2016

I've kept this blog, on and off, since 2006. In 2015 I used it to chart daily encounters, images, thoughts and feelings about volcanic basalt/bluestone in Melbourne and Victoria, especially in the first part of the year. I plan to write a book provisionally titled Bluestone: An Emotional History, about human uses of and feelings for bluestone. But I am also working on quite a few other projects and a big grant application, especially now I am on research leave. I'm working mostly from home, then, for six months, and will need online sociability for company!


Monday, January 17, 2011

Spelling word cloud

I'm sorting out spelling for my final manuscript submission. I use "find and replace" and search for our to change to or, but can't do a global change since so many of my source quotes are English, and there are words, of course, that don't change. So this is not a job that can be done after midnight (are you listening, Stephanie?).

Honor, favor, armor, but court, discourse, tournament. Also, who would have thought I would use the numbers four and fourteen so much? Well, I guess "fourteenth century" is part of the problem here.

The -ize words are even harder, as they look so weird: realize???  Some look ok, though, which makes me realis/ze how hybridis/zed my own spelling has become.

But the wonderful Jerry, my editor, emailed me this morning and said "regularize as you are able (notice the z, which is "zee" and neither a "zed" nor an s), but don't drive yourself nuts."  Which is good advice, as I'm still more likely to be fussing about spelling than doing the final revisions to Chapter Seven. Crazy!

4 comments:

This old world is a new world said...

Dramatize, but not televize.

This old world is a new world said...

Oh dear. Just had to write "poor" in another context, and couldn't quite work out why "pour" didn't look right (and I swear: I just wrote "write" there). Aaarrrgghhh!

meli said...

oh no!!! good luck!

i had similar troubles finalizing my thesis, though i didn't have the added problems of 'honor' etc. it turns out that actually uk english uses far more 'ize's now than it used to and i wasn't being consistent. but i ended up converting some that shouldn't have been, and ended up with a couple of very funny written words that had to be changed back before the hard-binding...

Jeffrey Cohen said...

In solidarity, I will note that my talk "The Neighbor and the Jew in Medieval England," which I am giving at the University of Toronto Thursday, was advertised as "The Neighbour and the Jew in Medieval England." I had to change the spelling of the title on my handout, and it took quite a long while (perhaps even SEVERAL seconds), but I didn't wait until after midnight to accomplish the task.

Good luck with your regulariZing!