Slang is so much fun! When used correctly in historical fiction it can add to the feel of the time period. But slang is also slippery. A phrase that “sounds” historical can be a lot more recent that you think. So, unless you like getting tetchy notes from readers, it pays to check your slang. A word as simple as “okay,” for instance, can take you down the rabbit hole of etymological research and confusion. Okay sounds so… modern, right? Well, it depends how you spell it. According to Oxford Dictionary online , the first use of this word (spelled OK) appeared in the 1830s, perhaps originating as an abbreviation of orl korrek t—“a jokey misspelling of 'all correct' which was current in the US in the 1830s.” So, if your fictional setting is firmly planted in late 19th century U.S. (as mine is), OK is okay! But—guess what!— okay is not! It didn’t appear until 1929, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary . Another useful tool for chasing down the time frame of period s...

First, a  quick followup to my last post about pre-orders, and Windswept Danger . Since someone near and dear to me was recently diagnosed with MS, I'm donating ALL royalties from pre-orders of the book to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Pre-order price of 99 cents, a $3 savings, is good through Oct 26th. You can find buy links here . And now, on to your regularly scheduled posting. Language, as everything else, is constantly changing. But what constitutes a legitimate change? When does something that was previously "wrong" become acceptable? Back in the Dark Ages, when I was in school, we were taught that already was an adverb that had to do with time. "When I got to the mall (although there were no malls back in those Dark Ages of my school years), Mary was already there." This was not to be confused with all ready , which means that everyone was prepared, or someone was completely prepared. Likewise, there's altogether and all ...

images.google.com I am obsessed by the sound and touch of words. I like Old English comical words like mugwort or marshmallow . I like hushed words spoken in whispers, like neath and ghoul . I like common everyday words like horn and jump and dog . I feel words nestled in my mouth, tucked into my cheeks. I smell them and taste them and lick every last drop from the corners of my lips. Then I let them drip like sweet spiced oil off my tongue. Words like nut have a short sharp crunchy feel as I say them, and when I say honey I can feel the goldenbrown goo thick at the back of my throat. Or the word crazy : the bee-tickled zz sound juxtaposed with the terrified eee sound of the y, the harsh C next to the soft liquid R – these are contradictions that make you doubt the location of your mind. I am enveloped in the sweet glut of words. I jump into them as though they are piles of autumn leaves. I roll around and listen to them crinkle and crisp under my broad soft hips. Or I dive...

Lately, thanks (or curses) to one of my kids, I've taken up playing Words With Friends . People think that because I write books, I must have a massive vocabulary. Not so. I write contemporary commercial fiction, which is what I read. I like characters to sound like the people I hear every day, and I don't want to interrupt them and say, "What does that word mean?" Likewise, I don't like stopping the flow of a story to look up a word. On a side note to the latter, if I'm reading on my NOOK, it's not as big a problem because if I touch the word, I get a pop-up menu that will display the definition. But if I'm confident I understand the context, I don't bother. A lot of times, when playing Words With Friends, I'll toss letters on the screen and see if they're accepted. Sometimes they are, which usually surprises me. If you're reading an historical, the language will be different from a contemporary romantic suspense, or a fantasy...

As a ghostwriter, I often help people write their memoirs or their family histories. In this role I get to ask a lot of questions, but preparing my interviews can be challenging because research of personal stories cannot be done by searching through public information on the Internet. You have to go fishing in the personal pond, which can be murky or shallow. One of the ways I fish for interesting and colorful details about my memoir clients’ lives is to ask about how the people in their story talked. Like most writers, I love words, so one of my favorite research topics is on the language used by various generations. Knowing the popular slang of an era adds color and authenticity to a memoir (or fiction.) Asking questions of the client about how their parents talked, or how they talked when young, is a good way to bring back buried memories. One thing that defines a generation is their way of speaking, especially the slang developed in their teens and twenties. These words often re...

Don’t you just love a great writer’s use of language?   The things that make up voice and style; from the most minimalist prose of say, a Hemingway, to that surfeiting sort of opulent writing of a Pat Conroy, to the inimical magic of Cormac McCarthy.   And can’t you pick it out just about anywhere, the sounds and cadence and flow putting your mind immediately into sync with a great author?     Language usage changes from what’s in vogue, with new words and made-up ones and trendy slang. But the great writers make it all their own, no matter in what time or place they practice their craft.   And all of it just tweaks me. Try the beginnings of Richard Ford’s newest, Canada :   “Our parents were the least likely two people in the world to rob a bank . . .   although, of course, that kind of thinking became null and void the moment they did rob a bank.”   Okay, I’m in.   Not just from the pregnant implications but the way in which Ford’...

  Greetings, all! It’s been a regular whirlwind here at Maven Central. Phone calls, appointments, and all manner of other fun and exciting things have been going on. Such a schedule can be hard on a gal if she’s not prepared. Luckily for your Style Maven, there are dandy reversible pieces for the wardrobe that can double as work wear and play clothes. Language often follows, er, suit when it comes to double duty. Words that spend many years as nouns gradually take on verb status. Words like husband , or Google , or the recently fashionable mainstream leap to mind; I’m sure that you can think of plenty of examples yourself. This kind of shift is nothing new. Ages before beloved comic strip character Calvin described the fun of “verbing” words, speakers were bending language to fit their needs. The CMOS states that the word husband went from a noun to a verb somewhere between the years 1220 and 1420. Where there is language, there is bound to be change. Dialect ...

