- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
I Are My Own Proof Reader.
Joe Sullivan, the editorial page editor and former editor of the Southeast Missourian, pointed out to me the other day that I had misspelled Adolf Hitler's name in not one, but two different blogs.
Oops.
I spelled Adolf as Adolph. I should have known better. Those efficient Germans would not waste two letters -- "ph" -- where a single letter -- "f" -- would suffice.
This illustrates a very important point about my blog.
I are my own proof reader.
Or editor. Or copy editor. Call it what you like, but I'm the only person who reads this blog before it is published on the web. There is no external filter between what I type and what appears on the website.
That's not always a good thing.
An eagle-eyed copy-editor could have pointed out my Hitler faux pas. And they might also point out some of my grammatical errors and run on sentences and question some of my choices for paragraph breaks and the excessive use of the word "anyway" as a transition.
I'll be the first to admit that I am no grammarian. I couldn't diagram a sentence to save my life. Not to be dismissive of English teachers, but I never could see the point in mastering that skill.
However, you will also not see this blog using much of the text messaging slang that is so common with the youth of today. You know, OMG and LOL. I'm not much into using that type of shorthand.
But I do like to link words in a manner that pleases me. As far as my choices of paragraph breaks, I can explain that with one word.
Impact.
Or emphasis would also do. If I want to emphasis a particular sentence, I might make it, its own paragraph, even though it should logically belong to the previous one.
And as far as the use of the word "anyway" as a linguistic transitional device, I find it the most expedient way to get back to the overall point I am trying to make with a given blog.
Sometimes, I get so far off-course that the only way to get back to topic is to write a half-dozen more meandering paragraphs or use the word "anyway."
Anyhow -- Ha, you were expecting me to use anyway, weren't you? -- I tend to write in what I consider a conversational style. While you can and do read these blogs, they could just as easily be read out loud. That's often how I write them, reading them out loud to myself. I think that's why my wife and the cat will often go upstairs to our bedroom to watch TV or read in the evening.
The mumbling to myself drives them crazy.
This blog is also a little different than most you read at SEMissourian.com. Most bloggers post their entries immediately after writing.
I don't.
I am often writing a week out and tend to continue making edits to a given blog until it is actually published on the web. I'm a tinkerer by nature.
Thanks four reading.
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