Hey all, just a minor peeve here. Authors that cant spell out the story title. It might have been a month or two since your last update so you post something like >"WotH"update at the moderators< or > Next chapter of "MotB" posted.< Sorry, that doesn't tell me the name of your story and doesn't get the old brain cells remembering.
Yes, a minor peeve for me too. It kind of causes me to feel like an outsider. Admittedly, I don't read in-progress stories, but I do follow the story progress and author blogs. Seeing a story referred by the first letter of each word causes me to figure out which recent story update it might be. Sometimes I have to go thru the author's story list. After a while I remember frequent posters. I dont think it's fair to ask the author to spell it out every time in each blog post.
I think that similar to many other uses of an abbreviation in writing, you should use the full title (and the abbreviation).
Such as: Game of Thrones (GoT) or GoT (Game of Thrones).
Then in the rest of the post you may just use the abbreviation(s).
I suppose that those authors are merely focusing upon their dedicated readers.
To me the purpose of being able to post/blog about my stories is to Attract New Readers, as well as updating current readers.
It's not just authors doing it to their own stories in blog posts.
A number of commenters on this forum will respond to story recommendation and/or lost story requests with initialized story titles.
A number of commenters on this forum will respond to story recommendation and/or lost story requests with initialized story titles.
Not just story titles, but those of films and other sources of fictional universes. After all, the poster knows what they mean therefore everybody will.
Mea culpa - I've started referring to the Steve Adams novels as AWLL :-(
AJ
Mea culpa - I've started referring to the Steve Adams novels as AWLL :-(
Granted, if you did two more things, that collection of novels would be identified even with the abbreviation.
1) identify the author - Michael Loucks
2) Link the author's name and in this case the universe's abbreviation.
edited quote:
Mea culpa - I've started referring to Michael Loucks' Steve Adams novels as AWLL :-(
But you are on here so much I bet it feels like hangin with the gang so verbal/written short cuts slip in, I Get it AJ
This is just good advice. Write to be understood. And if you can, link the story you're referencing.
I'll usually open with the full title: Magic is Gross, and refer back to it as MiG if I need to mention it again in the post.
One of the possibilities was "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?"
As many have noted (I spotted it as I was reading the section), 6x9 = 54 = 42(base 13)
Douglas Adams apparently said 'I don't make jokes in base 13'. In my opinion, it's a really good joke. It wouldn't be nearly as good if it was in any base but 13. Base 13 is inherently funny.
(Note: edited to fix the math. I inadvertently misquoted the story and thus did the wrong math)