Do Children Prefer Tablets and e-Readers Over Traditional Books?

Last month, as she presented author Joanne Harris with an MBE for services to literature at Buckingham Palace, the Queen expressed her concern regarding children’s preferences for e-Readers and tablets over the traditional physical book.

This is obviously something close to the monarch’s heart – even though in her regal capacity she rarely voices such sentiments, she spoke, on this occasion, as a mother, grandmother and now great grandmother.

Joanne Harris is most famed for her best-selling novel Chocolat in 1999, published in 50 countries. After the ceremony she said: “She asked me what I thought about e-books and computer games and said that she feared that children were playing with those more than they were reading books. So I told her that we start them on e-books and computer games and TV and then try to get them on to books later.”

The author added that the shape of books may change but that “people always need stories and the shape of those stories may alter”. It is her opinion that traditional books will be with us for a long time and it is great that both adults and children have a wide variety of reading choices.

Earlier this year, the National Literacy Trust published research showing that “a majority of children preferred to read on screens rather than books”, and 50 per cent of the nation’s two and three-year-olds use a tablet. More worryingly, children’s literacy skills seem to be taking a downturn, with the popularity of new technology.

So, is the book as we know it dying out in favour of e-Readers and tablets?  One solution may be to expose children to both worlds – e-Readers and traditional story books – and let them make their own choices. 

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Play Scrabble to improve your vocabulary

The board game Scrabble must be excellent for improving one’s vocabulary. But I guess that’s only true if you consult a dictionary and try new words.

Paul Allan has just become Britain’s national Scrabble champion, so he knows how to get the best from his own vocabulary, reported the Daily Telegraph. “The whole dictionary is there,” he said, “and it is a rich dictionary. There are no good or bad words. You’re looking for strategic advantage.

“You can use swear words and nobody bats an eye. You would do that in the small church hall tournament playing against a 90-year-old nun. You just play it as if it’s an ordinary word.”

Competitive spirit indeed!

His winning round against Allan Simmons, however, contained more mundane than exotic words, with “conlines” scoring the highest with 98. (It’s a poison found in hemlock.) Simple words used to clinch victory were: “ugh”, “be”, “zed”, “vet”, “yeah”, “dorm”.

Other words in Mr Allan’s winning round that might have you scrabbling for the dictionary were: “fy”, “litu”, “bandura”, “swarf”.

Christmas is just around the corner. If you haven’t got Scrabble in your house, why not treat the family and improve your vocabulary with a few games?

In the meantime, come to WriteItClearly.com for the best in writing.

Is the FutureBook Conference a little elitist?

I saw a notice about "The Bookseller's FutureBook 2013 Conference". I was intrigued and went to the website to have a look at what it was all about.

It is described thus: "The Bookseller's FutureBook Conference on 21st November is Europe's biggest publishing conference - a must-attend event, packed with fantastic speakers who will challenge your thinking and help shape your strategy for 2014. A great opportunity to network and connect with over 600 industry leaders, there will be 40+ speakers, 9 sessions, 7 big ideas pitched and stimulating discussion and debate."

Sounds interesting.

I looked for where this is being held: QEII Conference Centre, Westminster. No problem.

I looked for the cost of attendance: £399 for non-subscribers (to The Bookseller). (It's £368 for subscribers.) And these prices EXclude VAT.

Now that seems a lot to me. I'm not denying that setting up the conference, paying for the venue, and presumably paying at least some of the speakers will cost a bit of money. But £478.80 to attend?

As a (very often underpaid!) small business, I don't think so.

Is it rather elitist?

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The curse of being able to read accurately

I see that Lynne Truss is giving up on lecturing people about punctuation. She’s not giving up on punctuation, just on lecturing people about it.

 

It’s a shame. It is ten years since her book on the subject, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, came out and of course she cannot be expected to carry the torch for punctuation single handed.

 

The book cannot maintain its currency for ever, even though its contents will certainly hold good for many years (we could hope for ever!). Shops stock other books; people move on and buy other books.

 

In her weekly article recently in the Sunday Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/lynne-truss/10382533/Lynne-Truss-its-no-longer-useful-to-be-able-to-read-accurately.html) Ms Truss cites several examples where missing or incorrect punctuation could have led to misunderstandings.

 

The trouble, she says, is that people expect you to be able to understand what they’re trying to say. The keywords is trying. People like Ms Truss who understand punctuation understand what people have written, not what they’re trying to write. It is a curse.

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Greengrocer's apostrophe gets an outing

Oh my, the greengrocer's apostrophe was alive and well in a south-coast seaside town recently.

In this first example, we have a perfectly used apostrophe for Kelly's of Cornwall, but a naughty apostrophe has crept into chips (also with a superfluous dot above the H!).

In addition, I do hate dots over capital Is, as in chips and pies.

In this second example the greengrocer's apostrophe gets a real good outing.

Two portions of chips and a portion of chicken nuggets get the treatment. Interestingly, judging from the spaces, three portions of chips appear to have sacrificed their apostrophes!

Incidentally, the apostrophes had no bearing on the quality of food available.

BBC - use a proofreader, please

Oh dear, oh dear BBC!

This appeared on our screens on the South East local news programme following the Ten o'clock News on earlier this week:

This error, using "then" rather than "than", is sometimes found of people who do not use English as their first language, and sometimes of youngsters who are not widely experienced in writing.

It is not an error we expect from the BBC.

As we all know, errors can easily creep into our writing, but ... maybe the BBC is too lazy to use a decent proofreader.