I love interesting words and ordinary words that are used in interesting ways. Words are just plain fun. Admit it. You totally agree with me.
I was part of a conversation recently about the difference between thee and thou. Being the word nerd that I am, I of course checked out the etymology of the words to get to the bottom of things. It turns out they’re both second-person singular pronouns. One is nominative and the other is objective. In today’s English, we use you in place of both thee and thou, so we’ve lost the uniqueness of the words. To compare it to something that makes sense – you would never say, “Me is going to the grocery store,” or “Please don’t feed I anymore chocolate.” Right? Me and I are both first-person singular pronouns, but they’re used differently. Thee and thou are like that – both second-person singular pronouns – but used differently. (In case you really want to know, thou is the nominative and thee is the objective.)
Anywho…
Being the word-loving person that I am, that got me to thinking about some of the ways that words can be used – and some of the ways I’ve used words in the past. I don’t generally recommend my early books to people. For starters, they’re historical, and I’ve been writing contemporary for the last several years. Also…they’re my first books. So…not my best writing. (I’m being super tactful when I say that.)
There’s one description that I use in an early book, though, that I love. To this day, it’s one of my favorite descriptions of a person. The sentence is about a police detective who is approaching a woman to tell her that her husband has been murdered.
The man speaking wore his somber expression as comfortably as he wore his suit – both were threadbare from too much use.
It’s okay if you don’t think that’s the best description you’ve ever heard. It’s not the best one I’ve ever heard either, but I still love it. I can see that detective so clearly whenever I read that one sentence. His image is vivid and strong but also faded and worn – just like him.
Here’s another character introduction that puts a smile on my face. It’s from Skye and introduces the hero of the book.
He angled toward her and held out his right hand. “My name’s Sam Madison, and I work with runaways for a living. In a way.”
Sam. Hm. It suited him. But she would have named him ‘Braxton the Butcher,’ but then, what did she know?
What are some of the things I like about this scene? For starters, it shows us the heroine’s over-the-top imagination and hints at her battle with fear. It also gives us a clear picture of Sam. It might not tell us how tall he is, what he’s wearing, or anything else, but you wouldn’t think of naming someone “Braxton the Butcher” unless they were intimidating and at least a little bit scary. In fact – don’t laugh at me – when I first wrote this novel, I didn’t know Sam’s name yet. He was “SM” through the entire first draft because, to Skye, he was the Scary Man. When it was time to decide on his name, I kept the same initials because… Well, because I could. ^_^
Here’s the last one I’ll share. It makes me chuckle. This is a scene from Olive, the manuscript I’m currently working on. Just so you know, the italics in the scene is the hero texting Olive. He’s in the same room but texting. (I haven’t decided yet if Italics are the way to go with texting in a book. It seems like a lot of people are using bold now instead of italics. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you have an opinion!)
As Olive washed the lunch dishes, Damien remained at the island and, with as much subtly as a rhinoceros drinking tea out of fine china, tried to start a conversation. Tell me about your friends.
Damien might not be using his voice, but (hopefully) his awkwardness comes across loud and clear. I’m a sucker for an awkward interaction.
I hope you enjoyed this stroll down my own little #wordnerd memory lane. I’d love to hear about any great scenes you’ve come across recently that do a great job of capturing the mood of the scene in a fun or inventive way.
Heather Gray loves coffee, God, her family, and laughter – not necessarily in that order! She writes approachable characters who, through the highs and lows of life, find a way to love God, embrace each day, and laugh out loud right along with her. And, yeah, her books almost always have someone who's a coffee addict. Some things just can't be helped. Despite their different lives and situations, Heather’s characters have something in common. They're all flawed...but loved anyway.
I admit it,I’m a word nerd too! Funnily enough butchers are shorter and chubbier in my mind, don’t know why, because my butcher cousins are medium height, jovial and thin, lol! One of the publishing companies here puts out a monthly newsletter with a short chat about the differences between two words and it can be utterly hilarious. Let all the words flow :)
I love how vivid the examples are. When I read I like to immerse fully. Great words can do that.
I’m experimenting with small caps for texting in my next book. I hate trying to figure out the formatting stuff like that :)
Haha! See, I wasn’t thinking of an *actual* butcher – I was thinking of a prison nickname. ^_^ How funny is that! You’re so right. The same word can mean a million different things to different people because of their personal background and life experiences. Someone recently used “rock bottom” in a sentence, and I told them I thought they were using it wrong, which led to a nice conversation about the different interpretations of that one, single phrase. (And when I say that conversations like that are fun, I’m not being sarcastic!)
Thank you! And yes – I love to be fully immersed, too. If I’m’ trying to read something, and I keep getting pulled out of that world because it’s not real or vivid enough to me, I end up taking forever to finish the book (if I ever finish it). But a well-written book whose world feels real to me? I’ll skip sleep to devour that beauty. And it’ll end up on my “re-read often” list, too!
Ooh! I’ve seen that recently, too. Regular small caps, or bold small caps? My first publishing house used italics for texts, so that’s what I started doing…but nobody uses that anymore, and I don’t want people to be confused when they read. #weirdwriterproblems
I love the scenes! I think italics is fine for the texting part, or as Elizabeth said, smaller type. Just don’t go too small for those of us that are vision impaired! I’ve seen where the text is the same type as the rest, it just is double spaced above and below and we’re told it’s a text message. There are words I’ll look up because I’m curious about them, so I guess I’m a bit of a word nerd, too!
