posted
Here's a problem that only a science fiction writer could face. You will love it.
Like many of you, I am writing a story set in the future. My narrative needs to refer to a noun that should be capitalized by the literary standards of 2004. But by the standards of my future, the noun has come into common usage and no longer requires capitalization.
Think of words like pasteurize or watt or a thousand others we use every day. When first put into service they were capitalized, now they are not.
If I had a character writing this word I would clearly not capitalize it. But I don't. This is narrative, at best you might say a character is thinking or feeling the word.
So what do you say? Should the a character's thoughts and feelings be expressed using the conventions of the character's world or the writer's world?
If I use the character's conventions, will readers get it? Or will they just assume I'm a sloppy writer?
posted
Nope, I think it'll emphasize the difference between that time and the present, unless the reader is ignorant, which is possible. Too bad you're not writing current political satire, then we could dylanize it.
Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Does it change the story if you do it one way or the other? Will an editor publish the story based on whether you do it one way or another? I say this issue is best left to a discussion between you and your editor, when you publish the story. Maybe you shouldn't worry about it for now. Write it properly and then bring it up with your editor.
Posts: 284 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
You're writing the story from the aforementioned character's POV, I assume. (not that it changes much if you're not, just that my arguments are inappropriate). So you have to write the word as he would write it. You are showing us his thoughts, and you cannot possibly refer to a past timeframe he is no longer aware of by wrongly capitalising the word. The whole point of a POV is to draw us into a character's mind, so using a capital letter would clearly put some distance between the reader and the narrative by pointing out that there is a writer between the reader and the POV character. And it would break the immersion.
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I don't think people will find you a sloppy writer. As long as you make it clear that this is a different time and a different place, then readers should expect to see different conventions from those we have today.
Is it easier to just say what word you are talking about?
posted
I can think of a great example of an author doing that very thing: Neal Stephenson in The Diamond Age. He just starts right off with the vocabulary of his novel, set in the near future. He never defines any of the slang words or newly minted words; he just lets you pick it up in context like you do any other words in the language. For the first about thirty pages, there are a lot of concepts to pick up, but after that you get in the groove. I found myself using some of his words for a few days after finishing the book.
posted
Just to set out a different opinion, I say you need to be careful. Often the reason a word is capitalized (like the ones you mentioned) is because it is a trademarked or registered product brand name. Trademark law being what it is, if the brand name seeps into common usage and people start using the name to refer to all like products, the company can have their trademark taken away -- and that gets expensive.
Consider products like Asprin. In Canada, Asprin is still trademarked, in the U.S., it isn't -- all ASA can legally be called asprin, and Bayer has had to rename their product.
Escalator used to be a brand name, now it is a product name.
Companies like Kleenex and Rollerblade spend a lot of money every year to avoid the plight of companies like Bayer and Escalator.
At this point in the game, write it how you think it should appear, but when it comes time for publication you may need to talk with your editor to see if there is a legal issue.
posted
I don't think writing a narrative is sloppy at all, though it is harder for me to do. It sort of limits you to one character and what he or she sees, which is the most important part of the story. While I, myself, do not like using this technique, I enjoy reading a well done narrative so I'd give you a thumbs up on going in that direction.
Posts: 3 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I think the easiest way to avoid any confusion is to write the story in first person---if possible. (personally I hate first person stories that don't have at least a flimsy frame story. Why is this person writting this down? If they're not wirting it down, why are they talking so prim and proper, not to mention hyper descriptively) but if that doesn't bother you and it works for your story, you should go for it.
I think you should just roll with it an editor or reader should pick up on those type of things pretty quickly.
The word I am using is Pareto, as in Pareto chart, Pareto analysis and Pareto principle. It's named after turn-of-the-(previous)-century Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. When I teach Pareto's concepts to my students I make sure to tell them to capitalize the name.
But I solicited your opinions to be more general than that, since I expect this problem to come up frequently in my writing. It could just as easily be Gantt.
autumnmuse, it's an easy step to imagine a future like Stephenson does. He would have predicted Internet becoming internet, for example, because it's now in such common usage. But I'm going with terms most people don't know. Those who do know that they must be capitalized.
