What Should a Review Be?

 

My introduction to the publishing industry came through reviewing books for the New Mystery Reader web site. I’d won an advanced reader’s copy of Elmore Leonard’s The Hot Kid in a contest run by HarperCollins, on the condition I write a review for them. I forwarded the result to Stephanie Padilla, the editor of NMR. She liked it enough to bring me on board. Thank you, Stephanie. Everything that happened since is your fault. 😊

I’d never done reviews before, so I did some research into what should be in them. The best advice I found was that a review should tell a prospective reader if the book passes the $25 test. (Of course it’s more now.) The reviewer’s primary job is to help readers decide if the book is worth spending their money, and time, on. (I wish I remembered who said that, but it was a long time ago and I’m old. In fact, today I’m officially older than I was yesterday. I better go lie down.)

Okay, I’m back. Keeping the “Twenty-five Dollar Rule” in mind, what should be in a review? As you might expect, I have ideas.

First, a brief synopsis of the story. Very brief. Do not divulge any plot twists or too much about the characters; “no spoilers” doesn’t apply only to the end of a book. There are many things that happen along the way readers should be able to enjoy without knowing they’re coming.

That’s why I generally don’t read the back covers of books. Many years ago my eyes accidentally came to rest on the back cover of Scott Phillips’s excellent novel Cottonwood, where I learned what was going to happen in the next chapter. It was something I never would have expected; now it was ruined. Don’t tell any more about the story than you have to for readers to know what kind of book it is. It’s a review, not a book report.

Brief excerpts are fine, so long as they don’t spoil anything. It can come in handy to give readers an example of something you particularly liked, or disliked. It allows them to make up their own minds should their tastes and yours not coincide.

This is especially true if you’re inclined to talk about the quality of the writing. I focus on this when I still do the occasional review, as I read less for the story than for how well it’s told. I enjoy a decent story that’s well-written far more than a fantastic story told to ham-handedly. (Of course, there are limits to how bad the story can be.)

You can also do prospective readers a favor by breaking down the craft for them a little. How dialog-heavy is the book? How good is the dialog? How much description is there? How good is it? Are the characters well drawn? What’s the pace? How much disbelief needs to be suspended, and how often? How much internal dialog is there? Is it used effectively? How violent is the book? How funny? Is it truly funny, or is the author merely trying to be funny? How tight is the writing?

I could go on, but you get the point. A proper review should not be a few paragraphs of story summary followed by one about whether you liked the book. Readers deserve more. (And less, when potential spoilers are involved.) We’ve all seen movie trailers that ruined the movie because they gave too much away. Don’t do that with your review.

Does Talent Matter?

 A Facebook meme a while back read, “People who say talent doesn’t matter are those who don’t have any.” (Or something like that. I’m retired, but I still have enough of a life not to worry about the precise wording of old Facebook memes.)

I don’t know if I agree completely, but I’m there at least ninety-nine percent of the way. I’d modify it to read, “People who say talent doesn’t matter are those who don’t want it to,” which strongly implies they don’t have it without being quite so accusatory.

This puts me in mind of what might be the best-learned lesson of my abortive musical career. I was never the best trumpet player beginning any level of school. I busted my ass and became one of the best at that level by outworking everyone else.

Then I went to grad school, where I encountered people with more talent who were willing to work as hard as I did. And a few who didn’t have to work nearly as hard.

I was, and remain, good friends with a player whose skills amazed even our teacher in the Boston Symphony, who said,  “I can’t play some of the shit he seems to sight read.” My friend went on to play Principal Trumpet in Memphis and retired a few years ago after twenty-plus years as Associate Principal in Montreal.

I’m not saying my friend didn’t work at it, but he started on a plane so much higher than mine there was no way I could keep up with him, let alone narrow the gap.

That’s what talent does for you.

Writing is like that. Stephen King once said there are four levels of writers:

1.    Incompetent

2.    Competent

3.    Good

4.    Great

He also said an incompetent writer cannot become competent; there’s something missing in how they’re wired or they wouldn’t be incompetent in the first place. A competent writer can become a good writer through studious study and application of the craft, but a good writer can no more become a great writer than the incompetent can become competent. There’s something missing, and that something is talent.

