Not So magic Spells

I have been reading a lot of fan writing for a project I’m doing, and I must say that while I admire the enthusiasm fans have for Lost in Space, I am a bit less thrilled at the poor writing skills exhibited by some fans.

Now, I must emphasize at the outset that not all fans have poor writing ability. A good deal of the material I have received has been soundly written. But, just as in other aspects of life, the bad apples stand out.

I suspect some fans would be happier in the 18th century, before the time of dictionaries, when spelling was not set in stone: George Washington spelled the word pumpkin as “pompion,” for instance.

With Google, you can type in any word and get an immediate verdict on spelling. I remember one fan had sunmitted an article. He spelled Manitou as “Manatou.” Manitou Junction was the name of the town where the Robinsons landed in 1947. Manitou is an American Indian word meaning “great spirit.” There is no "Manatou."

Another fan made a mistake; he had listed the insults Dr. Smith had made to the robot. One of them listed was “adelphated armor bearer.” There is no such word as “adelphated.” The proper term is “addle pated.” Pate is a term meaning the head or the brain. So basically Dr. Smith was calling the robot addle minded, or stupid.

I have seen several fans simply copy that list, along with “adelphated.” Friends, this isn’t just us we’re speaking to with our writing: we’re speaking to the world. We just make ourselves stupid when we pass along errors like that.

Admittedly I have made similar errors—such as misspelling mustn’t and turmeric as “musn’t” and “tumeric”—in both cases, I’d made those errors for several decades.

The error that bothers me the most is the easiest one to avoid: the two forms of the word its. If you think the sentence “It’s head fell right off!” is correct, you are dead wrong. The rule is simple: use its if you’re describing an attribute of something: for instance, in the above sentence, the correct form would be “Its head…” etc. It’s is used when using a contraction: just think of this: try saying “it is” or “it has”—if that makes no sense, then don’t use it’s.

The above may seem like some minor quibbles, but after seeing the same mistakes over and over again, I felt I needed to say something. Have you ever driven somewhere and noticed every other person violating some basic rule of the road, to the point where you start to wonder whether it’s you who is in the wrong, and not them? The same is true with writing: after a couple of hours of reading clumsy writing, I start to think that maybe these people are right. I’m convinced that if I read enough bad writing my own writing will suffer (as an example, after a day of slogging through my slush pile, I forgot the difference between affect and effect—a quick trip to some grammar websites set me back on the right path)..

Folks, this is all about communicating. Anything that gets your ideas across clearly is good. Anything that gets in the way of that (bad spelling, bad grammar, using almost the right word instead of the right word, and so on) is bad.

Rules of writing are not that difficult. With such programs as Word, spelling and grammar errors are automatically detected (that breaks down when you make a typo and the typo is an actual word, then it doesn’t get spotted). So, to everyone, please go over your writing. Let it sit for a week and re read it. Show it to a friend to check for errors. Run a spell check.

Really, the bottom line is this: write everything as if you expect it to be published. This naturally leads to better writing.