NhülyaYILMAZ

Unscrambling . . . Continued

Continuing with language parts . . . on their way to complete sentences (or questions, if you would so prefer). The same conditions apply as last week’s workout (!) Clarity, coherence and cohesiveness for the final product. As for content and context and the subject, your call!  As before: Compound as well as single sentences have the green light.

Sentence / Question statement parts appear below in the form of nouns, verbs, adjectives / adverbs and / or fillers (a brief insight into these meaning-enhancers was present on last Friday’s post).  Like last week’s scrambled words, each one of also today comes from a murder mystery novel by Lisa Jacksson. I hope you will enjoy this activity.

Toward sentence or question statement #1:

  1. mind; hope
  2. can (either in its indicative or subjunctive mood); think; be; respond; hope (please note that this word also appears above in a different language function)
  3. straight; not; clear (or in its negative form)

Toward sentence or question statement #2:

  1. chance; trouble; focus
  2. shake; decide; have; focus (another red alert); be
  3. but; another; aloof; icy; even; always

 

NhülyaYILMAZ

Unscrambling . . .

Assuming that we all remember the language parts of focus from a post a while back, a workout with words comes in today. Below, you see a group of sentence elements that await your tender-loving care to be transformed into complete sentences. Any conditions? None other than aiming at clarity, coherence and cohesiveness when the final written product is concerned – with the content and context as well as the subject word reflecting your desire. Compound sentences and single sentences are equally welcomed.

I have grouped the parts separately as far as nouns, verbs, adjectives / adverbs and / or “fillers” (words that have the capacity to enhance meaning of any sentence or question statement, including interrogatives, AKA question words). Each word comes from a murder mystery novel by Lisa Jacksson. I hope you will enjoy this activity.

Toward sentence statement #1:

  1. lamps; night lights; room; shadows; corners; atmosphere
  2. turn; give
  3. low; a few; large; intimate; muted

Toward sentence statement #2:

  1. music; whisper (watch out for this noun as it reappears as a verb also); room; breath; fog; teddy (hint: in the said novel, not as in a Teddy Bear . . .)
  2. whisper; stare; buy
  3. soft; cold; black

Toward sentence statement #3:

  1. edge; thoughts; makeup; whore
  2. realize; be; look; want
  3. closer (or use “farther”, if you would so like); perfect (or “not perfect”); right (or “not right”); now; how; nothing (or “everything”); like (or “unlike”)

 

 

NhülyaYILMAZ

A Plea

I have started composing my weekly post a few days back. It was going to be on matters regarding the mechanics of editing as the promise of this site. What work of writing do you have as a draft at the moment? was to be a question I wanted to raise with you. Then, I was going to solicit a brief draft text from anyone who would be willing to share here their initial writing on any subject / theme / focus so that it would be in the public eye (including yours) to work with in terms of adjustments / modifications / rephrasing / etc. Today, however, my heart is somewhere else as is my mind.

Yesterday morning, I came across a blood-freezing news, traveling to my soul from Saudi Arabia – in the form of a horrific act of barbarism to which a 6-years old beautiful boy was subjected. (The related reading will find you, if interested, on the bottom of this page.) The anguish I felt was so overwhelming that I had to write. And I have. It turned into a poem draft in my native tongue. I am sharing it with you in this morning hour, together with its translation into English.

My quest is simple: Please go through my text in whichever language is familiar to you, bearing in mind that this draft has been created under high emotions of lament, with my spirit having met a violent turbulence of suffering. Once you do, indulge me with your input as to the outcome of this poetic draft. Harsh criticisms will be welcomed in the same passionate embrace as their mild counterparts. Thank you for listening.

nasıl kıydılar sana, masum bebek
Şii misin, Sünni misin ne demek
kırık camla boynunu bıçaklamış
iki ayaklı o mahlûk defalarca
o her yanı öpülesi güzel başını
koparmış kim bilir ne kadar süren
yürek kaldırmayan işkencenden sonra
bir de çaresizliğinin vahşeti içinde
akıl almaz bir melek katliamı
yaşayan anneciğinin çığlıkları altında

lânet olsun senin din anlayışına, ey yetişkin mahluk
lanet olsun senin gibi iki ayaklı hayvanlara
lanet olsun taksi kullanabilen
sürüngenden beter
hiç yaşamamış olsa
tibbi bir deneye yararı olabilecek
o ruhtan yoksun lanet olası varlığına

