spell check hijinks, part I don't remember

[ritaxis]

Wants to change "ill" to "i'll." Right, without capitalization. What the actual? Did they leave "ill" out of the dictionary? Did someone add "I'll" without capitalization?

And did they do it in the last couple of hours? Because I swear the last time I looked at this sentence spell check had no trouble with it.

On a related front I sure do use the word "really" a lot. I'm changing a lot of them where I find them. Also, I use "but" and "and" at the beginning of sentences frequently enough that it looks like a tic. Have to change a few of those too.

Comments

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

The number of writing tics I've got is pathetic.

I try, but they slip in so easily.

Love, C.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I figure that's what editing is for. In informal writing I keep starting everynew piece with "So," which seems weird to me but I don't know why I do it.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

I do that too.

It's OK, except it's not. I've learned from the internet that employing informal use, as unthreatening and unassuming, ends up screwing one's professional writing badly. These are easy habits because they are bad habits, and they're infectious as epidemics are.

Which is why the snark mode and the internet glossary usage have come to antagonize me. Though those modes are supposed to save time and space for twitter and texting and so on, people are unable to express themselves except in these superficial and ephemeral manners.

If that makes sense. I've been thinking about all this a lot. Because blogging, journaling is so useful for me, to loosen up, to start drafting. So it doesn't matter whether people 'follow' me or not -- it's about professional writing, finally. It has helped me enormously, but at the same time there are all these pathetic tics and approaches that require enormous amounts of time and attention to eradicate.

I talk about this in classes all the time, yet I'm as guilty as any student.

Love, C.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

"Really" and "actually" are too of my most commonly used words in speech and casual writing. I don't think I'm guilty of letting them infiltrate my fiction, but I haven't been writing fiction for a while, so who knows what I do these days?