No one wanted to be a trumpet player more than I did. No one ever worked harder. Music got my best effort and I’m comfortable with the decision to leave. To use a baseball metaphor, I was at best a AA talent trying to play in The Show. I could hang in short stretches, but sooner or later the holes in my game would be exposed.

Writing has been different. There are ways to take advantage of one’s strengths and hide weaknesses that are available to writers that musicians can’t rely upon unless they get to play only the music they choose. I applied the lessons I learned from music and, I believe, promoted myself from competent good on.

And that’s as far as it goes.

I admire the work of Dennis Lehane and James Crumley and Elmore Leonard and Dashiell Hammett and many others. I learn from them. But I know I’ll never write at that level. That’s not a defeatist attitude. It’s a firm grip on reality. I’ve had two publishers, been nominated for two Shamus awards, get panels at every conference I attend, and have the respect of people I respect. If that’s as good as it gets, I’m fine with it.

Kurt Vonnegut was correct: It’s all right to be less than wonderful at something you love. What’s not all right is to have a false idea of where your ceiling might be and make yourself miserable trying to break through it. Life is too short. Take what victories you get from writing and use them to enhance your life.

This is why I don’t believe in bucket lists. I know too many people who have missed out on everyday pleasures because their eyes were too far down the road. They consider themselves failures unless they attain a level of accomplishment that may be beyond their control.

(This does not apply to writers who are still so new they don’t know where they fall on King’s spectrum. People need their dreams. They also need to know when to accept reality.)

I’m not saying anyone should quit if things aren’t going your way. I’m suggesting that, if the frustrations of the industry are sucking the joy from the craft, remember to enjoy the ride, even if you have to find a less ambitious destination.

An Interview With Jim Nesbitt, Author of the Ed Earl Burch Series of PI Novels

 Jim Nesbitt is a lapsed horseman, pilot, hunter, and saloon sport with a keen appreciation for old guns, vintage cars and trucks, good cigars, aged whisky without an 'e', and a well-told story. He is the award-winning author of four hard-boiled Texas crime thrillers that feature battered but relentless Dallas PI Ed Earl Burch -- The Last Second Chance, The Right Wrong Number, The Best Lousy Choice, and The Dead Certain Doubt. For more than thirty years, Nesbitt was a journalist, chasing hurricanes, earthquakes, plane wrecks, presidential candidates, wildfires, rodeo cowboys, neo-Nazis, and nuns with an eye for the telling detail and an ear for the voice of the people who give life to a story. A diehard Tennessee Vols fan, he now lives in enemy territory -- Athens, Alabama -- and is working on his fifth Ed Earl Burch novel, The Fatal Saving Grace.

Jim and I bonded over our shared love of private eye fiction and Deadwood, so it’s a treat to have him on the blog today.

One Bite at a Time: Jim, welcome back to the blog. It’s been way too long. (2018, to be precise.)

You’ve written four books in the Ed Earl Burch series. Where did the idea for Ed Earl come from?

Jim Nesbitt: Jeez, Louise -- he emerged from the mists so long ago, I had to dig deep into the cranial archives to find the shop manual for the boy. So, on Page 156 of the Chassis section, it says: When I started writing the first Ed Earl book, The Last Second Chance, I knew I wanted to write an Everyman character, somebody who would strike a chord with readers because they could identify with his strengths, weaknesses and quirks. I also wanted to create an anti-hero, a terminal smartass who has big problems with authority and a permanent chip on his shoulder, somebody who only uses The Book as a door stop and would just as soon shoot you as cuff you. Author buddy Michael Ludden once described Ed Earl as "smart, tough, profane and reckless." Author Robert Ward once said Burch is "nobody's hero, nobody's fool." That's about right.

OBAAT: How much of Ed Earl is you?

