Alex's Historical Fiction

When in doubt, choose non-standard English ...

Now doing a very close edit of LOTR, questioning every word. Dodgy stuff picked out includes:

Alright - according to my dictionary, this is non-standard, but acceptable. Taking into account the average age of the members of my writing group, and wondering if the judging writing group might have a similar average age, I reckon alright won't be acceptable. That older generation was taught proper English grammar, whereas my generation was set on the path to grammar-hell-in-a-hand basket. We're also terminally confused by using Imperial meausrements one year (c1968), then changing to Metric the next (c1969). It also didn't help that I was off school ill a lot as well. But it's too late for that competition. Don't know what the judges would think of it for the Winchester comp, so it's going standard: all right

Bow - I used this without thinking, as being the front of the ship. Not being a mariner, I thought I'd better check this out. I got it right (phew). Also used rowlocks - jeez, I hope they had them in the 5th century (I'd check before publication, that's for sure ...)

Councillor - Or should that be Counsellor? Either seems OK in this case.

etc., etc.

I'm also reading it out loud, and have chucked out several extraneous words so far.

Oh happy days :-)

posted by Alex Bordessa @ Tuesday, May 24, 2005