Comments on: Here, catch an eyeball!

By: ink paw prints

ink paw prints — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 18:05:00 +0000

to be honest those eyes ones are more amusing (so long as you think of cartoon eyes). The expression that bugs me is the childhood phrase of:

"I beat him hollow!"

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 20:20:00 +0000

"He decided to study the floor for a while."

"He suddenly became very interested in the dirt near his feet."

How about those LOL :)

By: Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 05:05:00 +0000

😀 , Kendall!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 23:00:00 +0000

Of course, "he dropped his gaze" can be poked fun at the same way. A gaze isn't tangible...talk about an impossibility.

Anyway, as a counterpoint to what Karen said, most people I know are much more apt to make fun of things in conversation that they wouldn't think twice about in print, the total opposite of what Karen describes.

For example, whenever a certain friend of mine hears the phrase "night falls" or "night fell" in our gaming group, he says, "Thud!" ;-) And yet he's just being silly in the context of our (frequently playful) group; he doesn't actually think it's a poor turn of phrase.

Of course, bad writing can make almost any sentence seem weird (not a problem for Glenda, of course).

By: Glenda Larke

Glenda Larke — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 22:01:00 +0000

That's it exactly, Simon. There are people out there who will wince when they see "eyes" used like this, and I prefer it that readers don't wince (at least for grammatical/vocabulary reasons) when reading my books. So, even though I agree with Kendall and Russell, I will not drop the hero's eyes but drop "eyes" instead, even though I think it is an acceptable usage.

It's like using the word "kids" meaning children. Like the word "teenagers", it is thought to be modern American. Wrong. "Kids" got into print as early as the 16th century and was probably used orally much much earlier.

But I try not to use to because it jerks people out of my world into theirs.

By: Simon Haynes

Simon Haynes — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:58:00 +0000

I use ‘gaze’ in print, even though I know what I mean when I write ‘eyes’ instead.
Problem is, Thogs Masterclass will getcha if you put eyes.
It’s up to you – can you handle the exposure and publicity of such a public ribbing?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:12:00 +0000

What works in conversation can sometimes not work so well in black and white print on the page. The potential absurdity of the visual image is highlighted in print, because in reading we are being asked to form mental pictures using the words as building blocks. That’s not the case in conversation. Words are, for the most part, invisible then.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 13:39:00 +0000

Wouldn’t ‘He lowered his eyes’ be open to the same criticism? Yet it’s an accepted phrase, almost a cliche.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 10:19:00 +0000

It's fine. "He dropped his eyes" is an idiom! Taking literal meanings of individual words in an idiom (or metaphor) and stringing them together is the problem/fault of the overly literal (and/or mistakenly pedantic) reader, not the writer. (I think you've created a new pet peeve for me. ;-)

This is like the classic translation error where someone translates each word on its own to another language, instead of considering what the phrase means as a whole, in context, and then finding the best translation.

Books with no idioms, metaphors, or similes can be very dry reading....

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 03:31:00 +0000

Pah. Of course you can drop your eyes. In fact, over time, you can drop your whole face.