In a world wherein so much appears to be bizarre, insane, and beyond rational explanation, Secret Agent Reginald Dipwipple knows the insider truth: the world is incredibly incompetent. This is the world he operates in, fighting the good fight against terrorists just trying to make a living through mass intimidation. It is a world wherein words are weapons when they contain too many syllables. A world wherein computers have personality, geeks are cosmopolitan, and blondes are smart enough to deceive. A world of acronyms utterly indecipherable to the uninitiated: HUMINT, MASINT, GUTTER, USSR. A world where crises cause comedy. With today’s language, is it any wonder crisis happens? Who can understand what anyone is really saying? I ask you. I downloaded this book to my Kindle because the topic really resonates with me. Click here to read more about Tongue-tied With Stomach Knots . This month at the Blood-Red Pencil we take a look at changing language in many areas of our lives, fro...

Language lovers, grammar geeks, and students of story structure will glean added satisfaction from the tale Roland Merullo spins in his most recent novel, The Talk-Funny Girl , in which Merullo uses language itself as a barometer of character change. His protagonist may bring to mind flower girl Eliza Doolittle, whose stumbling block in George Bernard Shaw ’s play Pygmalion was the way her Cockney accent revealed her working class roots. But Merullo’s Marjorie has even worse problems: she knowingly mangles syntax. It’s page seven before this seventeen-year-old girl, raised in rural New Hampshire, speaks a sentence at all: “I come for a try for paying work,” she says, keeping it short and simple so as not to expose her quirks of speech. But we have already picked up the problem. By the time we hear her speak to her parents at home, an excerpted exchange includes sentences like: “Mister Warner told he might have a work to give.” “Look on me in my eyes, you Majie you….Might?” “Probly wi...

Please welcome our guest, Peggy Herring and have some fun with words. English is rife with words that can easily be confused with other words. For example: There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. They were too close to the door to close it. The buck does funny things when the does are present. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. The wind was too strong to wind the sail. After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number. Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt. Our melting pot language keeps growing, and readers must become more and more sophisticated to glean meaning from context. Many words have multiple definitions and even pronunciations. We communicate more and more by impersonal means like texting and email, which don’t allow for helpful cues like facial expression,...

Fellow word lovers, I thought you might like to see a sample of the new words, phrases, and abbreviations that were added to 2010 New Oxford American Dictionary. So it’s official, you can now use BFF and bromance in your novel, and your editor will just have to shrug it off. BFF : slang for best friend forever, a girl’s best friend bromance : a close but nonsexual relationship between two men cloud computing: the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer credit crunch: a sudden sharp reduction in the availability of money or credit from banks and other lenders defriend, unfriend: remove someone from a list of friends or contacts on a social networking site green audit: an assessment of a business in terms of its impact on the environment hashtag: a hash or pound sign (#) used to identify a particular keyword or phrase in a posting on social networking websites such as...

The Internet has facilitated the growth of global communities with people all over the world coming together to interact over specific interests - from role playing games and programming to cooking and parenting - as well as a general need to connect. Perhaps the biggest divider of community is language. If you can read and communicate in a certain language you can join that community; if you can’t you are naturally excluded or you have to build your own community. For those of us who speak English, coming across spelling and grammar idiosyncrasies can often bring back the awareness that we are communicating with others from a totally different culture half-way around the world. It can be tricky for editors to decide whether a “foreign” voice needs to be changed to conform, or retained for its fresh appeal. It’s a fine line that depends on many variables including an "irritation" factor. In fiction writing, dialogue is often spelt with artistic licence (i.e., incorrectly) in ...

Last month we started looking at some quirky differences between UK English (written English used in the UK and countries like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa) and US or North American English used in the US, Canada, and countries that do a lot of written communication in US English (such as India, Singapore, Hong Kong). Here are some examples that you shared with us: Marsha Pants: NA = trousers; UK = underwear Rubber: UK = eraser! Fit: UK = slang for sexy or attractive; NA = in good physical condition Specialty (NA) vs Speciality (UK) Artefact (UK) vs Artifact (NA) Star A fanny in American means your bottom but in England that means a lady's private parts. Meg "Color" and "colour" Jon Gibbs When I first moved to the US, I got a strange look from a builder when I told him his partner had popped out for a fag. In England that means you've stepped outside for a cigarette. Apparently it means something quite different over here :) menopausaloldbag (MO...

In years past, people would travel if they wanted to experience a different culture. These days we can simply click a mouse and go surfing. The Internet has become such a normal part of our day to day life that we no longer really consider the fact that we are interacting with people from all over the world. If you keep a careful eye on vernacular English, you can really expand your markets for articles and short stories, in particular, or even pick up some out-sourced work. And, of course, it is a simple matter to edit your old articles to rework them for a foreign market. Here are my top three favourite differences between North American English (NA) and UK English (UK): Aluminum (NA) Aluminium (UK) American English has dropped the second “i” and changed the pronunciation to “al-oo-mi-num”; UK English pronunciation is “ala-min-ee-um”. I could care less. (NA) I couldn’t care less. (UK) UK English speakers don’t consider “less” to be a negative, but a comparative - ie, the opposite of ...