Forum: Author Hangout

'Used car lots' are frequently an area with many cars for sale parked on it along with a minimal building acting as an office. Often it's just a trailer in a small scale operation. Therefor, 'lot' is the primary descriptor.

New cars are sold in a facility which normally has a more substantial building with that being the primary feature.

We feel the need to modify 'car lot' to 'used car lot' not there are no 'new car lots.'

A 'new car lot" is any car lot that wasn't there the last time you passed the intersection!

I can't wait for readers' reactions when your next story has a character starting work in a new-car lot with free customer-parking next to the purple people-eater's used-car lot.

The used car lot has a sign out front of the trailer that says, "No credito, no disponible, no problemo"

In New Orleans there is a term that is sometimes used for a certain type of Duplex, a Shotgun Double.

You can find a few of those in certain parts of the upper mid-west as well.

In the United States, a couple must first go to a government office, almost always one in the county courthouse, to get a marriage license. For the actual marriage, they then choose a private event in a church or home by a minister or other official eligible to do so, or return to one of various government offices to use one of their eligible people to officiate. These are most commonly district magistrates or county judges.

AS CW suggests, know what happens where your story is set and as part of it show the readers the process.

Or, and it's not very common, do both.

My parents were college students and one day my mom found herself pregnant with me. They took a quick trip to Virginia where parental permission wasn't required to marry and then returned to campus.

Dad hadn't told his mother yet, and knowing that she'd insist on a church wedding they broke the news a few weeks later and soon went down the aisle. Having confessed to the elopement, they told everyone that it happened months earlier than actually happened, giving a date nine months before I was due.

However, Ancestry.com now has Virginia marriage licenses online and a search revealed their documents, less than six months before my birth.

My parents were college students and one day my mom found herself pregnant with me.
Having confessed to the elopement, they told everyone that it happened months earlier than actually happened, giving a date nine months before I was due.

However, Ancestry.com now has Virginia marriage licenses online and a search revealed their documents, less than six months before my birth

Official records are not always accurate /complete /subject to misinterpretation. I had to get a copy of my mother's birth certificate by post and I gave them all the detail - complete name, place, date, parents,microfilm record reference etc.
I got back a certificate giving her first names as Marion Ann (correct last name) which was wrong!!!
Investigating further - I had a photocopy of the original - I discovered that her original certificate was Marion Ann ... but with the official rejoinder ON THE ORIGINAL CERTIFICATE that it had been changed to Marion J... **
A letter to Dublin and they immediately emailed an apology and sent the correct certificate.

I am certain Ancestry would get that wrong - they seem to have got stuff about my grandmother and father wrong as well

** I need an original birth certificate to get a new passport

never trust anything where the source if Ancestry.com

I only use user-submitted data as suggestions. The trees at the LDS site are worse. I use Ancestry to access images of census, newspapers, military records, marriage & death records, etc. Original sources, preferably images.

I will say the LDS trees do tend to be more accurate,

I use Legacy Family Tree which recently added the ability to synchronize with LDS' online trees. I had to untangle many of my ancestral lines. This work I've built up over the last 20 years and have published in my own tree at Rootsweb (now a subsidiary of Ancestry) and from where my work has made it's way into other people's trees. The LDS trees looked to be 20 years behind the times.

I am certain Ancestry would get that wrong - they seem to have got stuff about my grandmother and father wrong as well

OTOH I trust them enough to expect that you and I will get libel writs through our doors tomorrow

Many people from the islands (Jamaica or other Caribbean islands) often didn't register home births until months or even years later, so many of their birth certificates list the incorrect ages (fairly routine for remote villages).

A few months ago I was reading in a UK public library the official translation of the original 1210 account of the visit of King John to Carlingford. I also downloaded the (translated) text of statutes from the 1200's - the info is available.

My reference was to dates in the 20th century within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I can understand things being different in distant parts of the previous British Empire but within the UK itself - that goes to show how much I trust Ancestry

OTOH I trust them enough to expect that you and I will get libel writs through our doors tomorrow

I am certain Ancestry would get that wrong - they seem to have got stuff about my grandmother and father wrong as well

In the case I cited Ancestry had the scanned image of their marriage license online. When I informed Mom, she confessed. I had long suspected it, as the marriage date they always quoted was conveniently almost exactly 9 months before I was born.