(c) hülya n. yılmaz, 2.11.2019

Bugün Suudi Arabistanda bir taksi şoförü tarafından katledilen 6 yaşındaki minik meleğin anısına

In honor of Zakariya al-Jaber, 6 years old, who was brutally murdered in Saudi Arabia for being a Shiite Muslim. My anguish at this news was so overwhelming that I only could write a few words in my native tongue. May such atrocities never come on to the path of another little angel. Anywhere. In the notoriously inhumane Saudi Arabia, in particular.

how did they have the heart to do this to you, oh you innocent baby
why on earth did it matter whether you were a Sunni or a Shii’te
that two-legged creature is said to have butchered you
stabbing you repeatedly with a shard on your neck
until he managed to behead you following an unknown period of time
throughout which you were left to suffer unbearable pains
under the vain screams of helplessness of your mother’s anguish

may curses be upon your way to religious beliefs, you grown up creature
may curses be upon those you-alike animals
may curses be upon your capacity to drive a cab
may curses be upon you, you lower-than-a-reptile being
which, had it not lived, might have been some service
to the medicinal research in some far-stretched way
may curses be upon your being that is void of a soul

“Saudi Arabia: Boy beheaded [. . .]”

 

NhülyaYILMAZ

Content Editing

The following text comes to you from the Preface of my own manuscript. As I emphasize time and again, a writing always leaves room for improvement. In specific terms, we must seek clarity, coherence and cohesiveness in our written words. As for sophistication in diction and content, any text can be improved above and beyond its initially conceived version. How else can the following paragraph be formulated in order to lend it more of the three Cs and / or a more sophisticated flair? 

In our human existence, there is one core reality: We are born, we live, and then we die. Throughout that in-between-phase, we hope that our lives have mattered to our beloveds. It is the hope for permanence; that we live on beyond our death. This book is my attempt to seek such permanent memory for my loved ones. At the same time, it is my tribute to those beloveds  who are no longer with me. It is my way of proving to myself that their lives mattered and continue to matter (from: Once upon a Time in Turkey, a short story collection, pending).

NhülyaYILMAZ

And the Errors on Last Post’s Proofreading-Practice Text Were . . .

As with the previous posts, the original text shared here before for only a proofreading practice follows below. The errors are underlined.

“The question as to what we mean by truth and falsehood, which we considered in the proceeding chapter, is of much less interest than the question as to how we can know what is true and what is false. This question will occupy us in the present chapter. There can be no doubt that some of our beliefs are eroneous; thus we are led to inquire what certainty we can ever have that such and such a belief is not erroneous. In other words, can we ever know anything at all, or do we merely sometimes by good luck believe what is true? Before we can attack this question, we must, however, first decide what we mean by ‘knowing’, and this question is not so easy as might be supposed.

At first site we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as ‘true belief’. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would not accord with the way in which the word is commonly used. To take a very trivial instance: If a man believes that the late Prime Minister’s last name began with a B, he believes what is true, since the late Prime Minister was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr. Balfor was the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister’s last name began with a B, yet this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge. If a newspaper, by an intelligent anticipation, announces the result of a battle before any telegram giving the result has been received, it may by good fortune announce what afterwards turns out to be the right result, and it may produce belief in some of its less experienced readers.” [Source: “Free Weekly Proofreading Exercise” at www.proofreading-course.com]

Corrections:

  1. The word “proceeding” is semantically incorrect as far as the intended context. It should be replaced with “preceding”.
  2. There is a spelling error with “eroneous”. The correct spelling is “erroneous”.
  3. Like with the first error, the word “site” is semantically incorrect and it is to be replaced with “sight”.
  4. There is another spelling error in question here: “Balfor” should be “Balfour”, if researched, which at times becomes unavoidable during proofreading any text.

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NhülyaYILMAZ

Another Text for a Proofreading Practice

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Today’s post entails yet another sample text-based worksheet [Source: “Free Weekly Proofreading Exercise” at www.proofreading-course.com].

