How do you get to understand – and then alter – the genome of yeast?
By rebuilding it from scratch, with some hooks built in to make it programmable. What we sometimes call “enhancement points” in the ERP world.
And once you’ve done that, what can you do with yeast? Well, besides its traditional applications in making beer and bread, it’s already used to produce medicines and other useful biologicals.
I’m well aware, of course, that language changes; I studied English language for my master’s, after all, including Old English and Middle English. I know that change is inevitable, and resisting it is futile.
At the same time, I advise people who are writing today to know and follow today’s conventions – by which I mean the conventions followed by today’s most skilled writers. I posted a piece a little while back about the five errors I see most frequently in published fiction: missing past perfect tense, “may” instead of “might” in past tense free indirect speech, over-application of the coordinate comma, missing the vocative comma, and missing or (more frequently) misplacing the apostrophe.
All of those are conventions. They’ve been different in the past – in some cases, the not particularly distant past – and will doubtless be different in the future, should we last so long. But if you don’t use the conventions because you don’t know the conventions, you don’t look as professional as the people who do.
And then there are matters of clarity. If you use “enormity” to mean “enormousness”, you now have two words that mean the same thing instead of meaning very different things, and you’ve lost the ability to mean the first thing without some extra contextual cues that tell your readers that’s actually what you mean. If you dangle your modifiers, you not only reveal that your thinking is a bit fuzzy; you risk making a seriously-intended piece ridiculous, which will distract readers from your point. If you use “alright” instead of “all right”, at least some readers will object (even though that’s a change that’s probably now inevitable, and will join “altogether” and “anymore” in the category of “compressed words that mean something subtly different from the uncompressed version”).
I suppose my point is: think about language. Be aware of it. If you’re a writer, it’s both your tool and your medium, just as brushes and paint are for an artist. Be aware of what your language is doing and what it’s conveying about you to various groups of readers. Don’t just slap it on any old way; think about the brushstrokes and the colour wheel.
But don’t obsess about the brushstrokes, or insist on only using the ones that appear in classic paintings, and none of your newfangled acrylics, either, and my art teacher when I was nine years old never let me do X, and…
If you’re an editor, or a book reviewer, I believe you have a form of professional responsibility and also an explicit or implicit invitation (respectively) to critique an author’s usage as well as their style, craft, and other choices. If they’re offering a product for sale, it should be professionally prepared to the best of their ability, and following current conventions is part of that. Otherwise, try not to get too wound up about other people’s brushstrokes. There are more important things; and some of the strokes are changing, whether you like it or not.
Originally shared by Karen Conlin
An excellent post, as always, from my colleague James Harbeck.
These are good tips. One that I used to use when I was a copy editor that I’ve never seen anyone else mention: read upside down. It’s another way of slowing yourself down so that you see what’s actually on the page.
Personally, I don’t print my manuscripts, but I do send them to my Kindle for at least one of my proofreads.
Originally shared by Grammar Girl
It’s human to make mistakes, but these computer and printing tricks can help you catch your typos. http://ow.ly/iHBa30isK3l
So, how did Singularity University grow its female participation rate so effectively, and help multiple women begin start-ups?
Primarily, it seems, by helping them to feel both safe and valued.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Unleashing Some of the Most Ambitious Women on the Planet http://suhub.co/2Elt2mJ
By “stories”, the writer here means nonfiction pieces on science.
Originally shared by Conscious Style Guide
“Finding diverse sources, and tracking them, takes time, but not that much time. I reckon it adds 15 minutes per piece, or an hour or so of effort over a week.”
#gender
[Image: Three people wearing white lab coats talk together in a well-lit office.]
Plenty of story fodder here.
As well as the haves and the have-nots, I also like to think about the “don’t wants” – the people who reject a new technology for various reasons. How does that impact their lives and the lives of people who accept the technology? Do they act as a reservoir of people who are safe when the tech goes horribly wrong, or are they a drag on progress? Or both?
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
The Power to Upgrade Our Own Biology Is in Sight—But Is Society Ready for Human Enhancement? http://suhub.co/2HeHNJP
Are you putting enough old people in your near-future SF? How healthy are they?
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
We Read This 800-Page Report on the State of Longevity Research So You Don’t Have To http://suhub.co/2Eq0bOi
Originally shared by Samantha Dunaway Bryant
Since I’m teaching a creative writing class for a local community college right now, a lot of this struck home.
I don’t know that I necessarily buy all of these arguments, although there’s some merit to the idea that, when your car is a mobile office/living room, you’ll want it to be your car so you can fill it with your stuff.
One of my yet-to-be-developed post-cyberpunk story ideas involves a “fixer” character who’s permanently on the move in a driverless pod, where he lives and works. You don’t find him; you put out the word, and he finds you.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Why the Rise of Self-Driving Vehicles Will Actually Increase Car Ownership http://suhub.co/2F34kZy
Interesting thoughts here about “windows and mirrors”: mirrors show you people like yourself and enable you to imagine yourself as a protagonist; windows show you the lives of people different from yourself and develop insight and empathy.
Originally shared by Conscious Style Guide
It’s a lot harder to assault women or take away the rights of transgender people when you have empathized with their full humanity. Boys (and also, everyone else) must read books as windows into the lives of others.
#gender
[Image: A student wearing a backpack, walks down a car-lined street, with head down and hand on back of neck.]