I’d expect the Admiral to have said ‘all the nine yards’, perhaps, being more precise (the nine yards are not a ‘whole’ but a ‘set’ at best) but that doesn’t help proving it one way or another.

The way the Admiral used the word is an obscure but correct usage. The dictionary says it may be primarily Scotch in usage (or Scots in more modern terms).

It’s use in the USA in not unexpected though. It is odd how words and phrases suddenly shift. I was brought up with a clear understanding of the Scots word “Minging” as being very specifically something with a nasty, bad smell – fish that’s gone off, that type of thing. Then suddenly it re-emerged in in SE England with a much broader meaning as anything bad, poor quality.

Bored of this now………

Sorry Bob, should have warned you not to read the above. Etymology, however popular with Guardian readers and Radio 4 listeners, is never going to be exciting.

AllanK

He’s made his list

He’s checked it twice . . .

There are lots of opinions on grammatical matters, but it is what makes English so good for writers – it allows playfulness. The Guardian is a very useful guide, but it is only the standard reference when one is writing for them.

Guardian Style Guide (http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/s) says:

spelled/spelt
she spelled it out for him: “the word is spelt like this”

Only surprising when seen from the modern “mass production” view point. Short Brothers were somewhat prone to using the ship building approach of designing one-offs and making everything different. Commonality of parts was one issue that led to their big falling out with the Air Ministry.

I’d forgotten about the pic on post 117 – that will look just as cool.

Ah well, we tried. There might come a time when this will all make a lot more sense to you. Until then . . .

AllanK

PS Kev – when you said “earning a living” I hope you weren’t including me. For much of my life various forms of writing have provided my sole income but I wouldn’t call it a living. 😉

I thought a thread where we could discuss it and matters arising might be worthwhile?

What an excellent idea. If we keep all the party politics in here it will be much easier to get involved – or stay away. Still what hope of keeping politics out of the rest of the threads:rolleyes:

Well I’m not so sure. There’s lots of good points have been made and many need to be tried out and practiced in short writing exercises rather than in big re-writes of the story.

Ok, here’s my eight minutes of thought:

I don’t know why you need to split the story the way you suggested, with a longer air combat section. That’s not the biggest problem.

What I felt (and I suspect by bailing out after ten pages Kev suffered the same) is that the “real” air combat section clashed with the fantasy section (Pride Rock onwards). There was just too big a contrast between them. Instead those first seven or so pages need to lead the reader into the Pride Rock section. But that only matters if page nine onwards is the core of the story.

So, what I’d like is for you to write one sentence only, which tells us what it is about. There is a war, fighter pilots are in action over Africa and the story is about: . . .

Then from there we can all throw about ideas of how you get to that core story that you want and offer ideas of structures – if you want them.

And also suggest a few short exercises in writing emotion led descriptions – but I’ve used up my eight minutes so we’ll come back to that one.

Allan