“The question as to what we mean by truth and falsehood, which we considered in the proceeding chapter, is of much less interest than the question as to how we can know what is true and what is false. This question will occupy us in the present chapter. There can be no doubt that some of our beliefs are eroneous; thus we are led to inquire what certainty we can ever have that such and such a belief is not erroneous. In other words, can we ever know anything at all, or do we merely sometimes by good luck believe what is true? Before we can attack this question, we must, however, first decide what we mean by ‘knowing’, and this question is not so easy as might be supposed.

At first site we might imagine that knowledge could be defined as ‘true belief’. When what we believe is true, it might be supposed that we had achieved a knowledge of what we believe. But this would not accord with the way in which the word is commonly used. To take a very trivial instance: If a man believes that the late Prime Minister’s last name began with a B, he believes what is true, since the late Prime Minister was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman. But if he believes that Mr. Balfor was the late Prime Minister, he will still believe that the late Prime Minister’s last name began with a B, yet this belief, though true, would not be thought to constitute knowledge. If a newspaper, by an intelligent anticipation, announces the result of a battle before any telegram giving the result has been received, it may by good fortune announce what afterwards turns out to be the right result, and it may produce belief in some of its less experienced readers.”

Next week: Correction of the errors

NhülyaYILMAZ

And the Errors on Last Post’s Proofreading-Practice Text Were . . .

Here is the text in question for your convenience:

“Even among philosophers, we may say, broadly, that only those universals which are named by adjectives or substantives have been much or often recognized, while those named by verbs and prepositions have been usually over looked. This omission has had a very great effect upon philosophy; it is hardly to much to say that most metaphysics, since Spinoza, has been largely determined by it. The way this has occurred is, in outline, as follows: Speaking generally, adjectives and common nouns express qualities or properties of single things, whereas prepositions and verbs tend to express relations between two or more things. Thus the neglect of prepositions and verbs led to the believe that every proposition can be regarded as attributing a property to a single thing, rather than as expressing a relation between two or more things. Hence it was supposed that, ultimately, there can be no such entities as relations between things. Hence either there can be only one thing in the universe, or, if there are many things, they cannot possibly interact in any way, since any interaction would be a relation, and relations are impossible.

The first of these views, advocated by Spinozer and held in our own day by Bradley and many other philosophers, is called monism; the second, advocated by Leibniz but not very common nowadays, is called monadism, because each of the isolated things is called a monad. Both these opposing philosophies, interesting as they are, result, in my opinion, from an undue attention to one sort of universals, namely the sort represented by adjectives and substantives rather than by verbs and prepositions.” [Source: “Free Weekly Proofreading Exercise” at www.proofreading-course.com]

The Errors (underlined in the text, and yes, these are of minor nature but too often, our text gets convoluted because of them):
  1. “over looked” is misspelled in the original text, with “overlooked” being its correct form
  2. “to” should read as “too” in this context (this error is one that keeps creeping up on us way too often, and as such a culprit, it cannot be emphasized strongly enough as far as red alerts)
  3. “believe” is a misplaced word here, for we need its noun form, “belief”
  4. “Spinozer” is the misspelling of the actual name, “Spinoza”

Next week: More opportunities to practice proofreading

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NhülyaYILMAZ

A New Text as a Proofreading Practice

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Another sample text-based worksheet comes in for you, dear reader, to practice self-editing, which starts with a most vital step: Proofreading [Source: “Free Weekly Proofreading Exercise” at www.proofreading-course.com].

“Even among philosophers, we may say, broadly, that only those universals which are named by adjectives or substantives have been much or often recognized, while those named by verbs and prepositions have been usually over looked. This omission has had a very great effect upon philosophy; it is hardly to much to say that most metaphysics, since Spinoza, has been largely determined by it. The way this has occurred is, in outline, as follows: Speaking generally, adjectives and common nouns express qualities or properties of single things, whereas prepositions and verbs tend to express relations between two or more things. Thus the neglect of prepositions and verbs led to the believe that every proposition can be regarded as attributing a property to a single thing, rather than as expressing a relation between two or more things. Hence it was supposed that, ultimately, there can be no such entities as relations between things. Hence either there can be only one thing in the universe, or, if there are many things, they cannot possibly interact in any way, since any interaction would be a relation, and relations are impossible.

