Typo-Casting

     As I mention regularly in this blog, I've returned to meeting jail inmates on a part-time basis. The court staff calls me in to plug holes that sometimes occur in any small office--illnesses, vacations, that sort of thing. I'm happy to help. I enjoy the work, and the occasional magistrate session keeps my bar card from getting dusty. 

    The sessions also allow me to uncover that collection of typos and misunderstoods that crop up occasionally in police reports. Often, these mistakes happen when a patrol officer in the field calls in his or her report using the department's voice-to-text system. Others occur, I think, when personnel use a word and aren't entirely clear on the definition. In either case the results can be entertaining. 

    What follows are a few of the recent examples of reporting errors. Besides a bit of fun, I hope they remind writers and citizens that police officers are human. They make mistakes just like the rest of us. Rarely are the errors cataclysmic breaches or deliberate violations of constitutional norms. More commonly, they are the mistakes we all make. A failure to proofread carefully or the assumption that what we actually said was what we meant to say. Anyone who has ever dictated a text message should understand. We want our police officers to be flesh and blood people so that they might empathize with the individuals they encounter. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy it when that humanity is displayed. 

He did not feel the form. 

    I'm easing into the typo topic. This isn't the most egregious mistake. But a great deal of my jail business involves unwanted touchings of one form or another. More accurately, a lot of my business consists of an excess of alcohol or drugs, followed by unwanted touching, sometimes with fists. So maybe someone did sneak a feel on the paperwork rather than fail to complete all the numbered boxes. Hopefully, the defendant obtained consent. 

Upon returning to the station, I tasted the ecstasy.

    When I read this, I momentarily stopped my work. I've had a movie moment, I thought. An officer in the field, touched the drugs to her tongue, looked dramatically at her partner, tossed her mane of perfectly coiffed hair, and announced that, "this stuff is pure." 

    Or more likely, when she got to the station, an officer exhausted from working deep-nights did a chemical test on the drugs that came back positive for a controlled substance. Then in her sleep-deprived state, she wrote 'tasted' rather than 'tested'. 

    I like my version better. 

We stooped because a man was lying in the road.

    Either the police stopped to perform a welfare check on a man who might present a danger to himself or others, or they had a sympathetic response. You be the judge. 

I contacted a female who loved in apartment 137. 

    If children are reading this blog with you, tell them the police meant to type 'lived'. If they're not, create your own story to the prompt, "The Woman Who Loved in Apartment 137". 

I had the subject perform a simple metal test. 

   As every driver knows, when a subject is stopped for driving while intoxicated, they are asked to perform a battery of field sobriety tests. The goal is to determine whether the driver is too intoxicated to operate a motor vehicle safely. 

    The goal is to have the subject perform a simple mental test.  I always find it funny when I see a typo written by someone commenting on another's loss of cognitive faculties. I'm sure the defense attorney will too. 

    But I could be wrong. Arc welding may be a new National Highway Safety Administration-approved sobriety test. I don't attend as many legal seminars as I used to so I might have missed that update. 

    There are a handful of recent offerings. They should remind us all that we're subject to typos. Read those stories one more time before submission. And if you find yourself lying in the street, don't fear the bent-over police officer. She's likely stooping to help you. 

    I'll be traveling on the day this blog posts. Apologies in advance if I don't reply to your comments. 

    Until next time. 

Why A Librarian? by Anna Scotti

Anna Scotti, our guest blogger today, is a fellow member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society whom I knew and admired, but I became an enthusiastic fan a few pages into her new novel in short stories, It's Not Even Past. Everything she writes is a pleasure to read and deserves the awards her work has won.

Lori Yarborough is a bad-ass. She walks the mean streets of Los Angeles with only a battle-scarred pitbull for companionship, sleeps alone in the national forest, and - when finally pushed beyond endurance - slits a man's throat on a sunlit beach on Maui. She's also a librarian.

