scream-of-consciousness;
"If you're trying to change minds and influence people it's probably not a good idea to say that virtually all elected Democrats are liars, but what the hell."
Ain't no such name, in any language or culture. You have to make up names that are at least credible, or else you get what I call "speed bumps" in the narrative (stuff that causes the reader to pause, and thus slows down the narrative pace). Try "di Tasso" (Italian) or just an Anglicized approximation (e.g. Dawson).
Also, you want to avoid gender-common names (Kim, Pat, Chris etc) unless you want gender confusion to be part of the plot.) Kim is also bad because it's an Ancient British term (it means "chief") and does not occur in any other language except Korean and some other Asian ones.
On a parallel topic: can anyone suggest a decent voice-recognition software package? My typing is shit at the best of times, and increasing age-related joint pain is making it more painful.
@ KDT, A couple of years ago I tried a version (12?) of Dragon which did a passable job of putting the correct words on the screen. What I didn't care for was feeling like Victor Borge doing his schtick vocalizing punctuation marks in order to insert them into the copy, a "speed bump" for me. True, one doesn't use arbitrary sounds, and perhaps if I had used it more, the process wouldn't have seemed so disruptive. There is also the possibility more recent versions are better at punctuation. My $0.02. --General Petty Officer Fifth Class Skyhawker Doug
dammit i hate when that happens
ReplyDeleteWhat about trying the latest version of Word Perfect?!? ;)
ReplyDelete"di Tois"????
ReplyDeleteAin't no such name, in any language or culture. You have to make up names that are at least credible, or else you get what I call "speed bumps" in the narrative (stuff that causes the reader to pause, and thus slows down the narrative pace).
Try "di Tasso" (Italian) or just an Anglicized approximation (e.g. Dawson).
Also, you want to avoid gender-common names (Kim, Pat, Chris etc) unless you want gender confusion to be part of the plot.) Kim is also bad because it's an Ancient British term (it means "chief") and does not occur in any other language except Korean and some other Asian ones.
On a parallel topic: can anyone suggest a decent voice-recognition software package? My typing is shit at the best of times, and increasing age-related joint pain is making it more painful.
All recommendations gratefully received.
witness -- My speller crashed, Argh!
ReplyDelete@ KDT,
ReplyDeleteA couple of years ago I tried a version (12?) of Dragon which did a passable job of putting the correct words on the screen. What I didn't care for was feeling like Victor Borge doing his schtick vocalizing punctuation marks in order to insert them into the copy, a "speed bump" for me. True, one doesn't use arbitrary sounds, and perhaps if I had used it more, the process wouldn't have seemed so disruptive. There is also the possibility more recent versions are better at punctuation. My $0.02.
--General Petty Officer Fifth Class Skyhawker Doug
http://dualwriter.com/
ReplyDelete