There's the truth, then there's what we're willing to admit to family.

I always thought you were a right ... :-)

In the United States, a couple must first go to a government office, almost always one in the county courthouse, to get a marriage license. For the actual marriage, they then choose a private event in a church or home by a minister or other official eligible to do so, or return to one of various government offices to use one of their eligible people to officiate

We have a legal hiatus in England. The person officiating at a wedding must hold a licence to do so. The Church of England is OK in that it legally exists and it's clergy generally get licensed.
The RC church used to consider itself above temporal law so it did not register and therefore was not legally a religiou or even corporate body. It suggested / ordered that its priests did not apply for a licence so they could not marry people. I do not know if this situation still exists.

This could have stymied my wife and I except that it was normal practice for the local town registrar to be in the church vestry and carry out the legal wedding immediately after the Roman Catholic church service.

I must stress that the Roman Catholic Church is held in as high regard as the Protestant Church. Indeed the gentleman who organised the coronation of the Queen at Westminster Abbey in 1953 is well known as being a Roman Catholic.

That said, the Prime Minister must advise on the appointment of any member of the Church of England but is prohibited from doing so if he/she is a Roman Catholic or a Jew (as has happened). There is no such bar on Moslems, Hindus or any other religion!!!!!

AS CW suggests, know what happens where your story is set and as part of it show the readers the process.

This is worthy advice, especially when crossing any kind of border. If you're writing in English, guess who your readers are going to be. If they're North American, and your setting isn't North America, do explain what's going on, please.

I recently read a story involving some "American football" that was clearly not written by an author familiar with the sport. Each individual statement was true, but was flavored strongly with non-US/CA English phrasings. My impression was that someone knew the rules (maybe the author, maybe an editor) but nobody corrected the author on phrasing. This would have been fine if, say, the protagonist was an English immigrant to the US. But the presentation is that of someone moving within the country, and so the phrasing is really jarring.

Ironically, there are similar conflicting phrases in other parts of the story - references to schooling and "land offices" and "councils" - but for whatever reason they're easier to gloss over. The more-involved details of sport really make the subtly-different word choice stand out.

You wouldn't believe how many hundreds of hours of research went in to getting the details exactly right

I've got a solution for that. Let's teach them Aussie Rules and cricket.

I've watched thousands of games of Aussie Rules, yet I still don't understand how it's played

I assumed you were into Aussie Rules when you posted a link once to 'Up There, Cazaly'.
My original code was Rugby League but I gravitated to Rugby Union. I can't understand how that's played either. I gave up trying when commentators explained its rucks and mauls by saying, 'It's okay as long as a passing pigeon cannot poop on the pill.'

I've got a solution for that. Let's teach them Aussie Rules and cricket.

Earlier this week I saw something for the first time in my life - a group of young men, at quick glance all looking Indian or Pakistani, playing cricket on the field a block from the house where I grew up (in a small city in western Pennsylvania.) This even after I've been living here again for the past 13 years (I noticed because one guy ran into the street in front of my car to retrieve the ball, and I looked over to see one swinging a flat bat with a wicket behind him)

I saw this, and wondered if you were talking about my story Finding Home where the main character is a new migrant to the USA and doesn't understand the game

No. I also wrote:

This would have been fine if, say, the protagonist was an English immigrant to the US.

I think I've read two of your stories, and you used this approach. It works, if you change the source culture from English to Strain.

But that's my point, really. A man's got to know his limitations.

I spent some considerable time in Mexico learning Spanish. One of the things I did was watch futbol on TV. And ignoring the whole "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL" thing, there's a distinct separate vocabulary, cadence, etc. for broadcasting the sport. On reflection, this wasn't a surprise. It's true for baseball, and US football. I assume the same is true for cricket, ARfootball, chess and every other sport on TV.

Even if you don't speak Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkiveV2_MLs

Or English: https://www.ispot.tv/ad/7UFD/geico-kraken-its-what-you-do

I believe it's true in every productive field of endeavor- that's "jargon." (If you don't have a jargon, it's probably not a productive field of endeavor.) But I suspect that only the people who are in those fields might notice. Compare, "We're going to need an X-ray as soon as possible!" to the more likely "X-ray, stat!"