As It's Not Even Past opens, Lori is already on the run. She has traded demure sweater sets and a prim bun for raggedy yoga pants and flaming red hair. As the story progresses, Lori works as a nanny, a private secretary, a nurse's aide, a teaching assistant - she'll take pretty much any job that will allow her to keep a low profile and hide her education. She evolves from a naive, rather prissy pedant to a streetwise cynic. Lori changes a lot over the course of the ten-story collection. But make no mistake - she is a librarian to her core.

I knew, writing that very first librarian-on-the-run tale, that I wanted Lori to be smart and that she had to be brave. I couldn't think of a better job for her than librarian at the world-famous Harold Washington Library in Chicago, that owl-topped mecca for books and art and education. Lori is in many regards my alter ego - younger, smarter, fitter and a lot more courageous than I'll ever be, but like me in her fondness for Shakespeare and Donne, science and nature, good food, good wine, and good-looking men. I've held many of the jobs Lori has - teacher, personal assistant, lab rat - and I've worked with children and chimpanzees. If I can't blithely quote the classics as Lori does, I do know how to efficiently search my dog-eared Bartlett's. But I've never been a librarian, though I've admired them all my life.

Illustration by Helen John from
All of A Kind Family

My first hero was Kathy Allen, the "library lady" from Sydney Taylor's All of A Kind Family, who treated everyone with gentle but firm compassion. Ella, the family's eldest daughter, had an entirely inappropriate crush on Miss Allen's fiancé, but it was the lady herself I worshipped - her soft hands, her brisk manner, the swirl of hair she wore like a nest atop her pretty head. The librarian at my neighborhood public library in Washington, D.C., was not as young and pretty as Miss Allen, but she was just as kind, allowing me to check out books all summer long despite our family's terrible record for returning them. My siblings and I devoured books. We hiked with books, slept with books, read while standing at the bus stop, while waiting our turn at bat, and while hiding under the bed or behind a tree during hide-and-seek. We dropped books in mud puddles and bathtubs and left them behind in restaurants and at sleepover parties. But that wonderful lady never said no, just ran my tattered card through the check-out machine, sighing. She knew we were home alone while my parents worked, and she probably thought a few missing books were worth the cost of keeping us from running wild in the streets.

Our school librarian was a boss, too. The Alice Deal Jr. High library was a safe haven for weird kids, fat kids, foreign kids, new kids, smart kids, and anybody else who didn't quite fit in. When I became a teacher myself, decades later, I strove to make my classroom that kind of sanctuary. Along with the art room, the library, and the theater, my English classrooms were a hideout for anyone who needed to escape the vissicitudes of adolescent life.

Librarians have always been heroes; in World War II, the American Library Association provided not only reading material but lifesaving technical manuals to American servicemen, and in Cuba after the revolution, librarians hid "subversive" books from Castro's forces. In 2012, Abdel Kader Khaidara helped smuggle half a million books out of Timbuktu in order to protect them from extremists, while Saad Eskander defended Iraq's national library against Islamists and U.S. forces alike. American librarians have traditionally been champions of the First Amendment, standing in bespectacled unity, pastel sweater-clad elbows linked, to defend our right to freely access information.

But it's Barbara Gordon, equal parts sex appeal and erudition in granny glasses and skin-tight tops, who stands above all other librarians as a model of courage and hotness. Although she was the Head Librarian of a major city, chief tech advisor to a pantheon of superheroes, and a one-time candidate for the House of Representatives, you might know Dr. Gordon better by her other name: Batgirl. Maybe Brenda Starr, girl reporter, carried equal weight in my starved-for-female-role-models, pre-adolescent world. Brenda had a killer dimple and juggled two handsome boyfriends and a challenging career with ease. But Barbara was an intellectual. She would not have been ashamed to know the difference between placental mammals and marsupials, or how to count in base nine, or where to find Comoros on a map.

All of these librarians, fictional and real, swirled in my head as I wrote the first librarian-on-the-run tale for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine back in 2018. (“That Which We Call Patience” is actually the second story in the collection, because I added two new stories to supplement those that originally appeared in the magazine.) I suppose the librarians who made my childhood bearable have since returned to dust, but I hope their successors will read these words and will recognize themselves lovingly reflected in the pages of It's Not Even Past.