JN: People accuse me of having an alter-ego in Ed Earl all the time. And I'll cop to indulging some Walter Mitty fantasies through Ed Earl's frequently lethal antics. But I prefer to think that I'm his daddy. He's inherited some but, lucky for him, not all of my physical, biographical and psychological particulars, quirks and ailments.

Here's the tale of the tape:

We're both bald, bearded, beefy guys with bad knees and wounded livers. We both favor Colt 1911s in .45 ACP with a mix of hardball and hollow-points in the magazine. We're both built like beer barrels on toothpicks. He's got three exes, I've got two. He drinks Maker's Mark bourbon on the rocks, I used to but have switched back to George Dickel, Tennessee's better whisky (no e), now that I live about an hour south of the distillery. He likes to put a boot on the bar rail when he drinks; I'm a retired honky-tonker. He still fires up Lucky Strikes with a Zippo and chews Levi Garrett on stakeouts. I gave up Luckies a long time ago and finally ditched cigars, pipes and chew after a recent triple bypass. I've never been a cop and have never killed anybody. Ed Earl drops a lot of bodies -- as a cop and a P.I. He's a native Texan; I'm a lapsed wannabe who used to live in Dallas.

In truth, Ed Earl is a composite character, a hundred-proof mix of me and cops, lawyers, politicians, saloon sports and ink-stained journalists I've known through the years. He's also got a little bit of two of my favorite fictional characters, James Lee Burke's Clete Purcell and the late, great James Crumley's Milo Milodragovitch.

OBAAT: Ed Earl is not your garden variety private eye. Tell us a little about his personality, the cases he works, and why he is the way he is.

JN: Burch is hard-shelled and cynical but his scar tissue covers some deep wounds we all either have or know something about. The deepest of these is losing the gold shield of a Dallas homicide detective. Being a cop gave him a higher sense of purpose, a calling bigger than himself. Harry Bosch calls it Blue Religion. Burch mourns this loss but keeps it buried, for the most part, admitting it only to himself and only occasionally. Until he's offered a badge in the latest book, The Dead Certain Doubt, and has to take a hard look at whether he still wants to be a lawman or has been a semi-outlaw for so long that he needs be honest with himself and ditch the fantasy. That struggle is at the center of the in-progress Ed Earl book, The Fatal Saving Grace. He's got a badge again after two decades as a P.I. and is trying to remember the dance steps of chain-of-command, playing well with others, taking orders from idiots and being sharp and smart about the rules he bends or breaks. I'm still writing this one and will be just as surprised as the reader by the choice Burch makes.

I don't really write mysteries. I write hard-boiled crime thrillers, throwing Ed Earl into the briar patches of West Texas and northern Mexico to see if he survives. So far, he's been pretty unsinkable but usually winds up with more physical and psychological scars than he started out with. In The Last Second Chance, he chases down a drug lord who killed his partner and practices a weird mix of voodoo and Aztec heart sacrifice. Burch winds up with a broken jaw and vivid nightmares about winged serpents, Aztec jaguar knights and having his own heart carved out of his chest that he hoses down with Percocet and bourbon. It's the only way to chase the demons back into their holes so he can work a case.

Burch hates divorce work and skip tracing, even though he becomes damn good at chasing financial fugitives from the savings and loan bust that ravaged Dallas in the 1980s. He misses the action and moral clarity of being a murder cop. But that longing makes him a sucker for any chance of being a manhunter again. In The Best Lousy Choice, he takes on the suspicious death of a rich war hero, rancher and civic leader that nobody else wants to touch and winds up nearly getting killed by the murderous gunsels of the local cartel leader and a nasty group of Houston developers who want the dead man's ranch.

He also loves the ladies but usually falls for women far smarter and more lethal than he is. They tend to lead him around by the cojones until he wises up and gets himself back on track. Case in point: In The Right Wrong Number, Burch agrees to be the bodyguard of an ex-lover whose financier husband skips Houston with cash and diamonds ripped from his clients in the New Orleans mob. Savannah Crowe is a rangy strawberry blonde with a violent temper and a history of serial betrayal -- for both lust and money. She seduces Burch to keep him under her thumb until she trades her body for the mad skills of a Rice University computer scientist who cracks the code to her husband's offshore accounts. Burch gets a rude wakeup call when she kills two other bodyguards and skips town, leaving him as the fall guy for the cops.

