My dear friend

[nonya0992]

(The following is a work of fiction, please enjoy)

My dear friend,

It has been a long time since my last correspondence. Allow me the moment to fill you in on what you have missed. We started our new space program without any major issues. Well, maybe some issues. Jeb, as you know is a little wild, vehemently volunteered to pilot the first sub orbital flight. The launch was a little shaky on liftoff but smoothed out into his gravity turn. After a brisk splash down Jeb returned babbling about wanting to go again.

Some time later my team started putting together small probes to investigate the Mun. There were some great pictures from the flyby of the surface, however, someone let Jeb and Bob on the controls and they flew the probe at a two thousand meter altitude above the Mun's surface. The boss was not happy. Alex pitched the idea of sending a probe to another planet. He wanted to send one to Duna and return. Unfortunately the good idea fairy reared its ugly head and three other teams got a hand in the flight path planning. The probe launched spectacularly and set in a high orbit around Kerbin. It's first task was another flyby of the Mun with a follow-on flyby of Minmus. David's team made bad calculations that lead to an many course corrections and a lot of wasted fuel to get the intercept trajectory corrected. This is where we started to have problems. After Minmus the probe was scheduled to make another orbit around Kerbin to slingshot the craft into position for the transfer to Duna, but due to David's oversight there was not enough time to make the slingshot and still be in the proper position. A last minute decision was made to scrub the Duna flyby and attempt to intercept with Kerbol. Tensions were high when the call came down to start the burn. Unfortunately there wasn't enough fuel to achieve an impact trajectory and now we have a dead multi-million kerb tin can on a wild elliptical orbit and no one can do anything about it. It should go without saying that David's team was reprimanded.

A second attempt at a Duna flyby was made, but this time they strapped on more fuel tanks and solid boosters at Jeb's insistence. Again the launch was flawless and the transition away from Kerbin was perfect. We waited a long time and watched the probe as it silently drifted around Kerbol and closer to Duna. About five days before we were supposed to start seeing a small red dot from the probe I discovered a problem. It was my shift at the monitoring station when I witnessed all the batteries suddenly drain and I lost all control. The probe was just lifeless. I called in the big think tank guys to try and troubleshoot the issue and that's when we saw the problem. Alex's team only put solar panels on one side of the probe and now that side was facing away from Kerbol. A projection was made and we saw that the probe would not regain power until three weeks after it left Duna. Again, Alex was devastated while Jeb made comments about letting him oversee the probe construction next time.

We are currently working on another Duna probe but my team is trying to convince the Space Committee to authorize an autonomous lander to visit Eve as that planet's transition window is coming up. We already have a working prototype of the lander built but Jeb keeps saying something about "more cow bell."

I will write again when I have time, but for now I need to calculate how many parachutes I need for a smooth landing on Eve.

Your friend,

Jimmy Kerman

Chief Engineer

Delta Team

[nonya0992]

Hey guys, if I could do something better in the telling of my story could you please post to this thread? If its too long then let me know.

Thanks!!

[nonya0992]

Admin, please delete. Thanks

[Sesni]

Good job so far.

[Duxwing]

Grammar:

-"but" is a conjunction that introduces a contradiction of the form "A, but not A"; when comparing use "whereas".

-"are currently X-ing" or "are in the process of X-ing" are redundant and disturbingly popular: instead write "are X-ing".

-"that's where" and "that's when" are wordy: instead write "there" and "then".

-Paragraphs! Use paragraphs!

-"as" is for comparison: when describing causality instead use "because"

Style:

-Details! Details! Details! Awe readers with the rumble and roar of a rocket rising from the pad and dazzle them with sunshine's glaring off its distant fairings tall.

-Emotion: show your characters' reactions--even such silly ones as Jeb's jabbering about wanting to go again.

-Novelty: we've all seen Scott Manley send a probe from here to Timbuktu. Show us something that we have never seen.

-Framing: with your framing device of a letter create interesting and moving effects.

Forewarned is Forearmed:

-Instead of "is able to," "is capable of," "was able to," "was capable of," "were able to," "were capable of," or "capable of" when describing capability, respectively write "can," "can," "could," "could," "could," or "that could"; when describing difficult actions use such words as "overcame".