Want to know more about librarians or the books and resources I've mentioned here? Check out The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer, Let's Talk Comics: Librarians by Megan Halsband, Sydney Taylor's All of a Kind Family series, and How Librarians Became Free Speech Heroes by Madison Ingram on Zocalo Public Square.

Anna Scotti's short stories appear frequently in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and can also be found in Black Cat Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post, and in various literary magazines and anthologies. Stories from her new collection, It's Not Even Past (Down & Out Books), have been selected three times for Best Mystery Stories of the Year (Mysterious Press). Scotti is also a noted poet and the author of the award-winning young adult novel, Big and Bad (Texas Review Press). She teaches poetry and fiction online. Learn more at annakscotti.com.

Harming or murdering one person is illegal but doing the same thing on a mass scale is legal?

The recent release by the Canadian Medical Association seems, on the surface, like a sensible response to growing misinformation. 

However, it should never have to be written. We are living in a time when a national medical association imploring us to speak up against absolutely dangerous ideas is just another weekday event.

If a person is attacked with a knife or gun and ends up in hospital or dies, it is illegal and they will be prosecuted. If many children are hospitalized or killed by antivaccine propaganda or many cancer patients die because they eschew cancer medications, the people fomenting these ideas while making money from the alternate treatments they offer will not be prosecuted, so experts must resort to pleading with people to protect their health and save their lives. 

Harming or killing one person with a knife or gun is illegal. Harming or killing many people with inaccurate propaganda is a legal moneymaker. 

For those of us who are sticklers for law and order, who long for a just society, who love it when the criminals are stopped in their tracks - the lovers of mystery stories and citizens of democracies - what are we to do when mass harm and murder is now another weekday event? 

How many have been harmed by antivaxxers? In the United States, as of September 2025, 1454 have been infected with measles, 92% were unvaccinated or vaccine status unknown, 12% were hospitalized and there have been 3 deaths.

Before we Canadians tsk, tsk and point at Robert Kennedy Jr., Canada's numbers are worse: 4,849 measles cases have been reported in Canada, 88% were unvaccinated, 8% hospitalized and 1died. 

In Canada and the U.S. many communities are well below the 95% vaccination level needed to keep measles at bay for those children too young to be vaccinated or adults and children too ill to mount an immune response. 

Given the reduction in childhood vaccination rates because of inane fears of 'vaccine injury', this is just the beginning. Hospitalization and deaths from measles will rise and other vaccine preventable diseases are emerging. The World Health Organization has warned that not only measles, but meningitis, yellow fever and diphtheria are on the rise. 

While naming and shaming diseases that were once in our rearview mirror, let's not forget polio, a vaccine preventable disease with no treatment. “People think that polio is gone, but that virus is not gone.” says Paul Offit, director, Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. "It could be circulating in pockets of the U.S. right now, with cases being prevented only by high vaccination levels. But if those levels drop dramatically, we might not realize the dangers until it’s too late.

“If we stop vaccinating today, we probably wouldn’t have outbreaks tomorrow because it would take some time for susceptible people to accumulate.”

So, we were once here and we are heading back there again: 

If this isn't all concerning enough, let's look at cancer and the pushback against evidence based treatments to sell ineffective, untested cancer treatments. The numbers of people who have died from refusing their cancer treatments are difficult to calculate because it differs with different cancers, their stages, age of patient etc. However, it is a fact that survival times without effective treatments is decreased. There are other costs as well. I've seen this up close. 

