CN U RD THS? EDT YR WRK FR CHRSTS SK!

Tue May 13 10:28:05 CDT 1997

I received four separate messages from John Rigney <jrigney at rigneyassoc.com>
this morning. I thought they very definitely belong in the record. The >>
lines are mine; > are his. I've collapsed them into one message here, but
each had a different cute subject line and each ended with:

>>Professional English-Language Editorial Services
                                                 ?

>>Let me repeat myself: "Lineland" consists of at least 75% my words,
>                                           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^   
>
>  no, wait..."75% of Lineland consists of at least my words,
>
>  no, wait..."Lineland at least consists of 75% of my words,
>
>  no, wait..."at least 75% of Lineland consists of words,
>
>  Oh, fuck!  Does anyone know a good English-language editor?

Please explain your point here and I'll try to help you. The sentence might
be a bit awkward but it's perfectly understandable English:

"The color orange consists of at least 75% red."

It would have been better this way: "I wrote at least 75% of the text of
Lineland."

As you may be aware, it's considered poor form to criticize minor spelling
and style errors in online writing. Online writing is often deliberately
conversational. One of my hardest jobs in creating Lineland was deciding how
to handle this problem. I decided to correct what I believed to be
unconscious spelling errors, but to maintain as much as possible of the
writer's own online style, even if it made him, her or it look like a
semi-literate boob.

>>does not in any way diminish it's presumed commercial or scholarly value.

See above. I try to copy edit all my messages, but I do make an occasional
mistake.

>>here, they replied, "He would be linched."
                                    ^ 
See above. This was an error caused by the fact that lynched in Spanish is
linchado. If I wanted to make excuses for myself I might observe that this
is actually the word they would have used if they were writing, as they
would be unaware of the correct English spelling. 

>>It's also a modern version of a very old form, the epistolatory book.
                                                           ^^        
>epistolary is WAY preferred, dear Jules...

See above. This not an error, but a style choice. Note example below:

>An Email Argument about Email Arguments
----------------------------------------

>Selections from the list cwc96email-l Computers and Writing Conference
1996, Online Conference 

>At 10:23 AM 5/28/96 -0600, you [Michael Day] wrote:
>
>>Email seems to foster a kind of dialogic reasoning the likes of which we
have not seen since the golden age of epistolatory rhetoric in the age of
Samuel Johnson.
....
>>But as we're demonstrating here, this new epistolatory culture goes beyond
dialogue to a kind of polylogue, in which we build ideas in a round-robin
fashion. And of course, the structure of this kind of "argument" has to be
different because it's collaboratively produced, in pieces.
====================================================
>Donna Reiss
>Department of English, Tidewater Community College-Virginia Beach
>1700 College Crescent, Virginia Beach, VA 23456
>Phone: 804-427-7364 Fax: 804-427-7326 E-mail: dreiss at norfolk.infi.net
>WWW Home Page: http://www.infi.net/tcc/tcresourc/faculty/dreiss/dreiss.html
====================================================

In her own postings, Ms. Reid uses epistolary. She does not bother to
correct Mr. Day because it's not necessary. Preferred does not mean only.

The following message had the subject line: "JULES! I DON'T WANT TO GET INTO
ANOTHER TIRESOME ARGUMENT ABOUT THIS..."

Note missing period after superfluous ellipsis. 

>>[3] It's own literary merit. I don't want to get into another tiresome
argument about this.
^

So why are you singling me out for all this nitpicking?

Examine as well the messages of Peter Giordano, John Mascaro, doktor,
mittelwerk, et al. Mr. Giordano is a distinguished reference librarian who
studied the classics in college. Mr. Mascaro lectures in Creative Writing at
UCLA. We don't know what the others do (because they are faceless cowards),
but I'm sure they also have some academic pretensions.

To be absolutely fair and scientific, get a sentence count for all messages
in the Pynchon-L Archive. Call this S. Now apply your standards to the
entire text, keeping careful records. For the sake of simplicity, assign to
each error the value one. Let the sum of all errors equal E. Then: E/S = N,
where N is Normal Error Quotient.

When you have your statistics ready, go to the Pynchon-L Archive for October
and November, 1996, and April and May, 1997, and apply the same standards to
my messages. I think you'll find that I have an Error Quotient far below the
norm for Pynchon-L. 

Using the same standards, you might also rigorously examine the writings of
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., especially with respect to his technical
command of the structure of the English sentence, always keeping in mind
that he wrote for print publication and had the assistance of skilled copy
editors. I would advise you not to publish your Pynchon results on Pynchon-L
unless you have a flame-proof bunker. Your argument might be that these are
not errors but features. I'd agree with you, except for Chrissie's comment
in Lineland that Pynchon told her he wished he could write more clearly.

--
Professional English-Language Editorial Services
Jules Siegel http://www.caribe.net.mx/siegel/jsiegel.htm
>From US: http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/jsiegel.htm
Apdo 1764 Cancun Q. Roo 77501 Tel 011-52-98 87-49-18 Fax 87-49-13