"Well, the first rule of talking about writing is, if it doesn't work for you, don't use it. It's all subjective--not like there's a standardized lexicon or anything--and if a particular terminology doesn't suit you for whatever reason, then you'll do much better for yourself to come up with your own descriptor."
"otoh, semantics are important. Because we can't talk about things we don't have words for."
True on both points, but it's important in a discussion to know how everyone is defining something that has both connotations and denotations. This seems especially true for writing. I've been on message boards where conversations got heated and confusing til folks stepped back, defined their terms, and discovered instead of disagreeing, they were saying essentially the same thing, just using different terms for it.
In this case, it's part terminology or descriptor, but it's also a matter of is something really broken or is it simply that it doesn't work for a given reader or a given writer. So, I could say it's just not working for me as a reader, even a beta reader, while the writer thinks it's broken because it's not working for me, yet another beta reader could think it works fine.
So, whose opinion matters or matters most? I figure the writer, followed by a potential editor/publisher. :)
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2006-05-11 04:18 am (UTC)"otoh, semantics are important. Because we can't talk about things we don't have words for."
True on both points, but it's important in a discussion to know how everyone is defining something that has both connotations and denotations. This seems especially true for writing. I've been on message boards where conversations got heated and confusing til folks stepped back, defined their terms, and discovered instead of disagreeing, they were saying essentially the same thing, just using different terms for it.
In this case, it's part terminology or descriptor, but it's also a matter of is something really broken or is it simply that it doesn't work for a given reader or a given writer. So, I could say it's just not working for me as a reader, even a beta reader, while the writer thinks it's broken because it's not working for me, yet another beta reader could think it works fine.
So, whose opinion matters or matters most? I figure the writer, followed by a potential editor/publisher. :)