Word Usage Peeve: Circa

I was wandering about the Internet today and came across a series of photographs. The name for the online album was constructed this way:

Our New Home! Circa May 12, 2010

Um…no.

Circa, while a perfectly good and useful word (often abbreviated as c.), means, in the sense of dates, “around” or “about”. For example, we don’t know the exact years for the birth and death of Plato, so you might write “born c. 428 BC, died c. 348 BC”. If you know the exact date of something, then it isn’t circa anything, it is month-date-year, a fact and not an approximation or estimate.

Words are fun, and the English language has at least a million words to play with.  But in this case, circa has no place on the playground – save it for times of uncertainty.

Mistakes Authors Make

Authors are people.

I know that may come as a shock to some of you, especially considering how…un-humble…some authors seem. But like the rest of us, and despite their best efforts, they make mistakes, whether it’s as simple as a misused word or something with more impact. Things fall through the cracks and, as a result, the reader is pulled out of the story. Whether fact or fiction, sci-fi or self-help, missteps on the author’s part can make the difference between a bestseller and finding their books on the remainder table marked down to $1.99.

Editors, copyeditors and proofreaders exist to patch the cracks, plug literary holes, clean up the timeline, and provide clarity to the reader (and in novels, to do so without giving away the plot too soon).

RIP IV: Books the Second and Third

It isn’t that I haven’t been reading.  I’m just behind on writing blog entries.

***sigh***

Herewith, Books the Second and Third for RIP IV: Fear Nothing and Seize the Night by Dean Koontz.  These are actually re-reads, but it had been such a long time since my last visit to Moonlight Bay, California, the fictional beach city where the action takes place, that I thought it okay to count them for this challenge.

The main character in both books is Christopher Snow, a 28-year-old with xeriderma pigmentosum (XP), a genetic disorder that requires him to live his entire life in virtual darkness or risk uncontrollable cancers – not only can he not expose himself to normal daylight, the UV waves from fluorescent lights or computer screens can cause cumulative harm, because his body lacks the ability to repair even that minor damage.  His companions include Bobby, his surfing buddy; Sasha, his girlfriend, who works as the late-night dj on the local radio station; and Orson, an extremely smart dog who, as we find out, is even smarter than Chris realizes.

RIP IV: Book the First

First, a little explanation of RIP IV, which I didn’t know about myself until mid-September.  RIP stands, in this case, for “R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril,” a reading challenge now in its fourth year (hence the IV) and put forward by the blog owner at Stainless Steel Droppings, who calls himself a Renaissance Geek. The gist of it is, read one or two or four (or more) books in the categories of

1. Mystery
2. Suspense
3. Thriller
4. Dark Fantasy
5. Gothic
6. Horror
7. Supernatural

between September 1 and October 31, then write reviews of them and link to those reviews at the main site.

This seemed like a natural for me, for several reasons.

Writing in 3-D

When I say “3-D,” what do you think of?

Algebra class, maybe?  All those graphs with their x-, y- and z-axes showing length, width and height?  That’s one good reference, and it’s very concrete: we live, after all, in a three-dimensional world.

And if you go to movies—and I know you do—then I’m sure you’ve had fun with those 3-D glasses, taking them off during the film and putting them back on to see the difference in perception.  If you’re like me, you’ve also put them on outside the movie theater to see what those lenses do.  Pretty amazing, isn’t it, that what works to give clear vision in one setting can have the opposite effect in the real world.

I hear you ask, “But what does this have to do with writing?”

This is why I love Al Yankovic…

The thinking person’s nerd strikes again!

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