(readers may have noticed that opinion pieces written by me are formatted somewhat different from the usual…
..here is the reply i gave to a questioner on another site..)
ooh..!..weihana..!..just looking at how you have got all those poor sentences all squashed up together..gets me claustrophobic..
..makes me want to break their formatting-chains..and to free them..let them breath..
..this construct that you obviously labour under..you do realise came about because of the cost of paper..?
..this is why early books are just block-print..a dense/incomprehensible thicket of words..
..then came the paragraph..
..well.. i feel that every sentence/idea deserves the dignity of its’ own line..
..the paper shortage is past…
..this new interwebby-thingy means we can rethink the world of formatting…
..as as for capital letters..?..they are just a combination of an affectation and a construct once again driven by that cost of paper..
..to define the beginning of a new..or part of..an idea..
(..and why the false honorific affected by most..i mean..why Mr..?..when mr..will do…and our names..?..why..?..)
..with my way..the beginning of the line does that..and this also frees you to let the words sing..
..and they can take/revel in their rythyms..
..(the insult to me here..that most amused me..came in the middle of a splenetic-rant from i forget who..
..and they also seemed over-agitated by my use of the language etc..
..and they said:..’you..you write like a bloody poet..!’..)
another major influence on my writing style is that while i was at ak uni i worked at bfm for a few years..
(not as a dj..writing/presenting news/commentary etc..)
so i speak my writing…and am looking for those rythyms you need for effective radio-writing..
(as an aside:..major regret in the life:..it was a friday morning on mikey havocs’ breakfast show..and brett hansen ..the kiwi who runs mtv in europe..was the guest…and he was there for the whole breakfast show…
..and he watched me come in every half hour..and do a new/fresh batch of stories…that i was compiling/finding between bulletins..
..(i was doing this on my own..and used to pride myself on searching wide and deep for stories..as i do on whoar..)
..at the end of the morning he said to me:..’if you get to london and you need some work..come and see me..’..
…someone else from the station at the time said to me..’why aren’t you already out at the airport..offering to carry his bags on board’..
..and it was a fair question..but unfortunately a new baby and family-circumstances meant i couldn’t go..
..and yep..!..i do often wonder ‘what if.?’..)
..and that brings us to my disdain/contempt of that most effete of punctuation tools..the ‘comma’..
..that cowering excuse for an exclamation..snivelling away at the bottom of the letter…i much prefer the double-dot..or the dash -
..and last but not least..i think that no capitals is much more visually appealing that the jarring-notes of capital-letters…
..i hope that answers all yr questions..
..any more..just fire away..
..eh..?