 

OBAAT: Elvis Cole has Joe Pike. Easy Rawlins has Mouse. Spenser has Hawk, as well as Quirk and Belson for cop friends. Who does Ed Earl run with?

JN: Two people -- his dead partner, Wynn Moore, and the ever-deadly Carla Sue Cantrell, a petite blonde from East Tennessee by way of North Dallas who has a taste for muscle cars, high-quality crank and the terminal double-cross of outlaw partners and lovers. Moore, who calls everybody "sport model," pops up semi-frequently as a voice in Burch's head, reminding him of the hard rules of the detective game and scolding him for his choice of women and reliance on whiskey and pills. Cantrell has a hold on Burch's heart and has saved his ass more than once when the bad guys were about to kill him, usually with rounds from her own 1911. Call it a shared love of Old American Iron. She's the one who keeps telling him his longing for a badge is a fantasy and urges him to instead become a full-blown outlaw and partner in love and crime.

OBAAT: Who or what inspired you to write PI fiction in the first place, and what keeps you writing it?

JN: I've always thought of hard-boiled crime fiction as an American art form, particularly those that feature the lone shamus with a hard head, a gun and a shopworn code, sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. It's a marvelously flexible genre that allows a writer to have his characters comment on or think about nearly anything in American life, from politics, neo-Nazis and the tragi-comic disconnect between men and women to the narrow difference between technical competence and true genius in music. As long as it helps define a character and doesn't get in the way of a well-told crime thriller or mystery. I'm a junkie for the old-school pioneers of the genre -- Hammett, Chandler -- their next generation followers -- John D. MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, Charles Williams, David Goodis -- and some latter-day greats -- Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block, James Crumley and James Lee Burke. These are the authors I read religiously before I finally got the nerve to try my hand at fiction so it should be no surprise that I decided to try and follow in their footsteps. Lately, I've been reading some guy named King and his killer Nick Forte books. Gotta keep tabs on the competition. Might just learn some new dance moves.

OBAAT: You’ve described yourself as a recovering journalist. I get that; I often refer to myself as a recovering musician. “Recovering” implies some sort of addiction. What was it about journalism that hooked you?

JN: The juice, baby. The action. I used to love grabbing a go-bag, a laptop (well, a Radio Shack Trash 80) and a carton of Luckies to chase hurricanes. Spent 20 years on the road dogging politicians, rodeo cowboys, neo-Nazis, bikers, poker pros, migrant farm workers and folks caught up in the issues of the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, keeping the eyes and ears open for the details and voices that made those stories come to life. But I also broke into journalism in the late 1970s, when long-format stories were the rage and you could really stretch out and write, using the tradecraft common to fiction to tell your tale. It was damn good practice before I finally pulled the trigger to try my hand at fiction after years of foot-dragging.

OBAAT: Where can someone find you in 2025, either on the web or in person?

JN: That's a damn good question. I hope to have the next Ed Earl book finished by late January and out in February. I'm a horribly slow writer and am already two years too late with this latest saga. You can catch up with me online at https://jimnesbittbooks.com or https://www.facebook.com/edearlburchbooks. You can grab one of the Ed Earl books at https://www.amazon.com/author/jimnesbitt . Still hammering out my 2025 road trip schedule but hope to be at Murder In The Magic City, a two-day deal in Hoover and Wetumpka, Alabama in February; Killer Nashville in August and, fingers crossed, your gig, Creatures, Crime and Creativity, in September.

 

 

2024 in Review

 

End of the year reviews are often of interest only to the person writing them. I get that, but this is my blog and I have total editorial authority, so get over it.

JANUARY

Not much went on except the usual post-holiday letdown.

FEBRUARY

The shortest month, and mercifully so.

MARCH

The sixth Nick Forte Private eye novel, Off the Books, debuted on the 15^th.

