Submitted

Got my second final draft uploaded again, and should have another book in hand, before too long. Too bad this is a narrow interest, it’s about predictive astrology, and while I’ve worked on the text feverishly for years, I would like it more perfect than it is. This is merely another draft, I hope. Closer, but not done yet.

I kept hitting “MS Word English” although I live in a Microsoft-free environment, an all Apple eco-system. The computer would suggest corrections for grammatical items that looked right, sounded right, and parsed out passed one Virgo as “just fine.”

But it brings up that larger issue with “Microsoft English,” or more accurately, “MS Word Style,” and that style infected my earlier works, for sure. When I was working for, selling my works to AOL’s Astronet, I submitted in text, body of the email, and MS Word file. With that in mind, the MS Word dictated that each sign’s plural be spelled with an apostrophe. “Sagittarius’s,” or more current, “Taurus’s.” Which is incorrect to my picky eye, but grammar goddess are overruled by stylistic demands. Language changes and mutates, over time, but gratefully, I’ve gotten away from the incorrect use, as I’m the only one in charge here. Now.

“MS Word” English is gradually being replaced by “auto-correct English,” but it’s the selfsame culprit, you know.

I lament and rail against the algorithm-driven stylistic choices that break long-standing rules of grammatical usage, but I fear I am but a single voice, drowned out in a vast ocean of many. The machines are winning?

Which is back to the current style, and minor adjustments, trying to catch all the typographical mistakes, it’s not my typing that is suspect, but the keyboard, or the software. Perish the thought that I would mistype anything.

Submitted

There are rules of grammar and I find that the machines are less than accurate, the salient point being the various proper ways to use the names of the signs, as indicated above, but that also infuses style. Word choice, meter, usage, metrics, all of that is influenced by the rhythm of the machines, now, more so than ever before.

I wrestled, in a few examples, in the text itself, with clearly correctly spelled words that the software’s grammar guide didn’t like. Not having a human on the other end makes this worse, as there’s no one to argue a point about whether it should be a preposition, or adverb, and with my burgeoning collection of grammar books, I could probably find two sources that would support whatever point I was trying to make. That’s the beauty of language.

What I suspect happens if that the manuscript winds up publisher’s ‘in box,’ and from there the manuscript gets run through an MS Word perusal, looking for those red lines.

Predictive Astrology

My online journal, and my earlier efforts were done in MS Word. Think I skipped most of the rudimentary grammar guides then, gifted, as I was, with live editors.

Times change.

I’ll have another draft copy of the book, in hand, maybe in a week or two.

Two-Meat Tuesday

Two-Meat Tuesday – Kramer Wetzel

#tuesday