Some of you may have read my article about my dearest childhood friend, Carol, and her death from breast cancer.What I didn't include in that article was how she was inundated with misinformation. Carol died nine months after diagnosis and, for someone so healthy and strong, that was like a fast, horrible ride down a rollercoaster, with garbage advice being shouted at her along the way. Anyone who has read the article knows that Carol had a spine of steel, was a science researcher and wouldn't be pushed into idiocy. However, some criticized her chemo therapy (easy to do because chemo can be tough to go through) while pushing unproven cancer cures like diet (she was one of the healthiest eaters I've known) exercise (she hiked and did yoga) and relaxation (her attitude was excellent). It was all about identifying a nonexistent problem and fixing it as a cure to cancer (of course, all these cures were grifts that cost money). A lesser woman may have succumbed to these 'cures' given how difficult chemo was and how increasingly scared she became. Instead, Carol limited her interactions to those she trusted and lived the best life she could for those short months. 

The harms of misinformation aren't limited to vaccines and cancer - they are rampant for many diseases. 

Just as the CMA response shouldn't be necessary, neither should mine. We need to do more than cataloguing the harms endlessly. We need action. 

First, let's make childhood school vaccinations mandatory and effective by closing all loopholes antivaxxers are using to avoid vaccinating their children: no more 'conscience and religious' exemptions; only medical exemptions for vaccinations should be allowed. Mandatory childhood vaccinations are supported by 70% of Canadians; let's make it an effective law that protects children and society without allowing absurd loopholes for anti vaxxers to put us all at risk. 

Second, let's get some of our excellent legal minds around a table and figure out how to prosecute those who peddle dangerous medical misinformation. Harming and killing people must have consequences. Since I'm not an excellent legal mind (without legal training, I'm not even a mediocre legal mind) I can't say how the solution will look, but it's time we demand a solution. We cannot be in the position of watching harm and death and simply cataloguing it ad absurdum and begging them to stop. Going back to the statement by the Canadian Medical Association, "false health information is being normalized"; this normalization is largely because it can be done without consequences. Can you imagine if parents kept writing about how people were being paid to attack their children with baseball bats, often hospitalizing the children, and all they could do was beg people to stop? It would be absurd. Yet here we are - harm with no consequences. With vaccines, it's often the tiniest of children who are too young to be vaccinated, who end up hospitalized. With cancer treatments and treatments for other illnesses, it is the vulnerable and the sick who are most at risk. We must have ways to protect them and pleading doesn't protect them - we need laws backed up with the ability to prosecute those responsible. 

This must end. Making money from harming and killing people must have legal consequences. 

Scarcity Lends Value

I don't usually crack myself up when writing something funny. Maybe I'll chuckle in a first-draft fever, but that's about it. I've been doing this long enough now that my inner craftsman stays focused. The craftsman knows that making myself laugh isn't necessarily a good thing. I might've nailed a one-liner, sure, but I might also be indulging in one-liners rather than investing in the best possible story.

No, humor is serious business. A comedy needs all the elements of a drama--and then to be funny on top of all that. I stay focused on the arc and gauge the humor more by vibe. Does a section feel right in the flow? Does it read well on the eye and sound great to the ear? Does the humorous line develop the character or solidify a story moment? Is the humor consistent or random? And the big test: If I took that bit out, is the story better or worse?

I did qualify that with a usually, though. There I was shaping up what would become "This One Oughta Go Different"--and I kept laughing. I did it at one character in particular, a Marguerite Fanchon, and at one trait of hers in particular. My laughs sprang from liberation. The set-up allowed me to give Marguerite dialogue and blocking in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise dared, with sudden poses and off-point soliloquies flaunting the writing rules. 

Marguerite was, in today's slang, a lot. And those laughs were telling me something. To be careful with her.

Spoiler-free context: “Oughta” is my third Vernon Stagg installment for AHMM. Vernon is a small-time Nashville lawyer with self-aggrandizement issues and dodgy morals. His cocktail of personal flaws makes him performative, and the story revolves around him stumbling upon a perfect client every bit as performative: Marguerite. Vernon wants her pristine record and polished working-class persona to turn a simple pinched nerve claim into a major settlement. Hijinks ensue.

Marguerite, though, promptly disappears in Act One just as Vernon ramps up his big case. He spends until Act Four searching for her--and pursuing a case without a client. 

