By
C. Neuroticus Absolutus
I'm as much an up-to-date guy as I can be at my age.
Even knowing how dynamic our American English is, the language of my juniors
never ceases to amaze as well as alarm me. I no sooner learned the word, "emoticon", than a Japanese variation
of the same word , "emoji,"
appeared on the horizon. The "ji" appears in the Japanese word kanji in reference to the Chinese
writing system the Japanese adopted millennia ago. It means
"character." Thus my assumption that emoji means emotional character,
a great description of the happy face circle with its various mood transformations.
But I've strayed afield from the subject of my
death. I was reading an article in the Writer's
Digest publication Novel Writing,
"Tips, & Techniques for Better Stories."Although not a novice
writer, I'm always looking for always to improve my writing and the lure of
articles vetted by Writer's Digest
was too much to resist. After several days of part-time reading, I came across
an article where the title ground me to a halt: "Characterizing Quick."
As a promoter of righteous adverb usage, the word "quick" hit me like
a bear scratching both claws on a slate blackboard. I would have used "quickly."
Then the sub-title, "Develop dynamic characters
in no time with these 15 easy hacks." I am admittedly a newbie when it
comes to this usage of "hack." I'd seen it before and from the
context where it appeared, my supposition was that it meant "tip," as
in hint. Seemed to work well enough. In this case, I paused for a moment before
moving on. When what to my wondering eyes should appear, midway in the second
paragraph, but another hack!
I immediately sought the advice of the online Urban
Dictionary, which lists 14 definitions for "hack," but none solved my
problem. When consulting Merriam-Webster, a 5-minute search found the following
at the end of a list, obviously tacked on as though it were a new entry or an
afterthought: "an unusually creative solution to a computer hardware or
programming problem or limitation." There was my hack! A solution!
But what was this qualification about computer
hardware and programming? Were a bunch of backroom binary geeks attempting to scam
us?
I continued to read the article and from the beginning,
counted 4 uses of the word "hack." My experience and critics have
taught me not to repeat words over and over. Perhaps the example I have
highlighted here is a bit picky, but it stopped my reading and thoughts each
time the word appeared. That's deadly if you're trying to build tension or
convey a difficult point of view.
To summarize, I felt
hacked to death by the time I got to the end of the article. I'll have to
reread it someday to see what I missed the first time. 