In a message dated 02/07/02 8:24:36 PM GMT Daylight Time,
owner-rara-avis@icomm.ca writes:
<< My first and only crime short story came out in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery
Magazine in 1980. It was set in a cowboy amusement park
in Oklahoma, and I
wrote it with dialect, but no more pervasive than the
occasional "ya" (for
"you"), "ya'll" (for "you all"), a frequent omission of
the "g" from "-ing"
words, and some deliberately bad grammar to attempt
capture of the
vernacular of the people I wrote about. AHMM's copy
editor fixed it all up
so that it read less like Jesse James and more like
Henry James. We are not
amused. >>
My first story in AHMM contained the line "[She was] quite a
bit younger than him." This was changed to "quite a bit
younger than he." I still haven't stopped laughing - the idea
of anyone in Britain saying that is hilarious; but Americans
are much keener on "correct" dialogue than us is.
- Mat C
<A HREF="
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/matcoward/myhomepage/newsletter.html">
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/matcoward/myhomepage/newsletter.html>
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