-Use "ere" instead of "before" or "prior to," which respectively describe spatial location and are wordy.

-Duxwing

Edited January 5, 2014 by Duxwing

[nonya0992]

Duxwing, thank you for the awesome feed back. I will take them and see what I can do to my stories to liven them up.

[TheShadow1138]

Grammar:

-"but" is a conjunction that introduces a contradiction of the form "A, but not A"; when comparing use "whereas".

-"as" is for comparison: when describing causality instead use "because"

Duxwing, I feel I should point out that though you are technically correct in the usage of "but" and "as", they exist in multiple parts of speech. A quick look in a thesaurus tells us that "but" can be replaced by, or replace the word "whereas", and "as" can also be used as a replacement for the word "because".

Examples:

* "this one's expensive, but this one isn't", or "this one's expensive, whereas this one isn't"

* "they were free, as the case had not been proved", or "they were free, because the case had not been proved"

I applaud your attention to grammar and desire to teach and learn, I simply wanted to help ensure that your advise is as helpful and accurate as possible.

[Duxwing]

Duxwing, I feel I should point out that though you are technically correct in the usage of "but" and "as", they exist in multiple parts of speech. A quick look in a thesaurus tells us that "but" can be replaced by, or replace the word "whereas", and "as" can also be used as a replacement for the word "because".

Your polite insertions so confuse me that I see several interpretations of your point:

-If you mean that "as" et al. commonly erroneously replace "because" et al., then I agree that they do, and I ask why the prevalence of this error makes it correct in the formal writing that I was correcting.

-If you mean that "as" et. al always can logically replace "because" et. al, then I rebut that each word needs a unique purpose, without which we could delete it, and that synonyms have subtly different meanings that we must respect.

Examples:

* "this one's expensive, but this one isn't", or "this one's expensive, whereas this one isn't"

* "they were free, as the case had not been proved", or "they were free, because the case had not been proved"

Counter-examples:

-In a traditional fairy tale: "Once upon a time France's absolute military dictator, who believed that in a second universe existed an all-powerful being that granted him legitimacy..." vs "Once upon a time the King of France..."

-In a history book chapter on World War I, "Baron Von Richtoven, who was also known as The Rouge Baron..."

I applaud your attention to grammar and desire to teach and learn, I simply wanted to help ensure that your advise is as helpful and accurate as possible.

I feel condescended to when people use "I" statements or try to preemptively soothe me because people do usually when they believe someone to be too unhinged or sensitive not to calmly respond to a simple retort whereas I feel calm, genuine, safe, and rational when advising. Please therefore instead say only what you mean: worry not about my ego.

-Duxwing

PS

-Only by writing about myself in the third person could I have avoided "I" statements in my writing.

-Commas are redundant when immediately before "because" because "because" alone separates a dependent clause.

[TheShadow1138]

Duxwing,

Firstly, allow me to apologize. I did not mean to be condescending, nor to offend. On forums, since it's difficult to gauge how a person will react, I tend to err on the side of caution and I certainly meant no offense.

Your polite insertions so confuse me that I see several interpretations of your point:

-If you mean that "as" et al. commonly erroneously replace "because" et al., then I agree that they do, and I ask why the prevalence of this error makes it correct in the formal writing that I was correcting.

-If you mean that "as" et. al always can logically replace "because" et. al, then I rebut that each word needs a unique purpose, without which we could delete it, and that synonyms have subtly different meanings that we must respect.

I always say "specificity is the key", alas I failed to be specific in this instance and that's on me. As far as the word "but" is concerned, I meant that in certain circumstances "but" may replace, or be replaced by "whereas". In the case of "as" and "because", the word "because" may not always be able to replace the word "as". However, I feel confident in saying (since I cannot think of a particular instance where it is not true) that the word "because" may always be replaced (possibly with slight rewording) by the word "as". I feel confident in saying this as the New Oxford American Dictionary's third definition of "as", in the part of speech of a conjunction, is "3 because; since: I must stop now as I have to go out.". This indicates to me that since "as" can mean "because", it means exactly the same thing as the word "because". I believe this addresses the "prevalence of this error" by proving that it is not an error. Secondary to this, in the case of this story (a letter to a friend) it would make sense for some grammatical or spelling errors to be present (though this is, as I believe I proved, not an error) as it may be an indication of how the character uses language, and not necessarily an honest mistake on the part of the author. Such a device has been used in fiction many times, where a character's dialogue is written intentionally with errors both grammatical and spelling to indicate a character with less education than other characters in the same story. I believe Mark Twain made extensive use of such a device in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

