Dear reader,
for a long time, I thought that written language should be "neat and tidy". Written to the best of one's knowledge and belief. Exceptions prove the rule and the exception is always the writer: that's me. My exception is, at least in english writing, my K-PAX way of writing. In chats I use full stop and comma as punctuation mark, but don't necessarily start a sentence with a capital letter. Although I do use capitalisation whenever it would be correct to do so in german spelling. In english chats it's easier to stay with use of small letters all the way through. What I hardly ever do in german or english chats is use abbreviations, except when I'm in a hurry and need to write fast, because I'm about to leave. But even then a written-out "bye" is still short enough.
A couple of years back there was an article in the newspapers and online about a student, who had written a whole essay in text shorthand (like "I C U" for "I see you"). The teacher was so shocked by this, that she wanted to remain anonymous. I still don't understand that even today. The teacher, in my opinion, had nothing to do with how the student had written her essay. (Here is an excerpt of the girl's essay for those interested.)
At first I was with many teachers and parents. This shorthand is unacceptable for an essay in school. What I think is really important is to know how to write the right way and adjust the writing to the situation.
Is short hand of that kind a degeneration, which especially in english is close to phonetic spelling, we know from first year students and which we would only accept from those? I'm no longer that sure about it as I had been when I first read of that essay.
I know Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character and therefore should not be a model for one's own, real behaviour or belief and yet:
When Watson gets more and more shorthand messages from Holmes in episode 5 of season 1 of "Elementary", she complains to him about that, "Your abbreviations are becoming borderline indecipherable. I don't know why, because you are obviously capable of being articulate."
Holmes explains to her that, "Language is evolving, Watson, becoming a more efficient version of itself. I love text shorthand. It allows you to convey content and tone without losing velocity."
Is he right, because he's Sherlock Holmes and I like Sherlock Holmes? Or is he right, because he's right? Is he right?
Until next blog,
sarah
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Saturday, 7 December 2013
Wednesday, 2 January 2013
K-PAX or why i write names and places and such all in small letters alot
Dear reader,
this blog post is a special one today. Usually I post something on my german blog and then translate to post it here. Today I thought it's time to explain to my english reading readers about my way of writing and spelling things. As you may have noticed, I sign each post with "sarah", all in small letters. Also in this paragraph alone I wrote "english reading readers" and not "English reading readers". Today I'll explain why. I write differently in german, because the whole grammar and spelling words with a capital letter or not is different in german. In english, apart from "I" and names of places, people and such - and the beginning of a sentence, everything is spelled in small letters anyway. I thought it's time today to explain my writing style. Especially since some people already pointed out to me that it should read, for example "American", instead of "american". English is not my native language and although I may make some more or less obvious mistakes that are unnoticed and unwanted, "american", "english" and "german" are very deliberately written the way they are. Here is why:
Years ago a friend of my mom's suggested to me to watch the movie "K-PAX". So that's what I did.
"K-PAX" is about a man (played by Kevin Spacey and he should have won an oscar for that one!), who is found bending over a lady. She's been mugged seconds before. The police question him and his answers seem rather strange, so they take him away and he's eventually brought to a psychiatric hospital. One of the chief of staff there is Dr. Mark Powell (played by the great Jeff Bridges). We find out that prot, as the man calls himself, believes to come from the planet K-PAX. Of course the way prot would write or spell things and names and places isn't a topic in the movie. But it is in the book written by Gene Brewer, which was the model for the movie script. The book is written from the doctor's point of view and in his way to show his respect for prot, he adopts his way of writing. According to prot names of persons or places are not important in the big picture of the universe. So they don't deserve to be written with capital letters, thus: prot. Planets however do play an important part, so prot spells them everything in capital letters, thus: K-PAX. Or he'd also write: EARTH and WORLD. Some time ago, I would write "Earth" instead of "earth", which makes more sense to me than "EARTH". But I don't do that anymore now. No particular reason. I find "EARTH" a bit irritating, but I somewhat adopt prot's way of writing, as I imagine you already saw from my previous blogs. So I write "english" and "german" instead of "English" or "German" and also often I sign e-mails and this blog with all small letters reading: sarah.
So what is it with prot? Really from another planet or just delusional? Examinations show that he can see ultra violet light, which is impossible for humans to see. Also in one point in the story he seems to be just gone. Other patients tell the staff of the hospital not to worry, that prot is only away for a bit to see the few other places on Earth he didn't see yet. But in his research the psychiatrist also finds out about a man, who was believed to have drowned after loosing his wife and daughter over a murderous rapist. At the end of the movie or book that's for you to decide. Both the book and the movie give clues to both a very human, earthly tragedy and some unearthly, inexplicable things happening, too. I have my ideas, but I'm not going to discuss them here in my blog. If you like to share your thoughts with me or want to know what I think is going on, drop me a message.
