Playing To An Empty Room

Writing a blog (okay, “web log” as I am uncertain whether “blog” is in any recognized dicionary as of yet) is a little, no wait, a lot like doing stand-up comedy orr karaoke to an empty room. It’s basically a journal that some other sentient entity might come across and possibly connect with, or to. Rather, one hopes this turns out to be the case. Unfortunately, no nibbles yet. Therefore, I should be content with having my words floating out there in cyberspace (a word that is in the dictionary) touching absolutely no one. Oh, well – I asked for it.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a published author and you probably know my work. As I’ve also said, if you suspect that ou know who I am, keep it to yourself, or at least, don’t tell my agent. If you are my agent, let me say that the last advance was adequate but not all I actually hoped for. Money doesn’t have to be the only thing, but, as my agent, you would have no appreciation of that concept. I can say only in the nicest possible way, “Bite me.”

So, having been published and having been at least a little bit successful and having been the focus of at least a minimally known quantity of readers, it’s hard to feel motivated on a daily basis writing this thing. Nevertheless, I have committed myself to keeping it up (this blog that is the other thing has a mind of its own) and seeing it through until I can type no longer.

So, settle in and check back and read this, or not, but do refer your friends or enemies as the case may be, and let’s see where it takes you. Or, you can see where it takes you and I’ll stick to the creative bits.

Let me now rant on a matter of grammar. While I agree that the English language is living and evolving, blah, blah, blah, there are certain rules that were made to remain unbroken. Can we get this straight? Please? The biggest peeve I have is the use of a contraction of “it is” as “it’s” in place of the possesive form. What fourth grade drop-out started this trend, and why won’t it stop? I actually saw this in a headline on a major news website and couldn’t believe it. Where are the English Major editors on all of this? It drives me insane. Someone delivered a screenplay to me last week and, sure enough, every instance of the possesive “it” was expressed as a contraction. When I called the screenwriter to point out that he had delivered manuscripts to prominent folks around Hollywood and to the author containing the error, he positively had a meltdown trying to convince me that I was wrong.

“Excuse, me,” said I, “but the characters ‘i’,’t’,’apostrophe’ and ‘s’ are a contraction of ‘it is’. How does that become interchangeable with ‘its’ as a posseive form?” “What kind of bullsh*t are you talking about? This is a film script, not the Oxford dictionary. Besides, that’s a courtesy copy. I don’t really care what ou think.” Oooo. Wrong. I have screenplay approval and a very good PR lady who will circulate endlessly the story that JOHNNY CAN’T FREAKIN’ SPELL, but I kept that to myself. Instead, I gently pointed to Strunk and White, page number so-and-so and he said, I swear this on a stack of bagels, “Who are they? Are they working on this picture?”

It’s incumbent on me to be diplomatic. After all, I have other books that could benefit from treatment for the big screen. But, this fellow was a hack, therefore I said, “It’s not my fault that you can’t manage to put three hundred pages of reasonably assembled prose between two covers and have the public at large consider it as a work. But it would be my fault if I allowed a work derived from my own to be published without protest when the words are not mine. Therefore, I ask you to make the requisite corrections and resubmit the work. I’m certain it was an oversight and I also feel that I must have caught you in a tense moment, so we’ll just leave it at that.”

Click.

He wasn’t disconnected. He didn’t go into a tunnel. It wasn’t a dead zone. The battery in his phone didn’t die – he just, plain hung up. Now, I don’t know about you, but I feel that’s rude. I took the time to research his background and in order to avoid wasting my time with a lawsuit that I would win anyway, I would publish the name or identifying elements of his history here, but, I can say that he wasn’t even a minor in English in college. Even so, the basic curriculum in the English language when he was of elementary school age covered the use of contractions in the third grade with reviews after that. It’s a simple rule, really. If you’re removing a letter or letters to shorten the word (in an accepted way, unlike “ain’t” which would be a contraction if “ai” and “not” only one of which is a word) the characters go closer together, just like waiting in the school cafeteria lunch line, but someone’s wearing a feather! That’s not hard to follow or remember, is it?

In an era where information is king, doesn’t it make sense to know how to correctly communicate the information in a standard an established way so that EVERYONE can understand it? Besides, using “it’s” in place of “its” is wrong, doesn’t make sense and, oh yeah, is wrong.

I’m all for artistic license, but this has nothing to do with that, It’s just wrong. I’m also all for the “living and breathing” of the language – by all means, of course, if it leads to greater expressive girth. But this is not that: it’s just plain wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. And, nothing anyone does can make it right. “It is” does not and never will mean the same thing as “its.” Let’s try it out in a sentence:

The dog lost its bone. The dog lost it is bone.
See the problem? No? Leave this blog. NOW!