I don't care that you know the difference between "your" and "you're."

I'm an editor for a living, so people love to send stuff like this to me.


comic from this dumb tumblr

And I generally give a kind little laugh, because I understand why they'd think I'd like it, but here's what I'm thinking: This is dumb.

When it comes to language, you're either a linguistic descriptivist or a linguistic prescriptivist. Lots of people have described this distinction better than I'm about to (such as this brief and brilliant manifesto from the Linguistic Society of America), but basically, Descriptivists seek to describe how a given language is. Prescriptivists seek to describe how a given language should be. If you're a self-described "grammar nazi" (and by the way, ew at that name too), then you're a prescriptivist.

I'm not a linguist. But I have studied a lot of languages, mostly ancient ones, so I do know this much. They say you can't step in the same river twice. Language is the same way. It is a breathing, evolving, crazy thing that is created by the people who use it. What's unthinkable today is standard tomorrow. Did you really ever think we'd start saying 'blog, short for WEBLOG?? I, for one, did not.

Linguistic prescriptivism is like trying to catch a falling star. It's futile.

But more than that, it has some pretty classist and even racist implications.

To say that some language is right and some is wrong is to make a value judgement. Many people who use "nonstandard" language were brought up speaking dialects. Some language features are divided along regional lines. But some are divided along class and cultural lines. These dialects and language features are often derided as having "no grammar" or "bad grammar," when in fact they have distinct, legitimate, and well-documented grammars all their own. They're just different than what is considered to be standard.

In some cases, they even address gaps in the "standard" language. Consider Southern American y'all, and yous, which is heard among working-class northeastern Americans. They created a second-person plural where standard English lacks a distinction between the singular and plural.

Growing up in Tennessee, I grew up immersed in Southern American English, which I heard to a greater or lesser extent from most of the people in my life (with the notable exception of my Midwestern father). There is no greater punching bag among American dialects than my native one. Writers love to give a stupid character a deep drawl. Laughs at the overdone accents of Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel and Kenneth Parcell are, in some ways, at our expense.


buy this amazing wall decor on Etsy if you're so inclined


Finally, I beg the "grammar nazis" around me to consider how they came to know the difference between who and whom. They were fortunate to be educated in those differences. Not everyone has had the same opportunities. And if anyone would care to retort that these skills are taught in elementary school, which is compulsory in the US, I would invite those people to spend a morning in, say, an underprivileged New Orleans public school 3rd grade grammar class on an empty stomach. Just the fact that most people attend elementary school in the US does not mean that we are all afforded the same opportunities.



But...I'm an editor. How do I reconcile my heartfelt feelings about language prescriptivism vs. language descriptivism with my profession? Why on Earth would a person with such touchy-feely ideas about language ever ever ever want to wield a red pen and a Chicago Manual of Style for a living?

I love language. I'm a perfectionist. And my whole life, I have really excelled at making text conform to a given style. Linguistic descriptivists generally agree that there is a value to a measure of standardization to mass communications. Keeping mass-consumed informational texts fairly standardized allows us precision of language where it is needed. So I run a tight ship when it comes to grammar, syntax, spelling, and style in my books. But I do so with the full acknowledgement that my way is not the only way.

And that's why I think groups like this are unimpressive and silly.

So go forth and write however y'all damn well please.

Oh, and if you're interested in hearing what someone much more intelligent and interesting than me has to say about this issue, read David Foster Wallace's amazing article "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage." (High five pal Julia for that totally apt link.)

Discussion question:
What is your favorite non-standard English word or expression?

An Editor's First E-book*

* I think e-book is the nerdiest spelling since e-mail but I do whatever Merriam Webster tells me. ...generally.



Olsen Twins, chopped and screwed.


Well, ladies and gentlemen, I read my first e-book this weekend.

My interest in e-books is well-documented. I love to talk peoples' ears off about the endless possibilities of digital publishing, but I was starting to feel like I was all talk. What if reading an e-book was just totally lame? How could I make such sweeping statements about the future of the publishing industry without actually experiencing an e-book firsthand?

My homegirl Serenity Gerbman recommended a book called Room (hardback here and Kindle version here) on her Facebook wall a few weeks ago. She called it her fiction pick of the year so far, which is very high praise from a well-read lady like Serenity.