The absence of a character can be as powerful as their presence. Someone dies, or goes lost, or gets called off to war, whatever. That absent character still resonates as broken hearts, guilty souls, people fumbling at an empty shape in their lives. Absences drive plot, create mystery, and deepen worry. Think Catch-22, Gone Girl, The Lord of the Rings, The Maltese Falcon. 

In my shallow end of the pool, "Oughta" was never going to work with Marguerite hanging around too long. This is Vernon's story, not hers. Now, Vernon is wrong that her claim ever could land a major payday. He's even wrong about Marguerite's true identity, but this is comedy, and Vernon is wrong about many things. The point is, Marguerite is perfect for his angle he keeps trying to play. Maybe this time, he has a winner. For conflict's sake, it's only fitting to yank her away from him. For the character's sake, it's very Vernon that he proceeds with the case anyway.

That's tactics. There is also strategy, going back to the reason Marguerite had me laughing. She doesn't engage in conversation. Each thing said to her becomes a cue for some parallel melodrama in her head. Her lines are soap opera cheese that would get me tossed out of a writer's workshop. Funny, but only in small doses and only if her quirks are a clue. The lines even get some power if she lands somehow in that spotlight she craves. Otherwise, I'm just writing soap opera cheese.

Like I said, this Marguerite was a lot. Which was why I could only use her a little.

* * *

If you like hearing about hidden doors and speakeasy culture, there's more behind-the-scenes on "Oughta" over at AHMM's Trace Evidence blog.

Bouchercon Waffle Report

And the Anthony award for best anthology goes to... 

Tales of  Music, Murder, and Mayhem, edited by Heather Graham.

The convention anthology took home the Anthony this year. It is filled with amazing stories written by talented authors.

Still, it was disappointing news, not only for our Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked siblings, but for Murder Neat’s SleuthSayers as well. 

After the awards ceremony, writers offered heartfelt “literary condolences” to our Waffle-clan, and I appreciated their thoughtful remarks. Later, as the dust settled on our syrup bottle (so to speak), I reflected on the convention and our amazing contributors with a tremendous sense of gratitude. Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked may not have won the Anthony, but our contributors won in many other ways.

Connection

At the convention, our Waffle-writers connected with attendees, creating buzz about the anthology and joyful energy. They shared waffle-inspired swag on giveaway tables and at the author speed dating event. Convention-goers wore waffle charms on their badges and recounted personal Waffle House stories. An editor asked if a second anthology was planned because she had a client who wanted to be part of it. 

Fifty copies of the anthology in the book room were gone before the conference concluded. The bookstore sold out. And our auction basket, Breakfast with a Side of Crime, was popular, too.

Visibility

During the Anthony mixer, I had a chance to talk about the anthology and was honored to mention each of our contributors.

Leading up to the convention, Tammy Euliano’s story, “Heart of Darkness,” won the Derringer Award for best short story, an award she received at Bouchercon’s opening ceremonies.

 Waffle Swag with Tammy Euliano

Sean McCluskey’s story, “The Secret Menu,” was selected for inclusion in The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2025, edited by John Grisham.

We may have lost the Anthony award, but the visibility our authors received and the connections we made with readers were priceless.

***

Anthony awards with Tammy Euliano, J.D. Allen
Andrew Welsh-Huggins, & Bonnar Spring

 

Want to learn more about Scattered, Smothered, Covered, and Chunked—the birth of an idea and what it’s like working as a co-editor with short story legend, Michael Bracken? Check out this SleuthSayers post from May.

Ptolemy Keraunos: the Bastard Who Made Oedipus Look Like a Boy Scout

“(T)hat violent, dangerous, and intensely ambitious man, Ptolemy Keraunos, the aptly named Thunderbolt.”

                                                                                                                     - Peter Green

A Prince of Egypt

In an age where the phrase “Hellenistic monarch” and “bastard” were interchangeable, one of the most notorious bastards on the scene was a prince who rebelled against his father, married his sister, murdered her children, and stole her kingdom.  And all this after stabbing a 77 year-old ally to death in a fit of rage.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Ptolemy Keraunos (“Thunderbolt”). The Thunderbolt’s father and namesake Ptolemy I has his own chapter in this book for a reason.

