Story/ RL confrontations

Anybody else ever almost sign a work e-mail with your handle? I was writing an e-mail to a colleague today saying that I had the means to do something improperly but preferred to do it properly if I could. The ASJ phrase "but legal!" occurred to me (but I didn't phrase it that way). I darn near signed the thing HW. And no, those are NOT my real initials. Well, one of them is - I guess I could have argued it was a typo . . .

HW

Yep! I've caught myself signing Penski on real life and work emails too many times.
Hmm... Wonder how many time I didn't catch it.

Ah, the shadow Penski threatens to emerge into the light! I'm sure you've always caught it. Or almost sure . . .
HW

Hi,

I've never done that, but I've frequently had to take kisses out though!

That's funny, HW. Nope, I haven't done that...YET! I'm sure I will one day. I did once submit a report for work and was shocked when I realized that I had used the slang term "gonna" instead of going to. Sheesh! I may live to regret writing in dialect.

Watch out for that, Silverkelpie! What I really have to watch out for is the reverse - using too correct grammar when it should be dialect. I have to go back and take out possessive with a gerund etc. purposefully. But I'll have to guard against dialect creeping into my work writing!
HW

I have moved about and read a lot and watched too many westerns. My vernacular is spotted with Homilies. As, y'all probably notice by my writing. And, yes I actually say and write y'all in my stuff. But, it is part of the charm of RedRock Photography. The perks of owning your own company. (Too bad I can't seem to get a certain pair of boys to walk into my studio, I mean Hades it is situated in RedRock -- right?)

But, back to topic. (They tend to make my mind wander) When it has been a long day or I am tired, I have caught myself saying "Okay Hun have a good night see ya soon or such.) As the ending reply to a client on the phone. Now, a client who has been around me they take it in stride but you can hear the newbies snort when I slip saying, "Bye Hun see ya tomorrow at 10am" They just love the fact a stranger is calling them Hun...and I hang up going 'tranation you did it again Nichole."

Waitresses in Baltimore, and in western Maryland, are famous for calling everyone Hon. I've even seen it on bumper stickers, so it sure does show up outside of the westerns! So don't worry, hon!

And where I grew up in Maryland, plenty of us said y'all (especially because of my Texas mother's example), but no one down here in Arkansas, the real South, says it. Go figure!
HW

By the way, I started writing a story once where the closest town to Devil's Hole was called Tarnation. Well, what in Tarnation!
HW

I have Kid's infamous Walk-Off speech as an avatar on my blog. But that's pretty much it, really.

Today I ran head on into my own story in a painful way. I got a fund raising e-mail to help the victims in Boston. The letter came from the Senator from Boston - Elizabeth Warren! For those who haven't read any of my stories, Elizabeth (Beth) Warren is a major character.
HW

No y'alls in Arkansas, HW? Wow, that surprises me. I can assure all y'all that when in Alabama or Georgia you will here y'all.

Well, Skykomish, they don't y'all much if at all around Little Rock. I wouldn't be surprised if people in the southern delta area said "y'all," but I haven't been down there yet. I'm new in the state and it still seems mighty foreign in a lot of ways, despite my Texas and Oklahoma parents.

It's one of the funny but understandable things about the series - certainly no accurate frontier accents. I doubt that anyone knew what that would really have sounded like. Accents have changed so in the last 100 plus years, according to what I have read. I understand that a great many southerners used to use the oi for er sound that we now associate with Brooklyn. But you can still hear it in old recordings of old jazz songs from New Orleans, like "hoit" for hurt. I wonder what a real western frontier accent from where the boys have been would have sounded like.
HW

The question of a "true" western accent, or accent to their time and place is interesting. I would suspect that in the 1860's - 18890's, you didn't have much of a place specific accent out there much, simply because most folks weren't born and raised in the west yet. Most people were still moving there from all over the country, and, indeed, world so you would have had all kinds of accents. But that's my speculation, no knowledge of the facts of it.

I'll see what I can do on research, but I'm too busy to do a professional job on it. My favorite, Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way, is no real help except to assert that American English stayed amazingly uniform all over the county in the 19th century due to the terrific amount of travel all over the place.
HW

Not 100% real-life but...

Currently I'm into a game called Criminal Case. My colleague is a mr. Jones.
And he's got blue eyes too!