Monday listings

[jadesfire]

There may be actual content later. Or not. We'll see how we go.

In the meantime, some links that came up this morning and I thought you might like:

Asus and Intel invite people to design their ideal computer

Clive James has some news on the next Bond film (remember to bring your pinch of salt to this article ;))

Councils try to ban the use of Latin. I have mixed feelings about this one. Some phrases *are* confusing, although you can normally work out what they mean from context. But "e.g." and "etc" shouldn't be, I wouldn't have thought. It's trickier than it sounds from the headline, shockingly [/sarcasm]

Secrets of Great Characters according to 6 sci-fi authors. Great, great advice on building characters and worlds for them, applicable to all writing, not just science-fiction. Including contributions from Elizabeth Bear and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Comments

[lemon-tree-7.livejournal.com]

I can feel a rant coming on about banning the use of Latin!

Using a lot of 'easy' words is by no means automatically easier for a non-native English speaker to understand. Yes, vice versa could be confusing - prostitution poetry??? but it will be so obviously wrong in the context that people will know they need to find out what it means. However, if you replace it with and the other way round , non-native speakers with low level of English are likely simply to slide over the words without taking them in.

It's about making the writer's meaning clear to the target audience, and that takes more effort than just banning a few words and phrases, whether they are Latin, Greek, Turkish, French or Arabic.

* jumps up and down a few times, waving fists*

Hah! Rant over. That feels better now.
My former profession (teaching English to international students) comes back to haunt me from time to time!

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*grin* I agree! There has to be a balance between baffling people with Latin (which on occasions confuses me!) and not patronising them. If you don't speak English very well, then you're coming across words you don't know all the time. Heck, I come across words I don't know all the time! That's what context and the dictionary are for...

It's really frustrating when organisations take the view that blanket measures are more effective than a little bit of thought :S

[lemon-tree-7.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's not exactly that blanket measures are more effective than a little bit of thought .
Maybe their thinking is more, "There's a problem here, so what's the easiest/cheapest/quickest way of looking like we are addressing the problem?" And the answer to that question is unlikely to be training their staff to think about what they are writing!

Fun icon! I shall have to learn how to make some icons myself.

[jadesfire2808.livejournal.com]

*grin* Yeah, that's probably more like it.

I don't make any of my own icons - I go round to places like girlyb_icons, lilyrose_icons and other homes to people with actual artistic talent and nick them ;) If you look on this page (http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=jadesfire2808), it tells you who made all my different icons. I think this one is one of my few originals!