There’s an interesting post on the Guardian today entitled How fiction lost the plot - ostensibly, it’s about the prejudice that may or may not exist in book awards. However, some of the comments form a discussion of what publishers may or may not look for – and mention the worry that it’s the marketing department that drives what a publisher decides to accept.
Worth a look, anyway.
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Every year, Lake Superior State University produces a List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness - well, words that they believe should be banished anyway.
Their list of 2008 includes wordsmith and the verb to author as ones pertinent to what we do, but also includes overused phrases that crop up a lot in sports commentary (particularly in the US) and words such as random and sweet which are used out of their traditional context.
Anyone got any to add? I’ll admit the one on their list that I’d most like to see banished is webinar – a seminar conducted over the web. It’s ugly. Although maybe it should be reduced to binar in the same way that web log became blog?
Happy New Year!
How did it get to be January already?! December went by so fast (and so unproductively for me, in writing terms).
What are your writing and reading resolutions for the new year? (more…)