Also that week, The Beloved Spouse™ and I attended the Suffolk (VA) Mystery Writers Festival. This is a unique annual event that I highly recommend for both authors and readers, as it provides opportunities for interaction not always found elsewhere.

I received my first Social Security check on the 20^th. Thank you to everyone who is still working and contributing payroll taxes. I did so without complaint for over forty years, so you’re goddamn right I’m entitled to collect now. Make sure the same happens for you.

APRIL

While the rest of the country wasted April 8 watching a total eclipse, of which several will occur

during a normal lifetime, we did something truly unique by waiting for word of when our first grandchild would join the world. Our vigilance was rewarded at 1:24 EDT when Madeline Rose Blewett checked in at seven pounds, six ounces and twenty inches. Much of the year’s remaining news will have to do with this young lady in one way or another.

At month’s end we attended the Malice Domestic conference in North Bethesda Rockville, Maryland. Malice has become a regular stop for us and this year’s event did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm. Special thanks to Bruce Coffin for inviting us to share his table at the banquet.

MAY

Our first trip to Florida to see Maddie was cut short when yours truly broke out in a rash no one could identify. With the baby only six weeks old and us only knowing what wasn’t wrong with me (I didn’t have COVID, the flu, mono, or a couple of other things I was tested for) we decided not to take any chances and came home early. It was still a thrill to hold my granddaughter for the first time.

JUNE

Road trip! My elder niece was married to a young man we genuinely like in Estes Park, Colorado on the 14^th. This gave us an excuse to load the car and make stops at The Badlands, Custer (SD) State Park, Lusk WY, Estes Park (obviously), Lakewood CO (for the day after party), Ogallala NE, Fort Kearney NE, and the Pittsburgh area to see friends, relatives, Primanti Brothers and Oakmont bakery before arriving home on the 23^rd. A memorable trip with only minor glitches.

JULY

We traveled to Hillsborough, North Carolina for Noir at the Bar at Yonder: Southern Cocktails and Brew. Eryk Pruitt and his lovely wife Lana Pierce have established a reputation for hosting excellent events, so we see many of the same faces whenever we go.

AUGUST

We spent August close to home, attending the Howard County Fair and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Both were new to me and were not only educational but entertaining.

SEPTEMBER

An action-packed month. We spent the 13^th – 15^th in Columbia, Maryland at the Creatures, Crimes, and Creativity conference, which has become the pre-eminent event on our calendar. This year’s get-together proved why C3 holds its pre-eminence.

Home for a day to do laundry and pack before leaving for Florida again. Maddie was five months old and Sleuthfest was to take place right across the bay in St. Petersburg on the 26^th – 29^th; I was scheduled to teach a class on dialog. The family part of the trip went without a hitch but we had to return early (again) to escape two days ahead of Hurricane Helene. The conference was canceled and The Sole Heirs’ house suffered some water damage, but nothing too serious.

OCTOBER

Needing time to catch our breath, October as marked by a day trip to Westminster, Maryland to visit Baugher’s Orchards to buy cider; our local outlet for their fine product had closed. Yes, we have reached an age where buying cider is not only worth a full day, but is memorable.

Even better was a chance to see The Sole Heirs and Maddie, as they came through Maryland on their way to Massachusetts to visit the other side of the family.

NOVEMBER

The Sole Heirs invited the whole family – three grandmothers, two grandfathers, an aunt and uncle, and a close family friend – to Tampa for Thanksgiving weekend. In addition to the big feast on Thursday, we went to the aquarium, the zoo, saw an outstanding model train exhibit, and got to ride on the Coast Guard float in the annual St. Petersburg Christmas parade.

November also marked the debut of my first Western, Dead Shot: The Memoir of Walter Ferguson, Soldier, Marshal, Bootlegger. I’ve abandoned all pretext of working with or in the publishing industry, so Walt’s story is available only through my web site, where the e-books are free to download.

DECEMBER

Maddie’s christening too place at St. Mary’s Church in Annapolis, Maryland on December 15^th. A fitting end to an excellent year.

