Your minds
always go there first, don’t they. You
bunch of perverts...
Some of you
may remember Watson, the supercomputer that played against two Jeopardy
champions and beat them. Watson was
specifically built to understand human language. That was the sole point of its appearance on
Jeopardy—to show that a machine could be programmed to understand subtext and
clues and irony well enough that it could compete against humans using their
rules.
Why am I
talking about a supercomputer—a fantastic and kick-ass supercomputer, granted—when
I keep insisting this place is about writing?
Do you know
how big Watson is? Or how long it took
to build? How many people were
involved? Watson was a six year project
for a team of more than twenty engineers and programmers (plus a ton of
students interning with IBM). It’s a
collection of processors and drives as big as my first apartment in Los Angeles
(which means it’s probably the size of your kitchen).
And you
know what? Even with all that computing power
and information, Watson still got things wrong. Several times in warm up games and even
during the main event, Watson would miss obvious clues and give the
most bizarre answers. If you run the numbers,
Watson didn’t know how to answer a given question almost twenty percent of the
time. When it did answer, it still got
one out of every ten questions wrong.
Now, again,
please remember what I just said how long all those people worked on this
machine. A machine that was built for
the specific purpose of understanding human language. That’s going to be important when I ask my
next question.
How much
work do you think went into your computer’s word processor?
For that matter, how much went into just its
spellchecker? Or into that automated
proofreader? Do you think the people
programming it were IBM-level experts in their field? And in the field of writing?
I’m not
going to be a hypocrite and say these things are useless tools. I use my spellchecker. I usually make a pass with it during my third draft. There’s nothing wrong with
using it as a tool to help me check spelling. But I have no illusions about the fact that I
still need to be the one checking the spelling.
See, I
don’t blindly accept every “correction” it offers me. And this isn’t my entire third draft. I still go through the whole manuscript line
by line, sentence by sentence. It can
take me four or five days. Because I
know the machine can’t be trusted to do
it for me.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it until people listen. A computer cannot write for me. It doesn’t matter how cool someone’s system
is, it won’t do the job. That’s why,
whenever you ask a real writer for advice, they’ll usually say to hire a good
editor, not to upgrade your software.
If I want
to be a writer—a working, paid writer, not an artsy, pretty-language, special snowflake, gatekeepers-are-keeping-me-down kind of writer–I need to know how to
spell and how to use words and what those words mean.
These
words, for example.
fair and fare –one of these is how you get
through an experience
dual and duel—one of these refers to
citizenship
vain
and vein – one of these refers to similar things
tics and ticks – one of these is a twitch
mute and moot –one of these is irrelevant
reckless and wreckless—one of these means rash
vain and vane – one of these makes you think
this song is about you
desert and dessert—one of these has whipped
cream
shudder and shutter – one of these means to
shake
soar and sore—one of these relates to diseases
vane and vein—one of these shows the flow of
air or liquid
rack and wrack –one of these means to convulse
wreck and wreak—one of these means to inflict
wait and weight – seriously... it’s embarrassing
that I have to ask.
As in the past, these are all mistakes I’ve seen in articles or books over the
past few months. When I come across one
and it makes me shudder (not shutter), I know I have to add it to the list. Yeah, I keep a list. You don’t think I just come up with all this
stuff from scratch once a week, do you?
In the
interest of fairness... Two of these are mistakes I’ve made in the recent
past. One of them even slipped past me,
my proofreaders, my editor, the copyeditor, and then me again while I looked
over copyedits and layouts.
Did you
know all of the answers? Did you know what the other
word meant, too? If I don’t know them both (know—not
sort of recognize) there’s a good chance I’ll make a mistake at some
point. And, granted, we all make mistakes
sometimes.
But some
people make a lot of mistakes. And they
don’t catch any of them. Because they’re
depending on their computer to do it for them.
Next time,
I want to...
Actually,
before I talk about next time, I’d like to break my rule about no self-promotion
and guide you to the Kaiju Rising Kickstarter. It’s a giant monster anthology featuring
stories from folks like Peter Stenson, Timothy Long, Larry Correia, and a bunch
of others (including me). It’s already
fully funded (even stretch goals), but there’s still a day or two left to snag
a copy for yourself, and possibly a pile of add-ons.
Anyway,
that being said...
Next time,
I want to talk about exceptions.
Until then,
go write.
Hi Mr Stranger,
ReplyDeleteYou always post about wrong spelling. Just to make it clear, I'm not complaining ;=) But have you heard of dangling modifiers? They're actually kind of funny, for example, like:
Stomping up the stairs, the noise wakes the whole house.
Have you come across sentences like this?
Beachcomber
speakeasybycherry.wordpress.com
I try to make a point to go at least six months between spelling rants. It's not my fault you keep reading all this nonsense... :)
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've seen dangling modifiers before(and created more than a few, too). Mixed thoughts on them. I think some are the result of people trying to imitate stylistic things they've seen or heard without quite understanding why/how the example worked. Others show up when someone tries to write prose as dialogue(which is my sort-of-style here).
Are you suggesting a post, or were you just going to mock me about having them in places...? :)
Hahaha..NO (as in strong all caps) I'm not mocking you. I don't have any business to mock anyone, most especially writers like you! :=) I just thought of it, and wondered how common it is. No, you're doing fine from where I stand, you don't need me to suggest a post for you. I'm content reading whatever nonsense you post here, or else I wouldn't have linked you from my site :=)
ReplyDelete