Ptolemy I

In his own way the elder Ptolemy was as much as bastard as his hot-tempered son. But where the father was wily, the son was aggressive.  Where the father plotted, the son preferred movement.  Putting it kindly, the Thunderbolt was the prototypical “man of action” born into an age where intrigue ruled.  He was literally a man out of step with his own time.

In his eightieth year, with the question of succession pressing upon him, Ptolemy I gave up on his impulsive, hot-headed offspring.  Instead he chose a more sober half-brother (also confusingly bearing the name of “Ptolemy”) as his co-ruler and eventual successor.

Furious, Ptolemy Keraunos fled to Thrace, and the court of one of his father’s rivals, Lysimachus.  Ptolemy hoped to have Lysimachus’ backing in a war with his father for the throne of Egypt.  Lysimachus put him off with vague promises, but did allow the younger man to stay at his court (possibly so he could keep an eye on him).

Hellenistic Marriages

Lysimachus I

Since the time of the pharaohs dynastic marriage has been a political tool used by rulers to cement alliances and found dynasties. At no time was this practice more in fashion than during the Hellenistic period, when Alexander’s generals married the much younger daughters of their rivals, and married off their own children to yet others of their rivals’ offspring. Such was the case at Lysimachus’ court: the old man himself was married to one of Ptolemy Keraunos’ sisters, a woman named Arsinoë, and another sister, Lysandra, was married to Lysimachus’ son and heir from a previous marriage, Agathocles. Confused yet? Keep reading!

Lysimachus, Seleucus & the Scheming Sisters

If the Thunderbolt expected things to be different for him in Thrace, he was mistaken.  His sisters were busy plotting against each other. Arsinoë eventually succeeded in convincing Lysimachus that Agathocles was plotting to overthrow him.  The king responded by having Agathocles executed.  Lysandra and Ptolemy Keraunos fled, traveling to Babylon, to the court of Seleucus, by now the only other one of Alexander’s generals still left standing.  Largely for his own reasons Seleucus assured the two that he would support their bid to take the throne of his old rival Lysimachus.

Seleucus I

Seleucus’ forces triumphed in the resulting war. Ptolemy, who had fought on Seleucus’ side, demanded Lysimachus’ kingdom as Seleucus had agreed.  And just as Lysimachus had, Seleucus stalled, all the while planning his triumphal march into Lysimachus’ capital of Cassandrea.

It was a fatal mistake on his part.

Enraged at having again been denied a throne he considered his by right, the younger Ptolemy stabbed Selecus to death in his tent.  The act earned Ptolemy the nick-name “Thunderbolt.”

Ptolemy then slipped out of Seleucus’ camp and over to Lysimachus’ army.  Upon hearing that Ptolemy had killed the hated Seleucus, the soldiers promptly declared him Lysimachus’ successor and the new king of Macedonia.  The only problem was that Arsinoë still held Cassandrea.  So Ptolemy struck a deal with her.

Arsinoë agreed to marry her half-brother, help strengthen his claim to the Macedonian throne and share power as his queen.  In return for this Ptolemy agreed to adopt Arsinoë’s eldest son (also named, not surprisingly, “Ptolemy”) as his heir. 

You can guess what happened next.

The Thunderbolt Unbound 

Arsinoë with her brother-husband Ptolemy II

While Ptolemy was off consolidating his new holdings in southern Greece, Arsinoe began plotting against him. She intended to place her eldest son (the one named “Ptolemy”) on the throne and rule in his name.

Once again furious (it seems to have been his natural state), Ptolemy killed Arsinoë’s two younger sons.  Arsinoë headed home for Egypt and the court of her full brother, Ptolemy-II-King-of-Egypt-not-to-be-confused-with-any-of-the-other-Ptolemies-listed-herein.