I hope all of you had years at least as good and look forward to a great 2025. A lot of people are looking at tough times once the new administration takes office, so let’s keep them in mind and help where and when and however we can.

Fall's Favorite Reads

 Headstone, Ken Bruen. Wasn’t sure if I liked it through the middle, as the torments Taylor has to go through can be a bit much. By the end I was all in. Of course, it’s Bruen, so the writing was excellent throughout and got me over the rough spots.

Writing the Private Eye Novel, Robert J. Randisi, editor. Essays from more than twenty heavyweights circa early 90s, this is still a wealth of information for anyone interested in writing private detective fiction. Lawrence Block, Loren Estleman, Ed Gorman, Sue Grafton, Parnell Hall, and a dozen others join Randisi in exploring every facet of writing a PI novel, which often applies to writing fiction in general. I bought this after Bob died, as I wanted something of his on my bookshelf and this seemed a logical choice. It turned out to be far more educational and inspirational than I expected.

Lines and Shadows, Joseph Wambaugh. Non-fiction examination of a special team of San Diego police tasked with keeping predators from robbing, raping, and killing people sneaking across the border in the late 1970s, and how things eventually got out of hand. Focuses on more than the police work to shine a light on a too often forgotten aspect of the immigration problem: these are human beings deserving of at least a minimum amount of consideration and safety. The salient takeaway for me is how Wambaugh describes the US-Mexico border as an imaginary line separating two economies. Highest recommendation.

Floodgate, Johnny Shaw. I do loves me some Johnny Shaw. This is a departure from the Jimmy Veeder fiascos and Big Maria, and I was a little dubious at first. Not that it wasn’t good, just not what I expected. I got over that when I saw how compelling the story was and Shaw’s natural irreverence took over. Reads a little like a mash-up of James Ellroy and Carl Hiaasen; Shane Black could make the movie.

The Big Book of the Continental Op, Dashiell Hammett; edited by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett. It’s 733 small print double-column pages of every Continental Op story ever published, and one that wasn’t. (“Three Dimes.”) Contains the serialized version of “The Cleansing of Poisonville,” which became Red Harvest, as well as the original stories that make up The Dain Curse. The Beloved Spouse™ gave this to me as a Christmas gift in 2022 and I read the stories as palate cleansers between novels. It’s wonderful to see how Hammett’s writing improved as time went on and the stories became more complex and refined. I particularly enjoyed reading the opening lines of “Fly Paper.” (It was a wandering daughter job.)

The Capitalism of Publishing

 

The public is not typically aware that bookselling is essentially a consignment business. (Not all authors are aware of this, either, though they should be.)

Here’s how it works, in a nutshell. Bear in mind there are others that handle much of the logistics, but what’s here is the core process.

·       The publisher issues a catalog of what books are available to bookstores this quarter.

·       The bookstore orders the books it wants.

·       Customers buy those books from the store.

o   If they buy more than the store ordered, the store orders more.

o   If they buy fewer than the store ordered, the bookseller may return the unsold copies at the publisher’s expense.

·       Booksellers build the ability to return books into their business plans.

·       Publishers go along because they have to.

There are four major publishing houses that operate like this. Don’t be confused by the number of “publishers” that have their names on the spines of books. Those names are generally what are called “Imprints,” and a single house may own multiple imprints. For example, the Hachette Book Group owns Grand Central Publishing; Basic Books Group; Hachette Audio; Little, Brown, and Company; Little Brown Books for Young Readers; Orbit; Running Press Group; and Workman Publishing. Each of these has imprints of their own. If you buy a book published by any of these, the publishing company that runs the show is Hachette. The others in the Big Four are no different.

Since the big publishers can afford to accept returns and pay for display space dedicated to their books, theirs are what you see in your local bookstore. Since the local bookseller depends on this financial support to stay open, they do not as a habit stock books that

·       are put out by publishers that cannot afford to accept returns or pay for display space.

·       are self-published.