I stopped by a bookstore to check it out. It's pretty new, so it's not out in paperback yet. Having approximately .5 inches of available space left in one's tiny shoebox apartment does not make a person want to stock up on hardcover novels. And anyway, it cost $25, which is just more than I can spend on a book right now. I put the book back on its stand and walked away with a sigh.

Nick got a sweet iPad for his studies at MIT, and we're both in love with it. On Saturday morning, curled up in bed in my pjs, I had a brilliant idea. I grabbed Nick's iPad, opened the Kindle app, and moments later, I was reading Room.

The premise is simple and intriguing: Jack and his mother have been locked in a room for all of Jack's life. Just like any good episode of Law and Order: SVU, the story is RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES, very clearly inspired by the abduction and rescue of Jaycee Lee Dugard. I have a little obsession with stories about feral children and children in captivity. Have you read this incredible article about Dani, a little girl in Florida who was neglected and confined to a room for most of her life?

I could not put this book down. I read it in two days in just a few sittings. It's narrated from Jack's perspective, and his gaze is unflinching. I cannot recommend it enough.

I hardly noticed that I wasn't reading a regular book. Nick has an iPad case with a cover that flips open just like a book, so it felt like a book in my hands. So much so that I kept reaching with my thumb and forefinger to turn the page. No eyestrain. Delightful.

The iPad Kindle app allows you to touch any word in the text and get a dictionary definition. Can you imagine what a learning tool that must be for younger readers? This feature helps me understand how interactive e-books could be. Classicists, imagine a dynamic Perseus-style text for reading. Social networkers, imagine discussing an interesting book with people from all over the world from inside the text itself. Kids, imagine reading texts above your reading level with effortless aplomb.

This is all well and good, but there's one test every reading platform must pass: can I read it in the bathtub?



The answer is a resounding YES. Nick, I'm sorry I took your fancy new toy in the bathtub.

...actually, I'm not.



Discussion Question [two-parter]:
A: Have you embraced e-books? Do you think the experience is comparable to reading a traditional book?
B: What is the funniest part of the "Gimme Pizza" video above? Please cite specific moments.

on synesthesia

I can smell the colors outside on my lawn
The moist green organic that my feet tread upon
And the black oleander surrounded by blue
I get so overwhelmed by olfactory hues

Synesthesia, the neurological condition that causes stimulus in one sensory pathway to trigger involuntary responses in other sensory pathways (ie hearing colors, tasting pain, touching flavors), kind of sounds like it's made up. It kind of sounds like the thing that happens to people that take hallucinogens and maybe insane people.

But doctors estimate that anywhere between 1 in 100000 to as many as 1 in 200 people are legitimate synesthetes. The most common type of synesthesia is grapheme-color synesthesia, wherein letters and numbers (called collectively 'graphemes') are perceived to have a distinct color--about 65% of people with synesthesia experience this. And I am one of them!

synesthete.org offers a full grapheme-color synesthesia test. In the test, the letters of the alphabet and numerals 0-9 are flashed randomly and the user must pick a color associated with each one. Each grapheme is posted three times. After the user has selected a color for each grapheme three times, the results are analyzed. Here are my results, which as you can see very conclusively determined that I have grapheme-color synesthesia:





Nabokov, whom we've established is one of my favorite authors, was a grapheme-color synesthete too. He described his experience gorgeously:

In the green group, there are alder-leaf f, the unripe apple of p, and pistachio t. Dull, green, combined somehow with violet, is the best I can do for w. The yellows comprise various e's and i's, creamy d, bright-golden y, and u. In the brown group there are rich rubbery tone of soft g, paler j, and the drab shoelace of h.

I have a similar idea of my letters, bordering on and perhaps fully qualifying as grapheme personification, wherein letters and numbers have genders and personalities. Soft, feminine bilabial plosives B and P are a soft, maternal pink. Masculine, nasal M and N are a macho dark green and blue. Simple I and O are white--something that many grapheme-color synesthetes experience in common.