The first of these views, advocated by Spinozer and held in our own day by Bradley and many other philosophers, is called monism; the second, advocated by Leibniz but not very common nowadays, is called monadism, because each of the isolated things is called a monad. Both these opposing philosophies, interesting as they are, result, in my opinion, from an undue attention to one sort of universals, namely the sort represented by adjectives and substantives rather than by verbs and prepositions.”

Next week: The corrections (Please note: No error has been hinted at, which means that you, dear reader, have a clean slate to work on. Enjoy!)

 

NhülyaYILMAZ

And the Errors on Last Post’s Proofreading-Practice Text Were . . .

Here is the text in question for your convenient reading:
“[ . . . ] we see is constantly changing in shape as we move about the room; so that here again the senses seem not to give us the truth about the table itself, but only about the appearance of the table.
     Similar difficulties arise when we consider the sense of touch. It is true that the the table always gives us a sensation of hardness, and we feel that it resists pressure. But the sensation we obtain depends upon how hard we press the table and also upon what part of the body we press with; thus the various sensations due to various pressures or various parts of the body cannot be supposed to reveal directly any definite property of the table, but at most to be signs of some property which perhaps causes all the sensations, but is not actually apparent in any of them. And the same applies still more obviously to the sounds which can be elicted by rapping the table.
     Thus it becomes evident that the real table, if there is one, is not the same as what we immediately experience by sight or touch or hearing. The real table, if there is one, is not
immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known. Hence, two very difficult questions at once arise; namely, (1) Is there a real table at all? 2) If so, what sort of object can it be? It will help us in considering these questions to have a few simple terms of which the meaning is definite and clear. Let us give the name of ‘sense-data’ to the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardnesses, roughnesses, and so on. We shall give the name ‘sensation’ to the experience of being immediately aware of these things.”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Errors (underlined in the text):
  1. The word “the” is repeated in the same sentence twice in a row (lines 4 and 5)
  2. The 2nd verb is misspelled ~ “elicited” is its correct version (1st full paragraph, last line)
  3. Question options (1) and (2) are incorporated into the text, out of which either one would be correct. In other words, there is inconsistency in this formulation (3rd full paragraph, lines 4 and 5)
  4. The line that starts with “It will help us [. . .]” should appear in a new paragraph; hence, there is an error in “transitioning” (2nd full paragraph, line 5)
  5. The U.S. spelling of the word “color” appears in the text in its U.K. & Australian English version, “colours” (3rd full paragraph, line 9)
  6. While this matter does not constitute an error (hence, not underlined as one), the phrases, “hardnesses” and “rougnesses” seem unnatural in U.S. English (2nd full paragraph, 2nd to last line). Whenever there is an alternative phrasing, such word use is best to avoid – unless, we are talking about “poetic license”.

Next week: More opportunities to practice proofreading

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NhülyaYILMAZ

A Text for a Proofreading-Practice

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[Free online image]

A sample text-based worksheet for self-editing practices . . . was last week’s forecast. So, here comes an opportunity to practice proofreading [Source: “Free Weekly Proofreading Exercise” at www.proofreading-course.com]:

“[ . . . ] we see is constantly changing in shape as we move about the room; so that here again the senses seem not to give us the truth about the table itself, but only about the appearance of the table.
     Similar difficulties arise when we consider the sense of touch. It is true that the the table always gives us a sensation of hardness, and we feel that it resists pressure. But the sensation we obtain depends upon how hard we press the table and also upon what part of the body we press with; thus the various sensations due to various pressures or various parts of the body cannot be supposed to reveal directly any definite property of the table, but at most to be signs of some property which perhaps causes all the sensations, but is not actually apparent in any of them. And the same applies still more obviously to the sounds which can be elicted by rapping the table.
     Thus it becomes evident that the real table, if there is one, is not the same as what we immediately experience by sight or touch or hearing. The real table, if there is one, is not
immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known. Hence, two very difficult questions at once arise; namely, (1) Is there a real table at all? 2) If so, what sort of object can it be? It will help us in considering these questions to have a few simple terms of which the meaning is definite and clear. Let us give the name of ‘sense-data’ to the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardnesses, roughnesses, and so on. We shall give the name ‘sensation’ to the experience of being immediately aware of these things.”
Next week: The corrections