Rest assured, if you go into your local bookstore and ask for a specific title by an author not connected to any of the Big Four, your bookseller will order it for you. This is much appreciated, but it also means no one – literally no one – will find such a book by browsing the shelves, nor will it ever appear as a staff recommendation.

Where does this leave the small press or self-published author?

Shit out of luck.

Though it may sound like it, I’m not complaining. I accept this is how things work. I returned to self-publishing because I chose not to swim in the publishing business’s version of the Seine River during the Olympics. I have made my peace with it.

I’m writing here to encourage others to look clear-eyed at their prospects. Examine why you write. What do you want to get out of it? Money? How much? Fame? How much?

Or will the respect of those you would like to think of as your peers be sufficient? The joy you get from crafting something that, while imperfect, came out about how you wanted? The satisfaction of putting together a story others will enjoy reading, no matter how many – or how few – actually read it?

There is no right answer; there are wrong ones. By “wrong,” I mean, if you’re getting into it to make money and you don’t, whose fault is that? Is the system rigged against you? Sure it is, if only because there are more people who want to make money as writers than the industry can support. The lottery’s rigged against you, too, and you don’t bitch about that. (You have one chance in 292,201,338 to win the Power Ball jackpot.)

Telling stories for money is a privilege, not a right. It’s on you to come to accommodation with the industry. If you can’t, don’t bitch; quit. Not being a writer is the default state of humanity; there’s no shame in it. Those who make even a serious attempt are outliers.

“But I can no more not write than I can not breathe!”

Then save your breath and stop whining. No one is owed a living in their preferred profession. No one knows that better than I do. How I came to know it is a topic for another day.

Grammar and Spelling

 A conversation erupted on Facebook a few weeks ago about the importance of proper grammar and spelling. Opinions were all over the place. Some people were rigid for proper grammar and precise spelling. Others believed that, so long as the reader understood what you meant, anything goes.

I was busy at the time and unable to participate, though I have thoughts. (Surprise, surprise.) Here you go.

Regarding grammar, the entire field has become a refuge for pedants who would use strict interpretations as a crutch and demand everyone else do so. That’s bullshit.

I recently read Bill Bryson’s delightful history of the English language, The Mother Tongue; now I periodically dip into its companion Made in America, which shows how the language changed on this side of the sheugh. There are large chunks of “proper” grammar that come from a book by an English minister who appointed himself the Royal High Arbiter of English Grammar and pretty much decided what grammar should be. There were no definitive guides at the time – which makes sense, as there was no universally agree-on grammar either – people adopted his “rules” wholesale and we’re still hamstrung by them.

The purpose of grammar and punctuation is to make the writing clear to the reader, not to follow arbitrary rules. Placing the rules ahead of the purpose often serves to obfuscate the meaning, and that is something up with which I shall not put. (Thank you, Winston Churchill.) Last year I read Basil H. Liddell-Hart’s renowned history of the Second World War. It has a wealth of information, but the precise English public school grammar makes some sentences almost impossible to navigate; I sometimes forgot how a sentence began by the time it completed its Byzantine meandering to the end. You must give the reader a fighting chance to discern your meaning (Thank you Strunk & White), but grammar should always be the servant, not the master.

Spelling is different. Bad spelling forces the reader to divine the meaning of each cluster of letters. This not only slows things down, it violates Strunk and White’s “fighting chance” rule. Even the excuse, “This is how it should be spelled” is faulty, as readers from different parts of the country may perceive even a purely phonetic spelling differently.

Few people hand write things for others to read anymore. Keyboards and voice recognition reign. This means spell check is almost always available. If you can’t take the time to send your message through at least a rudimentary spell check, why would I think you spent any more time than that thinking about it, so why should I read it? (very brief social media and text responses are obviously not included, though you should still show some consideration for the poor bugger on the receiving end.)

Here’s the thing with grammar, spelling, and life in general: be sensitive of the intended audience. If you want them to read what you sent, make it easy for them. Think how you’d feel if someone forced you to trudge through turgid grammar and misspelled words in hope of figuring what they want to tell you and use your judgment accordingly.