This is a very, very, very subtle clue about my milieu. It's so subtle that no one but me will understand it (unless scholars study my work centuries from now). Frankly if someone else wrote it I wouldn't get it myself, I would assume the writer didn't know what he was doing.
JOHN, I am currently writing a draft in first person. It has a strong frame story. Even so, the character is not writing it down. I am writing it down.
posted
But if you're referring to Pareto charts as opposed to Pareto principles or Pareto analysis, why wouldn't you capitalize Pareto?
If it were a single thing which had come to be known as a pareto, that might be different, but there are other kinds of charts, analyses, and principles and Pareto would distinguish which of those you were referring to.
I rather doubt that usage would cause it to not be capitalized over time. Which would you be referring to as a pareto, the chart, the principle or the analysis?
Anyway, if it really has to be uncapitalized, it might work to have your character use the uncapitalized term and then think that it should be capitalized because it's from someone's name, and then think about how maybe they did that once upon a time, but most people don't know to do that now because they neither know nor care about the person it's named after, and that's kind of sad.
posted
I'm going to agree with KDW on this one. It's hard to imagine something that would be called a pareto the way we have watts and volts et al. I suppose that it would be some kind of unit of quantified set optimization (though the very idea that you could have such units is a bit odd). Even given that such units were somehow defined, I would hardly expect the term to be in general use, it would be rather specialized.
Though come to think of it, I suppose that it would be an interesting milieu if you could make it work...but I don't think you want to concentrate on it that much. Such stories are usually kind of one-note harps. But that's probably because developing that idea clearly takes a lot of harping on it
So if you're really going to do this thing, then there won't be any problem. If not, then the story will be rather strange for other reasons than this one uncapitalized word. Correcting the one problem only requires including a functional definition of a "pareto", while correcting the others requires explaining what kind of society has such a term in common usage.
quote:I rather doubt that usage would cause it to not be capitalized over time. Which would you be referring to as a pareto, the chart, the principle or the analysis?
But I encounter 'pareto' and 'gantt' (uncapitalized), in the reports I review and edit, almost every week. "We'll do a pareto on it"., meaning an analysis. "The supporting data for the pareto are included in Appendix B.", meaning a chart.
I think the real point here is whether or not the use of the term is jargon; "Language more technical than the idea it serves to express." (author unknown). You see, this is the subtle thing about jargon. It is NOT jargon if you are communicating with a peer; it is technical short-hand instead. It IS jargon if you are communicating to a person who can't reasonably be expected to understand the technical short-hand. It is also jargon if your base reason for using the term is not to communicate, but to intimidate, to confuse, to impress, etc.
So, if you have educated the reader to the extent necessary for them to accept and understand 'pareto' as technical short-hand, then fine, forge ahead! If not, then you should probably use 'pareto' as a modifier instead, and capitalize it, as in Pareto chart.
And, although I often wince when I hear it, gantt is so ubiquitous that I almost never see it capitalized anymore, and it has become a verb. "Just gantt it out!"
[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited October 27, 2004).]
quote:I rather doubt that usage would cause it to not be capitalized over time. Which would you be referring to as a pareto, the chart, the principle or the analysis?
I agree with Kathleen.
For instance, in more than 2,500 years, Pythagorean theorem hasn't lost its capitalization.
However, I also agree with Mike. Some very convincing arguments.
Because you aren't dealing with a trade name, you could probably swing it whichever way you want.
As I said, I am concerned with the narrative part of the story. If a characters is writing or even speaking I would feel more free to use the conventions of his/her world. Here is the sentence in its current form:
quote:Randy popped a pareto showing that I was still a top twelver.
Kathleen, the reference is to a Pareto chart. In my milieu everyone is analytical about every tiny detail of life. They would assess their situation based on a pareto chart like you or I might assess someone's mood based on a smile. But no character would ever say: "I am doing this because I live in a world that is so analytical we don't even capitalize pareto any more."
Survivor, I would explain the society if I could find a reason for a character to talk about something everyone but the reader already knows. You know how it goes; I have the classic speculative fiction problem. In this case I have chosen to skip the explanation and see if the story makes sense. If it melts down into a pubble of unintelligible nonsense I shall not hesitate to rewrite.
posted
Ah, so you really aren't just talking about using "pareto", are you?