It is difficult to explain but I do not see these colors when I see letters and numbers in front of me. I see that the text I am typing is black on white. But somehow I perceive the letters and numbers to have the color. Whatever part of your brain lights up when you see a blue ball--that's the part of my brain that lights up when I see an E or an S. I am fully aware that it is not actually blue, but my brain recognizes it as being blue. Am I making any sense?

Over the last few years, I've realized that my grapheme-color synesthesia isn't just a random experience that I have. I've come to understand how much it affects my day-to-day life--basically always for the better.


SYNESTHESIA IS A MEMORY AID



Which seems like it would be easier to remember? You can ask me a year from now what number I used in this example and I'll still remember--that streak of yellow-pink-green is impossible to forget.


SYNESTHESIA IS AN ARITHMETIC HELPER

Times tables are boring, right? No. They are gorgeous.



Most people can recognize the elegance of the x9 times tables--how the digits in the products all add up to 9, how the first and second digits in the products run exactly from 0 to 9 backwards and forwards, respectively. With the benefit of color, these fineries are amplified and put on display.

Moreover, I have realized recently that I work arithmetic in my head using color. When I see a simple sum, I think not 2 + 3 = ? but rather something more like pink plus yellow equals what? I think when I'm moving really fast it's more like just pink yellow blue. This makes me pretty handy with mental math and adding long columns of numbers and stuff.




SYNESTHESIA MAKES YOU FEEL PASSIONATELY ABOUT SPELLING

Grey is not the preferred spelling in the US for the shade between black and white. But in my mind, it is the only way to spell it. Just look at this.



Does it make sense for there to be a big splash of RED in the middle of the word gray? Ew. No. Grey it is.

Or how about:


Even though Vergil is *technically* better, since his full name was Publius Vergilius Maro, Vergil just looks so NERDY. Everything was fine until that blue E came to town.


SYNESTHESIA MAKES YOU AN AWESOME EDITOR

You can't crack a book about synesthesia without seeing this chart:



It demonstrates how synesthesia makes inconsistencies jump off the page. A non-synesthete has to hunt around for the 2s mixed in with the 5s. For me, the pink 2s leap out among the blue 5s.

This skill comes in handy, since I make a living as an editor. My grapheme-color synesthesia makes typos and other errors pop out.



My brain immediately identifies that gold-red-pink-yellow ("wakl") is an odd combination before I even consciously realize that there is a typo.


SYNESTHESIA MAKES GREEK A RAINBOW

Perhaps my loyal readers who remember my academic background are wondering whether I have a synesthetic reaction to Greek letters as well. The answer is yes. I had never really thought about it very hard until this moment, but I do. I was lost so far in thought as I made this chart that I forgot the omega! Shameful.



I think my synesthetic reaction to the Greek alphabet is very telling. The colors are by and large the same as the letters they closely correspond to in English, whether the letters look the same (as in alpha [Α/α] and A) or not (as in gamma [Γ/γ] and G). But what about the letters that don't have a direct equivalent in English? Like the long E sound eta (Η/η)? Eta takes on not the royal blue of E but rather the green hue of the H and N the capital and lowercase letters resemble. Theta (Θ/θ) makes a "th" sound, and the blue T and green H combine to create a lovely blue-green theta.

Perhaps most odd is psi (Ψ/ψ) and phi (Φ/φ), which make a "ps" and "ph" sound respectfully. My brain is so broken by these characters that they are the only graphemes I see in gradient--psis fading pink to blue to white and phis pink to green to white, mimicking the way the words "phi" and "psi" look spelled out in English. I don't begin to understand what all this implies about my synesthesia but I think it's pretty interesting.


SYNESTHESIA MAKES EVERYTHING WEIRD

While grapheme-color is definitely the strongest and most persistent and consistent synesthesia that I experience, I have a number of other synesthetic reactions. I often experience taste-color, but it so often corresponds to the color of the food itself that it is usually unremarkable. I mentioned a recipe not tasting "red" enough in this post. I also have music-spatial, touch-color, and a whole passel of other synesthesia-esque experiences.


I know that my synesthesia and my interest in writing have to have something to do with one another, but I haven't quite touched on how yet. Maybe my unique sensory perspective makes it into my writing? Perhaps it will make me Nabokavian. A girl can only type rainbow-colored letters and dream.

Discussion Question:
What is unusual about the way you perceive the world?