[Dragaera] Howlers submitted to IASFM

[Michael Wojcik]

On 2012-02-12 10:03, Gibbons, Mark wrote:
> Some of those quotes might work in context.

Sure. Most of them could follow something like:

	I glanced at the pages. He was an abysmal writer.

Though to be fair, some just seem to be the result of a combination of
minor offenses. "grey iron hair" is likely just an accidental inversion of
"iron-grey hair", which is trite but otherwise fine. Or the ones like
"genital hold" and "I shall severe your soul", which again are clearly just
amusing typos spoiling (or improving) trite phrases; it's the sort of thing
that would just have been quietly cleaned up in copy were the intended line
not so overblown or clumsy in the first place.

Others just demonstrate the classic ambitious-diction error: the writer's
using some word he or she has heard but doesn't actually know the meaning
of (eg "hollow ubiquity").

I used to have a collection of this sort of thing from my students' papers,
from when I taught college comp.

To be fair, at least a few examples here might be fairly reasonable,
perhaps with a bit of editing, in some sort of SF story, particularly one
from the New Wave (which is now pretty old) or a similar school. The "onion
oil" one, for example. And I confess a certain fondness for
"thermoperamulator".

-- 
Michael Wojcik
Micro Focus
Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University