azurelunatic | Snobbery (from a conversation with onyxrising)

Just because you can do elegant and complex stuff casually, and hold yourself to high standards does not make you a snob. Snobbery starts when you unreasonably expect others to conform to the high standards that you hold.

Expecting others to conform to reasonable standards, even if they are high, is not snobbery. And there are times and places where the standards, even high ones, should apply.

Examples from the conversation:
Whipping up a chilled curried cantaloupe soup and fresh bread for a quick cold thrown-together lunch is not snobbery, not if you're a culinary arts major and do that sort of stuff casually.
Being upset that someone else throws together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a quick cold lunch (rather than making chilled curried cantaloupe soup and fresh bread) is definitely snobbery, especially if they're not a culinary arts major.
Holding a resturant staff to high standards when you're paying for a good lunch is not snobbery.

Examples from my real life:

My spelling very well and using decent grammar in my own journal, comments, and communities is not snobbery, especially because it comes naturally to me.

My expecting someone to spell correctly and/or use decent grammar in their own journal and mocking them for the lack thereof would be snobbery, even though I would be well within my rights to insist on spelling and grammar in that same piece if it were turned in to me as a class assignment.

My expectation of good grammar and usage and good spelling in a published novel is normal, and I have every right to say, "Excuse me?" to the publishing house that does Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books, and decline to buy the next one.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

===Well said.

What exactly did the publishing house do?

I still maintain that I am well within my non-snobbish rights to make generalized bitches about grammar without highlighting any one person, because I believe that it is a reasonable expectation to hold the country in general to a higher standard of language than it's currently upholding. I refuse to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Publish it, full of errors?

Allowed most of the later books to go out looking as if they hadn't been by their grammar and usage beta yet. I can understand common but not proper spelling such as "alright" and the wrong homonym in a draft, writing not for the paying public, or in a personal document, but not in a professionally published novel. I am certain that "alright" was in there, and I remember being jarred by "gait" instead of "gate".

Anita would probably spell it "alright". The author/editors should not allow that to get out the door. Even though this is being told with Anita's voice, it's one of my standards that when I read a narrated book, I should be able to hear the character saying it without distraction. If Anita is writing in a journal, fine, spell it like Anita would. But if Anita is narrating a story as to an unseen scribe, spell it like a grammar nazi would.

It's not the author's job to be the grammar nazi. It's the beta (editor, grammar nazi)'s job to quibble over every little wrinkle and quirk with the author until the finished product is polished and the reader knows that every error is intentional. As it stands, it just looks like the author banged it out, spell-checked it a few times, and sent it off to the typesetters without benefit of beta, no matter how much actual work did go into the editing.

If our narrator is having a conversation with a person who can't spell, should the conversation be recorded as the person who is speaking would write it? Not in conventional literature. And the Anita Blake books are marketed and published as conventional literature, and as such, fall below standard on editing.

===I have absolutely no problem with grammar issues...(while I tend to write with my own idiot-cyncracies, I am quite aware I am doing them.).

===Exploring odd uses of grammar online: I tend to use the === to start off my online paragraphs. It happens to be a habit that I picked up when writing to e-mail lists that had people that simply could not quote properly to save their lives, and it helps me delineate my own thoughts from others. My horrid use of ellipses is my way of putting the "pause" that happens in "normal" speech. The use of " " around words tends to be a shorthand to say I am using the word, but either not convinced it is the best and most accurate term, or I am using it slightly differently than normal...and thus want to make it apparent I am aware of this and that others SHOULD be aware of this.

===I have no problem with unusual uses of grammar and writing, if it is done with awareness, with reason, and with intelligence.

===(And I do know that I personally should both learn how to type better, and use the mighty power of the spell-checker to catch my typing mistakes.)

One thing I abhor is the use of "" around a word for the purposes of emphasis rather than a non-standard or inappropriate use. For example:

All of our materials are of the "highest" quality.

Things like that make me cringe. Quotes are not for emphasis like that. It makes it look as if the quality of the materials is dubious at best.

When I see that, I assume it's the fault of a lawyer somewhere :D

Aye.

Here's my opinion on a couple borderline cases:

Sitting down next to your pb&j-eating friend and saying "mmm, curried cantaloupe" in a pointed tone: Snobbery.
Pointing out to someone who says " U R WRONG U SUK" that their lack of spelling and breaches of netiquette are probably causing them to be taken less seriously: Not snobbery.
Doing so repeatedly if they say they don't care: Snobbery.
Mocking someone for reading Anita Blake: Snobbery.

I had something to say, but I forgot.

We must burninate the grammar into their heads!

I firmly reserve the right to check the next Anita Blake book out of the library (where I've been getting all the others) and happily read it, pausing here and there for snark.

They're just not purchase material.

Snobbery (from a conversation with onyxrising)

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