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#157. 150 – Counting Coup
14 Dec 19, 2012
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#156. 149 – Repopularity
44 Dec 12, 2012
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#155. 148 – Fashion Play
46 Dec 05, 2012
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#154. EPISODE SEVEN
48 Dec 02, 2012
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#153. 147 – Turning Point (END OF EPISODE 6)
43 Nov 21, 2012
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#152. 146 – I Say Thee Neigh
44 Nov 14, 2012
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#151. 145 – The Prod Gets Even
10 Nov 07, 2012
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#150. 144 – Cloudy With A Chance Of Pain
11 Oct 31, 2012
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#149. 143 – All Chucked Up
10 Oct 24, 2012
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#148. 142 – Not Even A Cigarette
13 Oct 17, 2012
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#147. 141 – Three Up, Three Down
14 Oct 10, 2012
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#146. 140 – Spoken Promises
14 Oct 03, 2012
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#145. 139 – Family Matters
12 Sep 26, 2012
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#144. 138 – Dealing Out
15 Sep 19, 2012
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#143. 137 – A Conscience Decision
12 Sep 12, 2012
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#142. 136 – Teed Off
15 Sep 05, 2012
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#141. 135 – Fluid Mechanics
13 Aug 29, 2012
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#140. 134 – With Loot And Pipe
16 Aug 22, 2012
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#139. 133 – Mexican Standoff
17 Aug 15, 2012
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#138. 132 – Sideswiped
13 Aug 08, 2012
On the evolution of grammar…
Policing language and grammar is ever a slippery choice of career (or hobby).
Don’t get me wrong, since for better or worse I am my own editor for Zombie Ranch and so have to do exactly that, especially before committing to print where fixing a typo is not just a matter of editing a text layer. I also have characters who are not necessarily adept at communicating in formal Oxford English, which is just a fancy way to say they “don’t speak good.”
Yet the very idea of someone’s quality of communication is a malleable concept. You may have heard that in modern writing, “passive voice” is to be avoided. “The ball hit Jed” and not “Jed was hit by the ball.” Some explain it’s because the latter, passive expression sounds “weaker” but as far as I can tell the derogatory view of passive voice is a 20th Century invention intended to conserve words while conveying the same concept. Go back to the mid-19th Century and you’ll see passive voice everywhere, even in military communications where you’d think Generals were getting paid by the word. Sorry, I mean the word paid the Generals.
Woof, that’s active voice but doesn’t make much sense. That’s the rub, isn’t it? The end goal of communicating is to convey ideas, everything else is just window dressing. A message forum question like “how to find code?” sounds ESL to me as a knee-jerk reaction, and yet the more I think about it, do we really need to say “How do I find the code?” or is that just a lot of unnecessary grammatical dressing? Everyone knows what you meant and much in the same vein as passive voice fell out of favor, isn’t this possibly just the next step in the name of efficiency? It’s arguable that the invention of the telegram is what led to the marginalization of florid verbosity (usin’ lots o’ big words) in favor of more succinct communications. Nowadays one of the main ways people communicate is by texting, which is like telegrams in real time. Data plans don’t make you pay per text any more like they used to but speed and compactness of message are big priorities, so who am I to look down upon a message like “where r u?” This may well be the future, like it or not. Today the smartphone, tomorrow the OED and the style guides.
Though in the meantime, you may continue to look forward to complete sentences from yours truly.
Mostly.
How to make webcomic?
2 thoughts on “536 – Great State Of Tech Sass”
Anonymous
Amusing spam above … Things are about to get weird with Casa De Chuck!
Dawn
Ugh, I try to get to the SPAM quicker but we have a new kitty and I have been distracted. It is gone now. 😀