End apostrophe abuse--A 12-step program

[ksmith]

Laughed at this post, link by way of jimhines.

When I first worked out idomeni names for the Jani series, I did fling apostrophes about. "Haárin" began life as "Ha'arin," which would work, glottal stop-wise. But some names, I'm guessing, didn't.

Around that time, I stumbled over a Usenet thread in which the overuse of apostrophes in SF/F was discussed and slammed. I went back to my idomeni names and worked out the left and right accent mark system that became a way to differentiate bornsect and Haárin names and words. In the end, I think it was a better path. I still see lots of apostrophes in SF/F names and words, but not many accent marks.

Comments

[thecurlyboy.livejournal.com]

I really don't care about whether an author uses apostrophes, accent marks, or something else - I care about how often I have to read those kinds of words. I remember one author had one *sentence* with 17 apostrophes (glottal stops, not possessives). The rest of the novel had a lot of sections like that. It wasn't interesting or fun - it was annoying.

Which pretty much means main characters should not have apostrophes or accent marks in them. It practically hurts to re-read Anne McCaffrey's Pern series these days, for that very reason.

You did a good job with your Jani books in keeping the frequency of accents at a high enough level to keep it interesting and relevant, but not high enough to start causing annoyance to the reader.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

You did a good job with your Jani books in keeping the frequency of accents at a high enough level to keep it interesting and relevant, but not high enough to start causing annoyance to the reader.

And I wound up doing myself a favor because by the time books 4 and 5 rolled around, I was having a devil of a time keeping track of the accents. If I had gone the newbie author route and worked out multiple idomeni languages, I'd have wound up in the laughing academy.

[thecurlyboy.livejournal.com]

Hehehehe. I hadn't thought of that!