Dear writerly friends,

[eliyes]

If ever you are composing fiction -- or non-fiction! -- for the consumption of others, and you use a word you suspect may not be quite right... but spellcheck says it's a word... look it up in a dictionary. Hell, this is the computer age -- stick in in a search engine and see what pops up. Just in case you don't know what it means. Even if you think it's probably what you mean.

Getting people you know to have solid and extensive vocabularies to proofread for you is also a good idea.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to compose an email to an author who seems like a nice gal and writes really good stories, but has a couple of words used entirely incorrectly throughout the 50+ of her stories I've read so far. I think I'll start with the obvious Princess Bride quote...

Comments

[taichara]

*still swinging freely between exasperation, hilarious disbelief and sheer wtf*

[krillia.livejournal.com]

...now I'm curious. ^^;

[kiffie.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

Catch me on AIM if you want details. It's not bad, exactly, just... very much not what she means.

[kalloway]

Yesterday I marched into my boss's office, grabbed the dictionary she has in there and proclaimed that I couldn't actually work until I knew if I was using 'redacted' correctly in my inner-monologue. ^^;;

And then I had to google it on my phone anyway.

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

Was it not in the dictionary? :o

[kalloway]

Oddly not. Which made me wonder if it really was a word or just something I'd made up/picked up incorrectly. ^^;;

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

Hmm, maybe it counts as "lingo" too specific to be considered for that edition of the dictionary? Redacted. It's definitely a word.

[kalloway]

Maybe. It was just a random pocket dictionary, after all. ^^;;

But yeah, I checked via my phone and I'd been correct on it, but y'know... Weird in general.

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

Yeha.

You spell "weird" correctly, though! :Dd