Edited

In my free time I help copy edit articles for our journal. I would have gladly done it for free. At least all along I thought I was doing it for free until recently I got paid, so, YAY!

Some of the articles I see are very well-written, others not so. It’s the not-so-well-written ones that I am writing about. I was told to ensure that the articles are in the proper format, as well as looking for grammatical errors. You would have thought that academics, who write all the time, write well. Apparently, they don’t.

There is a guide for style, based on the Chicago Manual of Style, which I presume is supplied to all the authors. Basically, it tells what font to use, how to format the headings, the format for citation, etc. None of the articles follow the guide perfectly, which is fine as that’s where I come in, but I sometimes wonder if some of the authors even know how to properly use a word processor. I have seen articles that doesn’t seem to have a system for organizing headings.

The author of this article I’m currently looking at seems to have a fetish for italicizing and quotation marks. Every other word is either italicized or in quotes. Some words are both italicized and put in quotation marks. Reading the article, I cannot help feeling that the author is being ironic and cynical. As much as we expect students to follow instructions, I find it extremely annoying that lecturers and professors fail to do the same.

The second part of the job is less annoying but much trickier, as my grammar is far from perfect. Often I am not sure whether to use the past tense or the present tense, so simply go by what I feel right. However, most of the grammatical mistakes are glaring, like a missing article or an incomplete sentence. Generally, I find that academics tend to write very long sentences that by the end of the sentence you forget what is written at the beginning. Haven’t they heard of sentence connectors?

The point of writing is to convey information. You want people to understand what you write. Therefore, as much as possible I think it is best to always try to write short sentences with simple words.

Read: Yukikaze

I chanced upon Yukikaze by Chohei Kambayashi when browsing the Haikasoru website after reading The Lord of the Sands of Time. It’s supposed to be a classic, Yukikaze, and most importantly has a cool cover art. I was sold.

Some decades ago an alien force invaded Earth through a portal over Antarctica. Earth fought the aliens back and secured a foothold on the other side.

Thirty years on the war against the JAM, as the aliens are called, is at a stalemate. The Faery Air Force (FAF) is technologically far more advanced than any military forces on Earth. However, it has never been able to maintain any clear advantage over the JAM.

Strangely, after all the years no one knows who the JAM really are and even how they look like. There’s speculation that the JAM are really machines, and when fighting the FAF they are really fighting against the machines of the FAF. Hence the question of whether humans are really necessary, at least in the war agains the JAM.

Yukikaze is the nickname given to the mount of Lt Rei Fukai, the main character. It is a highly advanced tactical reconnaissance fighter known as the Super Sylph. Yukikaze is the only thing that Rei cares for and trusts. However, as its AI matures, it becomes evident that the plane has a mind of its own.

Afi bought me Yukikaze as a birthday present. She asked me to pick a book. I couldn’t think of any in particular that I wanted, so picked Yukikaze which was the next in my wishlist. I also didn’t know that there is an anime made out of the novel. The clips I see of it looks awesome, particularly the flight sequences. I’ll definitely go look for it when I get home.

I’m now reading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Read: 1984

I cannot remember when I first heard about 1984. It must be about the same time I first heard about George Orwell. For a long time, the book had been on my to-read list but I never got around to reading it. There’s always a new release that I’d read instead. So some time ago I thought that I should at least try to alternate my reading between new and old releases, hence 1984.

At the very least, 1984 gives us the term Big Brother. The government rules on fear and propaganda, in this case complete control of information, using a perpetual war as a tool. Whether there is actually a war going on, and against whom, does not matter except that the government says so. Every aspect of our lives is controlled by the government, even our thoughts. No one can be trusted. Parents cannot even trust their children.

It is, in a fashion, a really scary novel. At every word I cannot help wondering whether Big Brother already exists, now, in real life. I also wonder if governments and politicians around the world, whatever the label they wear, actually learn from Orwell as much as Machiavelli.