The usage of "pareto" rather than "chart" as shorthand for a Pareto chart indicates that in this society, it goes without saying that in order to show someone was a "top twelver" you would pop a chart of some kind, a Pareto chart being only one option of several.
So the problem isn't to show that "pareto" means anything, but to show that charts are so ubiquitous that the word "chart" would nearly always be redundant. In that case, you have to set a context where it will clearly be understood that the object being described is a chart of some sort, then use the specifier.
quote:Randy popped a chart by way of reply. It was a pareto showing that I was still a top twelver.
Still, I think that a better solution would be to simply call it something like "P-chart" which is easier to say, read, and understand than "pareto". But that depends partly on the length and complexity of the overall story compared with the number of different types of analysis used as nouns. If this is a short story or one in which only a few different types of chart appear, then go with the punchier term. If this is a longer work in which many different types of graphic analyses are used (to story-distinct effect) then you'll have to go with "pareto" and so forth.
posted
I'm curious, who is your intended audience?
Your sample sentence sounds quite jargony (esp. as per Mike's description), and even with the discussion here I found it confusing. The version offered by Survivor is much clearer without changing much.
Depending on your audience, how you present it is up to you. If you're aiming for a more technical crowd with a basic understanding of the concepts you're using, jargon won't be a big issue. If you're writing it for a broader audience including less technical folk (like me ), added exposition would be helpful.
posted
The original question has been answered. This reply is just to round out the thoughts presented by Robyn.
Robyn, my intended audience is everyone. Survivor's version works well, but it's much too wordy. In fact, I was looking for ways to make my version shorter.
But the bigger problem is my own pet peeve about speculative fiction writers. I hate it when writers include a word like "chart" when the character would not think or say it, even if the word is vital to making the story intelligible. This happens on almost every page of every spec fic story, even the best ones. I put up with it, but it destroys the plausibility and grates my nerves to hamburger. I've only ever read one story that doen't do this, A Clockwork Orange. The very writing style that makes it a masterpiece also makes it grate on my nerves in another way.
There is no perfect solution to this problem, just as there is no perfect story. We writers must merely set our standards and do our best.
posted
I think of it like an ECG. I would say, "My ECG says..." so for the Pareto chart it would be something like, "My pareto tells me..." or "My PC is showing..."
posted
If pareto is an oblique reference to the way lifeless 'vampire words' infiltrate business parlance and then enter common vernacular only to suck the meaning and nuance out of the heart of language, then be bold about it.
On another note;
Could you imagine the word: american?
[edited to appear less strident]
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited October 27, 2004).]
posted
Yes, I could imagine the word american. A thousand years from now, it might be an adjective referring to a yellow cheese.
Even now, we often don't capitalize the words champaign, hamburger, or sandwich. So some day in the future it may be common to use american uncapitalized.
That is what I thought but I'm not sure it will work.
In order to convey your connotation, you are going to need a strong context. On top of that, your audience will likely be educated adults with strong reading comprehension skills and/or those with a basic understanding of the terms as they are currently used.
If you can find a way to make the context strong enough as to leave no question that charts are now called paretos, then do it; in this instance I don't think "to capitalize, or not to capitalize" will make a difference in the level of understanding afforded your readers.
Alone, Pareto (or pareto) is not enough of a description for most of your audience (if you want your audience to be everyone). Even today, we use several different types of charts: pie charts, line graphs, marine/coastal charts, star charts, etc. None of these are the same thing, and the adjective used to describe the chart cannot stand alone and mean the same thing (especially since chart is a synonym for both graph and map).
I can appreciate why you want to do it, but the execution will be difficult.
I just had a thought (yes, another one ); what if you mentioned a specific program used to generate the pareto? For example:
Randy opened Excel and swiped my card. A pareto popped up showing I was still a top twelver.
I don't know if this sort of thing works for you or not, but by tying pareto to something familliar, like Excel (substitute 1-2-3 or Quatro Pro), you've created a context for understanding your usage of it.
Also, in the sentence as you currently have it, when I read that Randy is popping a pareto, my first thought was he's taking some sort of drug. The context is clear that this isn't the case, but it was just a humourous misreading on my part.
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), added exposition would be helpful.