As far as the purpose of each word, and synonyms go it is quite true that many words in English have exactly the same, or nearly the same meaning (this is the definition of a synonym). Technically we could remove several words from English, we could even remove some letters from the Latin Alphabet if we wanted, however this would cause several problems. Not the least of these problems would be the need to rewrite and reprint an untold number of works, otherwise we would be presenting future students with a lot of words and phrases that would no longer be valid English. Another problem would be that if we removed such words we would no longer have a need for Thesauri and have the problem of deciding which word to keep, or which definitions of words to keep. This would also make fiction and poetry in particular a lot more bland.

Counter-examples:

-In a traditional fairy tale: "Once upon a time France's absolute military dictator, who believed that in a second universe existed an all-powerful being that granted him legitimacy..." vs "Once upon a time the King of France..."

-In a history book chapter on World War I, "Baron Von Richtoven, who was also known as The Rouge Baron..."

I can't really pin down how your first counter-example is a counter-example to what I said. The second one, on the other hand, I understand completely, and you are absolutely correct.

[Duxwing]

Duxwing,

Firstly, allow me to apologize. I did not mean to be condescending, nor to offend. On forums, since it's difficult to gauge how a person will react, I tend to err on the side of caution and I certainly meant no offense.

If they explode, then be a cool guy and don't look at the explosion: just turn around and walk away.

I now understand.

I always say "specificity is the key", alas I failed to be specific in this instance and that's on me. As far as the word "but" is concerned, I meant that in certain circumstances "but" may replace, or be replaced by "whereas". In the case of "as" and "because", the word "because" may not always be able to replace the word "as". However, I feel confident in saying (since I cannot think of a particular instance where it is not true) that the word "because" may always be replaced (possibly with slight rewording) by the word "as". I feel confident in saying this as the New Oxford American Dictionary's third definition of "as", in the part of speech of a conjunction, is "3 because; since: I must stop now as I have to go out.". This indicates to me that since "as" can mean "because", it means exactly the same thing as the word "because". I believe this addresses the "prevalence of this error" by proving that it is not an error. Secondary to this, in the case of this story (a letter to a friend) it would make sense for some grammatical or spelling errors to be present (though this is, as I believe I proved, not an error) as it may be an indication of how the character uses language, and not necessarily an honest mistake on the part of the author. Such a device has been used in fiction many times, where a character's dialogue is written intentionally with errors both grammatical and spelling to indicate a character with less education than other characters in the same story. I believe Mark Twain made extensive use of such a device in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Thanks for clarifying!

-I agree that sometimes "as" is better than "because" in describing causality; e.g., "I so foully farted as to clear the room".

-Might the dictionary mean that replacing "because" with "as" would is the third best use of "as"?

-I also agree that whatever the validity of "as," an error may have been intended.

As far as the purpose of each word, and synonyms go it is quite true that many words in English have exactly the same, or nearly the same meaning (this is the definition of a synonym). Technically we could remove several words from English, we could even remove some letters from the Latin Alphabet if we wanted, however this would cause several problems. Not the least of these problems would be the need to rewrite and reprint an untold number of works, otherwise we would be presenting future students with a lot of words and phrases that would no longer be valid English. Another problem would be that if we removed such words we would no longer have a need for Thesauri and have the problem of deciding which word to keep, or which definitions of words to keep. This would also make fiction and poetry in particular a lot more bland.

-Words that have nearly the same meaning have different meanings, which we should respect

-Down with X, C, and Q! They are redundant.

-*pirouhettes on one foot, arm outstretched and swinging* Daaahling, all writing is pohetray!

I can't really pin down how your first counter-example is a counter-example to what I said. The second one, on the other hand, I understand completely, and you are absolutely correct.

The first counter-example uses a mocking definition of absolute monarch, which the King of France was.

-Duxwing