Sydney Writers' Centre blog

Did you know: How did CamelCase evolve?

So what have camels got to do with writing and why are they carrying a case? Once upon a time, it was easy:

There was:
    UPPER CASE
    lower case
    And sentence case.

But now there's CamelCase (sometimes known as "medial capitals" or "embedded capitals"). This is where compound words are joined without spaces in between. Here are some example:

    YouTube
    PayPal
    PricewaterhouseCoopers
    WikiLeaks
    HarperCollins

It gained momentum when computer programmers wanted to avoid using spaces in the work. More recently, as you can see from the major names above who use it, the practice has become more common among marketers and branding experts. The general rule is that unless you are writing an official name that uses CamelCase, there should be no other reason for you to use it!

Did you know: Brangelina is a portmanteau word

You've heard the words:
Brangelina - to describe the coupling that is Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
Tomkat - to describe the bizarre partnership that is Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes

However, well before these celebrity mashups made combining words popular, we had portmanteau words.

Like:
smog - smoke and fog
spork - a spoon and fork
brunch - breakfast and lunch
Spanglish - Spanish and English

The word portmanteau is also a combination of two French words: porter (to carry) and manteau (cloak). It was well described by CS Lewis in Through the Looking Glass where Humpty Dumpty explains the practice of combining words to Alice: "You see it's like a portmanteau -- there are two meanings packed up into one word."

Did you know: Is your new character “ingenious” or “ingenuous”?

The confusion curse of Microsoft Word spell check has struck, correcting my rushed typing out of the word ingenious with ingenuous. In my defense, the key vowels are all in a line on my keyboard, but I was intrigued by how close the spelling is of the two words, and researched their origins.

Ingenuous means to be honest, open and sincere and it comes from the Latin word igenuus that is very similar to our modern word and almost means freeborn and generous. Interestingly, the Latin root word for ingenuous can also imply ingenious, but the modern word ingenuous does not. Ingenuous can also mean innocent, unworldly and naïve, and you’re probably familiar with the character archetype of the ingénue, often a girl or young woman who is endearingly innocent and usually has the best intentions.
 
This is clearly different from ingenious, which means to be brilliant and creative, and is usually used in association with inventing something, or a new idea or insight. The term ingenious comes from the Latin word ingenium that means inherent talent and the ability to cleverly devise new ideas and solutions.  This root word has no link to ingenuous.

Did you know? “To let the cat out of the bag”

This phrase, referring to the release of a secret with significant impact, has always confused me and, given my fondness for cats, concerned me. So I went hunting to try and locate which famous cat had caused a scandal when it burst from the bag.

Unfortunately for my story hungry brain, if this phrase did originate from a specific event, no record of it remains. Instead it is believed to refer to an old market trick by farming sales people where a customer pays for a piglet and instead receives a cat. If you were buying a meal, or making a farming investment, the cat would be useless. The emergence of the cat from the bag would be an infuriating and explosive moment for the new owner.

Did you know? The origin of "barbeque"

This is for all of you who are planning a barbeque for Christmas and would like to segue into a nerdy conversation over the grill – rather than be stuck comparing the sizes of fuel tanks or the finishes of your outdoor furniture.
   
It’s probably best to note, like most Christmas family gatherings, there is a lot of disagreement around this word. Many believe that the word derives from the French word barbe a queue that means from end to end, and literally translates to ‘from beard to tail’.

But it actually comes from the Arawakan tribe from the Island of Hispaniola, in the West Indian Islands. European explorers took the technique for roasting meat and fish on a wooden frame over a fire, and the Taino language word: barbacoa.

There are enough interesting concepts in there to keep the conversation of home-maker topics for the rest of the Christmas get-together!

Popular Facebook Note on the “best” 100 books

A friend of mine tagged me in this Facebook note over the weekend, confirming my suspicion that my book-nerdiness is becoming increasingly obvious. This note that has been doing the rounds for almost a year now, and it is probably based on the 2009 BBC booklist. We were struck by how many notable exclusions, and questionable inclusions, there are on this list.

For example, why is The Picture of Dorian Gray not on the list? Why are the Narnia series, and the individual The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe both on the list?

What do you think of the list? How many of these books have you read? Which books are missing? I’ve gone through and followed the instructions of the note, and would love to hear which ones you have read in the comments section.

The Facebook Note:

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicise the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!
 
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy*
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez **
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

How many of these have you read? Are your favourite books on this list?

Fabulous video of Stephen Fry's rant against grammar pendants

We watched this video spellbound. Not only is Stephen Fry as insightful and entertaining as always, this video is also an inspiring reminder to liberate our focus on language from correcting miniscule details to concocting and sharing word-rich phrases.

You'll know that we're not fans of incorrect or confusing grammar, but we are fond of a gorgeous sentence packed full of wonderful worlds.

Watch this video and try to "action" it today.