I've heard of it, and I'm in a Gaelic-speaking part of Britain Although it's American and popular culture is different, the basics of it still apply anywhere. Writing is writing...not necessarily the same type of writing or the same audience, but...well, yep, you know what I'm saying. I'm writing too much - just done a two-page battle speech for my story and can't get it out of my head
Perhaps I should say I've heard of S&W NOW, but I left the UK 25 years ago before Internet etc, so maybe it's better known there these days. We managed pretty well without it, though, in the days when we were taught all the basics thoroughly at school anyway *inserts tongue in cheek*
It's in the eye of the beholder man, if people want wishy washy crap they're going to find wishy washy crap a delight to read. I agree but to quote the dude 'that's just... like... your opinion man.'
Man, like, pretty much everything on the site is opinion, you know. You can like take what you can use and blow off the rest, dude. It goes without saying, unless you, like, feel the need to say it anyway.
I just started reading The Origin of Species and finding myself thinking "man I wish we wrote like that these days." He wasn't using purple prose but he did use the full extent of his vocabulary. Content aside it's a very beautiful piece of writing that lives up to the task of taking a technical subject and exploring it with words. Sometimes it seems that we don't explore with words anymore. We explore the subject with ideas and themes, pictures and metaphors, but not with pure, unadulterated words. We're in the mindset that our audience has been stolen by TV and movies. They don't read much and so they don't have as good a grasp on the language as people in the past. Yeah it's true your writing doesn't mean anything if your words don't get across to the reader, but I still hate it. Bring back the days of the gentleman geniuses, when you could be a politician, scientist, artist, and writer all at the same time. Bring back the days when the pen was mightier than the sword instead of trailing third behind TV and .50 caliber shells.
