chaotic as a ball game without foul lines.” If you examine Strunk and White on style and Lynne Truss’s, Eats Shoots & Leaves, on punctuation, I think it will not be hard to convince yourself of the aptness of White’s dictum.

To be continued...

Visit R.J. Robertson's website at: RichardJRobertson.Com