Best Programmers

  • Subscribe to our RSS feed.
  • Twitter
  • StumbleUpon
  • Reddit
  • Facebook
  • Digg

Monday, 13 September 2004

Finding the voice

Posted on 04:18 by Unknown
Excerpt from LOUIS MENAND's review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss.

"Does this mean that the written "voice" is never spontaneous and natural but always an artificial construction of language? This is not a proposition that most writers could accept. The act of writing is personal; it feels personal. The unfunny person who is a humorous writer does not think, of her work, "That’s not really me." Critics speak of "the persona," a device for compelling, in the interests of licensing the interpretative impulse, a divorce between author and text. But no one, or almost no one, writes "as a persona." People write as people, and if there were nothing personal about the result few human beings would try to manufacture it for a living. Composition is a troublesome, balky, sometimes sleep-depriving business. What makes it especially so is that the rate of production is beyond the writer’s control. You have to wait, and what you are waiting for is something inside you to come up with the words. That something, for writers, is the voice."





Write to me: Suman[at]techwritersindia[dot]com
Email ThisBlogThis!Share to XShare to Facebook
Posted in | No comments
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Popular Posts

  • 3rd STC Chennai Meet this sunday.
    3rd STC Chennai Knowledge Sharing Session this sunday, April 4th. This month's knowledge sharing session will be held this coming sunday...
  • (no title)
    How to save your client $1600 per task per year through Usability Testing I have noticed quite a few mails asking how to conduct a usability...
  • Firefox: Tech writer friendly!
    Firefox has an in-built popup blocker. Firefox saves your screenspace through its tabbed-browsing feature. Firefox allows for opening mult...
  • Engrish!
  • Participative Help Design
    Participative Help Design I used a weblog script to create online help for -uh- using weblogs. I used a plugin to pull help topics as alphab...
  • (no title)
    AECMA Simplified English What Is Simplified English? AECMA Simplified English is a writing standard for aerospace maintenance documentation...
  • Writing SI units and symbols
    Quite a few of us do not write the SI units correctly. If you are a Physics or Chemisty student, and still remember what you studied in scho...
  • Use it before you write it.
    From the Nikkor ED 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D VR Review (emphasis is mine): [quote] Here's the warning in the manual : "When the camera is...
  • Re: [twin] Course Content for Technical Writing
    Hi Your hard skills are okay. But you are not specific when you say 'team skills' I mean today everyone is expected to be a team pla...
  • In Denver
    Guys I am in Denver. So updates will be erratic. I should be back in India around 18th of March. Until then, bye! Suman write to me: Suman@s...

Categories

  • conferences
  • contigency design
  • culture
  • design
  • error messages
  • google
  • hall of shame
  • ideas
  • management
  • manual
  • standards
  • stc
  • strategy
  • tools
  • usability
  • writing

Blog Archive

  • ►  2009 (1)
    • ►  February (1)
  • ►  2008 (5)
    • ►  November (1)
    • ►  September (1)
    • ►  May (2)
    • ►  April (1)
  • ►  2007 (7)
    • ►  October (1)
    • ►  August (2)
    • ►  June (1)
    • ►  March (1)
    • ►  January (2)
  • ►  2006 (10)
    • ►  November (2)
    • ►  October (3)
    • ►  September (1)
    • ►  August (3)
    • ►  June (1)
  • ►  2005 (17)
    • ►  December (2)
    • ►  November (1)
    • ►  October (3)
    • ►  September (2)
    • ►  August (3)
    • ►  June (2)
    • ►  May (1)
    • ►  April (2)
    • ►  February (1)
  • ▼  2004 (32)
    • ►  December (4)
    • ►  November (1)
    • ►  October (3)
    • ▼  September (3)
      • Writing SI units and symbols
      • Travails of a tech writer
      • Finding the voice
    • ►  August (2)
    • ►  July (5)
    • ►  June (3)
    • ►  May (1)
    • ►  April (5)
    • ►  March (2)
    • ►  February (1)
    • ►  January (2)
  • ►  2003 (42)
    • ►  December (2)
    • ►  November (3)
    • ►  October (1)
    • ►  September (3)
    • ►  August (7)
    • ►  July (2)
    • ►  June (1)
    • ►  April (4)
    • ►  February (4)
    • ►  January (15)
Powered by Blogger.

About Me

Unknown
View my complete profile