A hodge-podge of languages.

While trying to find out if British English puts a full-stop after title abbreviations (Mr, Mrs, Ms and so on), I've discovered that I'm writing in an interesting hodge-podge of languages.

* I always spell-check for British English.
* Yet I always use American dialogue punctuation and follow their quotation mark rules.
* I merrily ignore all the disapproving looks over comma splices, as they're quite standard in British English.
* I also use a nice mixture of verb forms, depending on my mood.

Having realised that, it's tempered with the realisation that language is fluid. Flicking through a Jeffrey Deaver book which happens to be sitting beside me, I note that he uses single quote marks for dialogue (UK), yet punctuates them in the US style. Interesting.

If I do end up going for a proofreading course I shall have a lot of bad habits to break, I think!!

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In other news--through the awesome power of Rockfic chat, I finished a WIP. It's been hanging around my hard-drive, making mournful faces at me for months. Since the beginning of May, in fact. Now, I have another nine WIPs which I'd quite like to get done, so I'll be dragging anyone I can lay my hands on into chat. Maybe we can recreate the magic!

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Goddammit. This house is infested with spiders :(

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You know what I find really interesting?

People have been writing heterosexual romances, general fiction and fan fiction for years. Why on earth are we being asked to give special support/attention/whatever to het writers over slash writers? Slash is the 'new' genre and homosexual writing--explicit or otherwise--takes up very little shelf-space in bookshops as compared to the mountains of books that explore the joys of male-female nookie and angst.

So, yeah. I'm just a bit bemused.

And, evaine, I'm not trying to get at you, sweetie. I'm just really bemused about this particular point.

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I'm not sure why I need to make a statement on my reading preferences, but anyway.... Het fanfic is to me, rather akin to romance novels. I overdosed on romances when I was single and now that I'm in a happy marriage I don't feel the need to read boy-meets-girl stuff. I get plenty romancing, so I just don't need to read about it nowadays. :D (Mind you, I suspect I'd happily read a good Bend-over Boyfriend type story ;) )

Absolutely nothing against het--I wouldn't be married to a bloke, if I did, right?

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feelforfaith! I just stumbled across this LJ entry about sexy and unsexy words and thought of you: http://www.livejournal.com/users/makesmewannadie/39308.html

Enjoy ;)