The problem might be that "sport", and in particular "watching sport", are things that are nearly universal. We all feel like we know something about whatever sport we like to watch. And part of that is going to be "how it's shown" and "how it's played." If you write a story where USfootball players are talking in a huddle, you can get away with some liberties because fewer people have been in a huddle than have watched it on TV. Presumably, one could do the same thing with a rugby scrum. But if you start describing how the announcer speaks, you're definitely in that zone where everybody feels like they know how things work. And that's where you have to get it 100% right. Or... not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n-p44kKaWc

Has anyone who is a English-speaking futbol fan ever read Cotton Mather's "Playing the Game" series (https://storiesonline.net/a/Rev_Cotton_Mather)? If so, how did he do on terminology?

Even if you don't speak Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkiveV2_MLs

I was a bit surprised that the first golfer in the clip didn't wrap his putter around the futbol announcer's necks. :)

The second video wouldn't play at all, and it triggered over 20 hits on my security software blocking third party scripts.

Yeah, I use NoScript and RequestPolicy, and have to manually tune them. ispot is an actual advertising-industry site: they try to hold on to ads and provide links, sort of the way imdb does, to actors, ad companies, production companies, songs, etc. So if you're looking for an ad, and can't find it on youtube, it's worth looking on ispot. But carefully. They're FIRM believers in advertising, after all... ;-)

After all, if you don't learn something by reading, then why do it at all?

Escape from our dreary, boring lives.

You won't see that on SOL unless the female character is real young. Seems like authors write about busty women.

Of course you will. not everyone likes mounds of flesh you could suffocate between. I personally prefer tangerines, not grapefruit or watermelons. More than a mouthful is a waste.

It's what I know from my youth, and we rarely write about the women of our old age.

Spot on.

I find myself attracted to the first set of women who gave me that reaction as a youth, and over the years have expanded the age limit upwards while maintaining the lower limit.

You won't see that on SOL unless the female character is real young. Seems like authors write about busty women.

More than a mouthful is a waste

ED: That's what happens when one comments before reading to the end. I will confess that below a certain size won't allow a titty fuck.

@Ernest Bywaterflat
flat is where the living space occupies a whole floor of a building and the building is obviously multiple stories. However, I think the term was originally associated with 2 story buildings with each unit having a separate entrance. They would most likely has multiple bedrooms. May have as much floor space as a detached house.
Cheers

Generally it used to be the case that Flats were rented, Units were individually owned, although these days the terms seem to be used interchangeably.

A block of flats would all be owed by the one person (or business), and each one rented out. The entire complex is under a single title. If it were to ever be sold, the entire building would be sold, not individual flats.
With a block of Units each unit is under it's own title, (it could be the whole lot are owned by one person, but that's rather unusual). When it comes to selling, only a particular Unit would be sold, not the entire building as each Unit is under a separate title.
Then there are Townhouses which can best be described as multi-level (or just much larger, fancier) units. Once again, like a Unit, in a single building, each with it's own title.

Technically, a "car lot" refers to a lot containing cars for sale, whereas a car dealer's lot can be any lot owned by the car dealer, even a new undeveloped home.

Sorry; I disagree on that one. We don't use the word "lot" to refer to an undeveloped bit of land - that would be a plot

Here in Australia we have two types of plots:
1. The small bit of land in the cemetery where you bury people,
2. What the other political side are planning to do to stop your plans.

At least three, surely:
1. The small bit of land in the cemetery where you bury people,
2. What the other political side are planning to do to stop your plans,
3. What others on your side of politics are planning to do to stop your plans.

3 is a sub-set of 2 because I don't differentiate between inter party politics and intra-party fraction politics.

Q. How many political parties are there in the Parliament?
A. The same number as members of the Parliament - provided the schizophrenics are currently taking their medication. :-)

The same here, we rarely use "plot" to refer to a "plot of land", though that's not an incorrect usage, it's merely an uncommon one.

The term used in the US for legal purposes for a lot/plot of land, for instance in the title/legal description of a lot, is "parcel".