Because of his work, my dad (he's a psychiatrist and psychotherapist) is always very critical about "psychiatry movies". And often he gets bored and says a movie could have been shorter. But he very much enjoyed "K-PAX". He said, he especially liked the two possibilities of the human tragedy as well as the possible alien explanation. So take it from him: this movie is well worth watching!
One last thing about the book: the author is a certain Gene Brewer, as I mentioned above. In the book the psychiatrist is also called Gene Brewer, but is purely fictional. The author doesn't have a degree in psychiatry, nor is the story in "K-PAX" in any way related to some real life case. Not that I'm aware of anyway. I just wanted to point that out to you here right away, since this is often talked about and people seem to believe that the author is or was in fact a psychiatrist actually writing about true events. As far as I know this is not the case.
Until next blog,
sarah
this blog post is a special one today. Usually I post something on my german blog and then translate to post it here. Today I thought it's time to explain to my english reading readers about my way of writing and spelling things. As you may have noticed, I sign each post with "sarah", all in small letters. Also in this paragraph alone I wrote "english reading readers" and not "English reading readers". Today I'll explain why. I write differently in german, because the whole grammar and spelling words with a capital letter or not is different in german. In english, apart from "I" and names of places, people and such - and the beginning of a sentence, everything is spelled in small letters anyway. I thought it's time today to explain my writing style. Especially since some people already pointed out to me that it should read, for example "American", instead of "american". English is not my native language and although I may make some more or less obvious mistakes that are unnoticed and unwanted, "american", "english" and "german" are very deliberately written the way they are. Here is why:
Years ago a friend of my mom's suggested to me to watch the movie "K-PAX". So that's what I did.
"K-PAX" is about a man (played by Kevin Spacey and he should have won an oscar for that one!), who is found bending over a lady. She's been mugged seconds before. The police question him and his answers seem rather strange, so they take him away and he's eventually brought to a psychiatric hospital. One of the chief of staff there is Dr. Mark Powell (played by the great Jeff Bridges). We find out that prot, as the man calls himself, believes to come from the planet K-PAX. Of course the way prot would write or spell things and names and places isn't a topic in the movie. But it is in the book written by Gene Brewer, which was the model for the movie script. The book is written from the doctor's point of view and in his way to show his respect for prot, he adopts his way of writing. According to prot names of persons or places are not important in the big picture of the universe. So they don't deserve to be written with capital letters, thus: prot. Planets however do play an important part, so prot spells them everything in capital letters, thus: K-PAX. Or he'd also write: EARTH and WORLD. Some time ago, I would write "Earth" instead of "earth", which makes more sense to me than "EARTH". But I don't do that anymore now. No particular reason. I find "EARTH" a bit irritating, but I somewhat adopt prot's way of writing, as I imagine you already saw from my previous blogs. So I write "english" and "german" instead of "English" or "German" and also often I sign e-mails and this blog with all small letters reading: sarah.
So what is it with prot? Really from another planet or just delusional? Examinations show that he can see ultra violet light, which is impossible for humans to see. Also in one point in the story he seems to be just gone. Other patients tell the staff of the hospital not to worry, that prot is only away for a bit to see the few other places on Earth he didn't see yet. But in his research the psychiatrist also finds out about a man, who was believed to have drowned after loosing his wife and daughter over a murderous rapist. At the end of the movie or book that's for you to decide. Both the book and the movie give clues to both a very human, earthly tragedy and some unearthly, inexplicable things happening, too. I have my ideas, but I'm not going to discuss them here in my blog. If you like to share your thoughts with me or want to know what I think is going on, drop me a message.
Because of his work, my dad (he's a psychiatrist and psychotherapist) is always very critical about "psychiatry movies". And often he gets bored and says a movie could have been shorter. But he very much enjoyed "K-PAX". He said, he especially liked the two possibilities of the human tragedy as well as the possible alien explanation. So take it from him: this movie is well worth watching!
One last thing about the book: the author is a certain Gene Brewer, as I mentioned above. In the book the psychiatrist is also called Gene Brewer, but is purely fictional. The author doesn't have a degree in psychiatry, nor is the story in "K-PAX" in any way related to some real life case. Not that I'm aware of anyway. I just wanted to point that out to you here right away, since this is often talked about and people seem to believe that the author is or was in fact a psychiatrist actually writing about true events. As far as I know this is not the case.
Until next blog,
sarah
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