That’s why I love that word section in the publishers newsletter it is so much fun :)
For the texting, there are so many different ways I’ve seen it done. As a freelance proofreader, I suggested to an author friend of mine that she start a new line for each text and put the sender first, followed by a colon, like a screenplay. No quotation marks. For example:
Damien remained at the island and, with as much subtly as a rhinoceros drinking tea out of fine china, tried to start a conversation.
Damien:Tell me about your friends.
I personally think that there needs to be some kind of action spelling out the texting more. Maybe there is in the scene and it’s just not in this paragraph. But maybe it could say something like:
Damien remained at the island. He typed into his phone. The text ding chimed again on my phone.
Damien:Tell me about your friends.
He was about as subtle as a rhinoceros drinking tea out of fine china.
I am a total word nerd and I love the book, Don’t Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight for the author’s word craft. I read it on repeat when I get the itch for it.
Italic small caps, lol
Wondering about the Rock bottom. Here its mostly used to say someone hit rock bottom (meaning they can’t fall figurative any lower)
I grew up with Thee and Thou as I grew up with the King James Bible and also so many older hymns use these words also. (Of course in the KJ Bible thou can also be He or God). The other word often used is Thy.
I like the idea of the name first to show its a text.
caps can hurt sore eyes (and those prone to migraines as it runs the words together slightly). Also using bold for lines can also do the same thing. (says someone who is starting to struggle more with migraine pain due to having to delay treatment by a few months).
I think that some kind of formatting other than italics would be a better option for texts since italics are often used for thoughts.
That’s how I’ve always heard it, too! When I heard it this week, though, it was being used to signify the lowest level of priority in a business sense. (I used to have a pastor that would ask during sermons, “Have you ever been so low that you had to look up to see rock bottom?” That’s what I always remember whenever I hear that phrase.)
Why does that make me laugh?
Word nerds of the world unite! (Or, you know, get a really good book and enjoy it!) ^_^
Thank you for your input on the texting! I’ve seen the spaced-out ones, too, and I always know exactly what’s going on, but it makes me feel like I’m reading a play or screenplay instead of a book. Which isn’t entirely bad – just different, I guess. I’ll have to give it some thought!
I’ve seen that, too – the screenplay way of doing it. The thing with Damien is that he only texts – he doesn’t talk – and that’s explained earlier in the book. It’s been interesting finding ways for him to communicate without repeating action beats such as, “He picked up his phone,” “He tapped away at his phone,” etc. The story is great, but the logistics of the characters’ communication has been a unique challenge.
I love good word craft! I can enjoy books in genres I don’t normally read simply for the beauty of the language used. ^_^
That’s good to know! I would have thought capitals would be easier on migraines, but you’re right – it does run the words together a bit more. I use a black background and a large font on my e-reader. My son laughs at me, but a white background hurts my eyes. And if I have a headache, I’ve been known to make the font extra, extra large just so I can keep reading… I think I’m a glutton for punishment. ^_^
Thank you Jessica! I agree – now I just need to settle on what that better option is going to be. (When I first started writing, I didn’t have a formatting choice. It had to be the way the publisher wanted. One of the perks about being indie is getting to make my own choices and do something the way my readers want rather than having no say in the matter at all.) ^_^
Ooo, love me some good word nerdery! Having to deal with a different representation for something like texting gets away from writing and into formatting and typography. Ausjenny’s comment about a particular font giving her migraines is really a typography challenge. It’s about how a font makes it easy or difficult for our eyes to follow along with the flow of the text, allowing different words to be recognized by their shape. All-caps loses some of that visual flow, making it harder to distinguish words. Choosing a particular font is part of the typography discussion as well. Seraphed fonts like the various forms of Times Roman were designed specifically to make the mechanics of reading easier.
Formatting comes into play with choices like plain vs. bold vs. italic versions of a given font. Changing margins or indentation depth can also be used to distinguish between different story elements (thoughts, texting, memory flashbacks, daydreams, written letters, etc.) I think formatting is best suited to deal with this kind of differentiation rather than font changes (like an all cap font).
I recently read a story in which characters did a lot of texting. The author did a really cool thing by identifying them early on by their online user names associated with the characters (like Rosie99 or bballking18) and used the user names with colons to introduce a text entry. The user names clearly identified the exchange as being text messages and kept it from looking like a play script. I think the author may have also used italics for the text exchange and separated it from the main body with a blank line. It worked well IMHO.
Back in the days before we had a million different fonts to choose from, the main body of the text would be in Times Roman (just like you would find in a book) and text related to computer output was shown in Courier font. Courier was a favorite for typewriters. It was monospaced (every letter took up the same width on the page) and thus was the perfect choice for representing machine output.
I should stop, now. After all, word nerdiness and sesquipedalian technical loquacity are not the same thing. :)
I can understand that I have made the print larger on my laptop due to the eyes getting tired when I am in pain. Unless people suffer from a migraine or bad headpain of any sort and on a regular basis people don’t realise the issues. I never realised how much headpain affects things like reading and concentrating till I got it almost 7 years ago. I went from reading around 150 books a year to maybe a couple a month in a good month.
Hahaha! Thank you Lincoln! You were informative and entertaining *and* you made me reach for a dictionary – which always makes for a good verbal exchange! ^_^
I love clever dialogue and descriptions, with a touch of humor in my books. Words are so fun! I can think of of a few exchanges in past novels that still make me smile.
Txting in novels has thrown me a time or two. I have had to back up & reread it, trying to decide what just happened. If the author comments on the 1st exchange that a txt was used and then keeps the font & everything the same after that – and different than the dialogue – then I’m fine. It’s just when no reference is made at all.
I do love an author’s use of words.