Re: Linguistic quirks (was: Don't know what to title this...)

Subject: Re: Linguistic quirks (was: Don't know what to title this...)
From: "Steve Schwarzman" <steve -at- writersbookmall -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 18:29:46 -0400


Geoff wrote:
>I'd be curious to learn about other substitutions or linguistic quirks
techwhirlers have encountered in their work with authors, engineers, or
developers.

As an editor, it's a big help to know the native language of one's authors.
This includes sentence structure, verb tenses, idioms, etc. But it's also a
matter of individual style in how those differences get mapped into English.
I once had a difficult-to-please boss who brought her writing to me for
fixing up. Her English was actually quite good; her only real weakness was
in mapping tenses into English from her native language, which combines
present conditional, past conditional, future conditional, and past
continuous into a single tense. She was aware of this, but overcompensated
with too many "had"s. Once I had worked with her for a while and figured
this out, it was quick work to make her texts say what she wanted.

Steve Schwarzman
___________________________________________
Books for Writers - http://www.writersbookmall.com


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