"Write Better, Write Now!"

[fajrdrako]

I'm one of those people who like to read books about English usage, grammar, word origins, and so on - anything about words and how they go together. It occurred to me at lunchtime that it was a while since I'd read a new book of that type, so I got one out of the library, Write Better, Right Now! Fast, Easy, Effective Writing Tips and Grammar Rules for Canadians by Paul Paquet and Laura Byrne Paquet.

It's for Canadians, I thought - good thing. Usually the English usage books I read are by Americans or the British, and I have to translate accordingly. It's good to occasionally read something about my native language and its uses.

After some reading, I was amused and pleased to find familiar Ottawa references in the examples - something about a parking space on Bank Street, something else mentioning Carleton University. I checked out the address of the publisher: yes, it was published in Ottawa. And the e-mail address looked oddly familiar for some reason, and I checked the author's name again, and discovered that the co-author was someone I know: someone I just saw last Sunday, as a matter of fact.

Small world. But I met her in a writers' group, so it makes sense.

The book has some good quotes, like this one from Stephen Leacock:

Writing is no trouble; you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.

Now, I don't actually believe that - the jotting can be difficult. I still think it's a good quote.

There is an interesting paragraph that speaks volumes: "Remember that, unlike the case in the United States, there are roughly as many people of Asian ancestry in Canada as there are people of African ancestry, and roughly as many Moslems as there are Jews. And our great divide tends to be linguistic rather than racial. If you want to reflect diversity, make sure that you're reflecting Canada's diversity, not America's."

It seems to me that only in Canada would such a paragraph need to be included - since we are so surrounded by American culture that we have to be reminded that that their reality is not our reality, and to be told what our own reality is.

I would add too: if you are writing for an American audience, or an international audience, the Canadian demographics may be irrelevant.

They also quote Chaucer:

Speaketh so plain at this time, I you pray,
That we may understand what you say.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

My ex-husband was from St. Louis, MO, and he used to find it astounding that so many of the black people around here were Francophones. He'd say, "Yo, bro'," and they'd reply, "Qu'est-ce que vous avez dit?" The fact that he found this so odd (and funny) was a sign of how ingrained the American experience was for him. Over and over he was running into ways the American experience of life was not the same as the Canadian experience. (Like the time he was so sure that all the stores would be open on Boxing Day....)

Yes, I find American culture quite different in a lot of ways, particularly its inclusion of black and Hispanic culture, which really doesn't translate to our Canadian experience - or the language used to describe it - even for those who are black or Hispanic Canadians.

I think American TV can and does speak to Canadians - why else would we be enthralled by Smallvile or Buffy or Stargate-SG1? But I think also we're at a remove from so many things that Americans (and therefore American TV shows) take for granted as 'reality', and that gives us a cognitive dissonance that is sometimes confusing, sometimes just amusing.