But Ptolemy Keraunos did not live to enjoy his throne for very long.  In 280 BC a group of barbarian Celtic tribes began raiding Thrace.  The Thunderbolt was captured and killed while fighting them the next year. The second century A.D. Roman historian Justin gives us the picture of this Ptolemy's end, having been defeated and captured on the battlefield: “Ptolemy, after receiving several wounds, was taken, and his head, cut off and stuck on a lance, was carried round the whole army to strike terror into the enemy”.

The Sweeney

I was thinking, for whatever odd reason, about Cockney rhyming slang, and about linguistic regionalisms and vernacular, generally. If you’re not familiar with Cockney idiom, it takes a rhyme, and then clips off the end – the actual rhyme. For example, “lottery ticket” rhymes with “sticky wicket,” or “Lemony Snicket,” so you’d say, I forgot to buy stickies, or Lemonies. I made that up, but the most famous one Americans might recognize is the title of the early John Thaw/Dennis Waterman procedural, The Sweeney. The series is about the London Metropolitan Police robbery-homicide division, the Flying Squad. “Flying Squad” rhymes with “Sweeney Todd.” The usage generally plays off some other common reference, and the disguise factor is only once removed, not impenetrable. To someone born to the sound of Bow Bells, easy currency.

Language, and more specifically, vocabulary, is an evolving enterprise.

The Cambridge Dictionary added 6000 new words this year. Slop made the cut, in the sense of internet filler content, as did intention economy, product that AI designs, anticipating need. Others include loud looking – meaning aggressively trying to hook up – and brain flossing – immersive white noise. Cardboard box index is an economic indicator, based on shipping requirements. Or sanewashing, no explanation necessary. It’s interesting how much of it comes from information technology, an indication of how present data and data management is in our lives, and how much of it comes from processing information, our engagement with that technology. Language reflects the social and political environment.

Here’s the introductory note to Huckleberry Finn on speech patterns.

In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods South-Western dialect; the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a hap-hazard fashion, or by guess-work; but pains-takingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.

I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.

Writers are often advised to avoid dialect, and tricky spelling, to replicate pronunciation that veers off the standard of spoken English.

I’m not sure about this, any more than I’m sure about steering clear of contemporary slang. Speech patterns are native to Down East or the Deep South, the Ozarks or the Upper Peninsula, and they demonstrate the adaption of language to place. Word order. Descriptions based on local diet, or insect life, or hair color – because a pocket of gene pool. The locals don’t remark on it; to them, it is the norm. It’s the way other people talk that’s eccentric. Don Winslow, in City on Fire, uses the term cabinet to mean a milk shake, and this is real inside baseball, trust me. It’s an expression used in Providence, Rhode Island, and nowhere else in New England (or the entire world). Up in Boston, they call a milk shake a frappe. Which, either way, means it’s got ice cream in it. A “milk shake” is just milk and syrup.

The argument, I think, is that regionalisms, or phonetic spelling, or trying to be awkwardly hip, puts too much distance between you and the reader, and there’s some truth to it.

Trudging through Joel Chandler Harris, or Kipling, for that matter, in Soldiers Three, gets old fast. The dialect is tiresome, and over-used. You have to sound it out loud to understand what’s being said. On the other hand, you hear the complaint that Stephen King uses brand names too much, as a shortcut. Eh. I don’t know. The argument for, is that these expressions ground you in specifics, and that’s the way I lean. When you read an older locution, in Twain, or Dashiell Hammett, or Jane Austen, you work out the meaning from the context – or, God forbid, you could look it up.

The sound of Bow Bells

The sound of Bow Bells

It’s said, that in East London, if you could hear the ringing of the bells at St. Mary-le-Bow church, in Cheapside, that you were a true Cockney, born within earshot. It’s a legacy turn of phrase, because the sound of the bells no longer carries as far as it did, drowned out by noise pollution. And like the bells, the metaphor fades. Specific to the place, it becomes received memory, folklore, urban legend, separate from experience.

Lost Language. Orphaned figures of speech. Forgotten devices and designs. A baggage claim of poetic license and clouded hyperbole, the rhymes and rhythms left unheard.