grodscorp@grods.comOh, so that explains it
 | Posted by John Surname on Tuesday 19 June 2007, 9:52 pm Categories: Blogosphere, Literature, Mundane Blogs Tags: IainHall, SemiColons, StephenKing |
The secret behind Iain Hall:
Thanks for the kind words about my writing; I take to heart what Stephen King said in “The Danse Macabre” when he said that any one who wants to write, in any genre, should set out to write everyday and treat writing like a job, because only then do you have a chance of mastering the craft, and finding your own authorial voice.
No wonder he’s a shit writer, he takes advice from Stephen King, another shit writer. But I don’t think King had quite the way with semi-colons Iain has. He’s really made those things his own, and is possibly in line for a “semi-colon” award. The prize? I’ll give him a free semi-colonoscopy.
GrodsThink Ep.31 (16/9/08)
Tuesday 19 June 2007, 10:35 pm #Bridgit Gread
set out to write everyday and treat writing like a job
Iain is certainly following Stevo’s advice to the letter.
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 7:56 am #The Editor
I think that from now on we should call him
Iain; Hall
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 10:01 am #Adam
Editor, The (or Jangari), could you tell us all of the correct way to use a semicolon? The programmer in me wants to put them at the end of every sentence but I know that’s not accepted practice in non-C-based languages.
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 12:09 pm #Steve
I think that from now on we should call him Iain; Hall
I’ve always wondered whether Agent 007’s greeting should have a semi-colon, i.e. “The name’s Bond; James Bond”.
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 6:17 pm #Bruce
Adam,
Are we going to have to have an argument about whether or not JAVA is C-based?
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 6:42 pm #The Editor
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 10:12 pm #Jangari
You don’t want to ask me, Adam. I’d only confuse you with postmodern perspectives on the role of punctuation in written language inasmuch as it serves merely to orthographically represent ordinary prosodic pauses and breaks between parts of a spoken sentence.
But if you asked someone who didn’t care about postmodern, they’d tell you to use a semicolon to separate two independent sentences (i.e., able to stand alone) that are connected in some way, either the chronologically, causally or contrastively, and where an otherwise full separation (with a full stop) would only obscure this connection (that’s what I thought, at least).
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 10:19 pm #Mikey
Actually while I don’t like Horror as a genre King is an excellent writer. His book On Writing is probably the best book on writing I have ever read. And I gots me learnin’ and all in that field. And one day might actually try and do something with it.
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 11:04 pm #Bridgit Gread
Yes Mikey, Danse Macabre and On Writing are both excellent books. Though I’m not a fan of his pure horror or fantasy stuff, I quite like some of King’s work, particularly his novellas and short stories.
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 11:58 pm #Bruce
I have grown to have a distrust of Stephen King readers; especially female blonde ones with athelete boyfriends who don’t pay them enough attention.
Wednesday 20 June 2007, 11:59 pm #Bruce
whoops… athlete…
Thursday 21 June 2007, 12:03 am #Adam
I say Java is C-based, it sure looks like C with all its semi colons and squiggly brackets. Anyone who says otherwise is UNAUSTRALIAN. And thanks Jangari, that’s pretty much what I thought :-D
In other news, I got an email from a random staffer of Kevin Rudd today. It didn’t have any writing but it did have attached to it a funny video about a garage full of marijuana going up in smoke. Proof that if the ALP win government the economy will be ruined due to the fact that everyone will turn into a pack of video sharing BLUDGERS!
Thursday 21 June 2007, 2:36 pm #The Happy Revolutionary
Perhaps somebody could send Mr Hall a lifetime’s supply of commas, and some pointed directions as to how to use them.
Not to say that a tangentially-related series of subordinate clauses, with commas used randomly, if at all, doesn’t make for great reading.
Thursday 21 June 2007, 5:49 pm #John Surname
Don’t you know that commas are a product of the “orthographic Nazis”, designed to trick the world into accepting leftism.
Thursday 21 June 2007, 6:24 pm #Bridgit Gread
That’s right, we will use orthography to impose comma-nism on the unsuspecting masses…
Thursday 21 June 2007, 6:57 pm #The Happy Revolutionary
That also explains the fear of Islam - Hall probably thinks Arabic script, with all of it’s sinister squiggles, are part of the orthographic terrorist’s arsenal to destabilise good, old-fashioned Western language.
Not to mention the greatest threat of Islamo-grammatico-fascism - the transliteration of Arabic words which use the letter ‘q’ without a ‘u’ following it (such as the word ‘Iraq’). It’s decadence, I tell you…
Friday 22 June 2007, 7:14 pm #strider
You are being unnecessarially nasty and spiteful here. Whilst I am not a huge fan of Stephen King, he sometimes is very interesting in his writings, and that quote about his regular writing echoes the views of Anthony Trollope (ie my favourite novelist) whose command of the English language and characterisations remain unsurpassed.
But then,I expect that most of you are probably fans of Dickens (a far inferior contemporary of Trollope), and I wish you joy of it. Not.
Friday 22 June 2007, 7:41 pm #The Happy Revolutionary
Nope, not a fan of Dickens.
Perhaps Iain should find a Modernist mentor (like Pound) who abhors the use of semi-colons altogether.
Some of Hall’s writing resembles a dyslexic free-associating in print.
Saturday 23 June 2007, 8:34 pm #John Surname
Thanks for that strider (ie go away).