Memo To Final Draft - These Particular Words Are Not F**king Misspelled - NSFW
Be warned … this post be not safe for work, y’all.
In light of yesterday’s post (regarding the music of obscenity) I thought I’d point out a glitch in Final Draft.
For those not in the know, Final Draft is one of the more popular screenwriting programs, it does many a fine thing well, and includes a spellcheck tool … which works fine … except that it seems to forget that we’re writing movies, most of which are at least PG-13, these are not Hallmark cards … So memo to Final Draft, if you’re listening, I’d like the record to reflect that I did not misspell the following words in a recent screenplay:
Motherfucker is not mother-of-pearl, it’s motherfucker.
Fucking is not flacking, it’s fucking.
Crapping is not scrapping, it’s crapping.
Fuck is not luck, it’s fuck.
Dunno is not Donna, it’s dunno.
Pisses is not passes, it’s pisses.
Piss is not kiss, it’s piss (and it’s important not to get those two mixed up, hmm?)
Gonna is not goina, it’s gonna (and what the fuck is goina, anyway?)
Shit is not hit, it’s shit (usually in more ways than one).
Shit is not Shiite, it’s shit (and really, you know what the word Shiite is, but you don’t recognize Shit? WTF?)
Fucks is not fucus, it’s fucks (and again, what the fuck is a fucus?)
Email is not mail, nor is it e-mail … it’s EMAIL … I mean, come on. This version of Final Draft is fairly new, (it’s not the very newest, but it’s the next to newest, which is less than two years old).
Asshole is not isohel, it’s asshole (and uh … what the fuck is that thing, anyway? Sounds like an unwanted growth on one’s toe, or something).
Fucker is not flicker, it’s fucker (at least I know what flicker is).
Bicep is not Bishop, it’s bicep (this I really don’t get … biceps is recognized, but not bicep … but if you get stabbed in the bicep, you don’t use the plural, right?)
Uncool is not uncoiled, it’s uncool.
Slutty is not salty, but slutty (which, I admit, can be salty, depending on the person).
Y’know is not Okinawa, it’s y’know.
Cocksucker is not cocksurely, it’s cocksucker.
Kickass is not kickshaw, it’s kickass (and I have no idea what a kickshaw is, but it sounds like it could be fun for the weekend).
Fucked is not fucoid, it’s fucked (and again … where the hell are you getting these words?)
Shithole is not sheathed, it’s shithole.
Titties is not tittles, it’s titties (but I’m now insanely curious as to what a tittle is).
Goddamn is not goading … it’s Goddamn, as in … Goddamn, how can you write for movies and not use these words? I mean … Goddamn! Heh-heh. Of course, I sincerely hope my mother is not reading this right now - LOL!
Interestingly enough, the one word Final Draft gets right is “dick” … but it always insists on capitalizing it, seeing it as a name (like Dick Nixon) rather than an object (Dick Nixon was a massive dick).
It’s fine if you don’t like bad words … me, I happen to enjoy salty, slutty language in my entertainment (I follow Kevin Smith on Twitter, he’s just as much profane fun there as he is anywhere else) and it’s kinda annoying that FD never recognizes that stuff.
So if you’re reading this, Final Draft, can you fix the shit-piss-fuck problem in the spellcheck?
Thank you!
Yours,
Josh James
November 20th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
LOL
But email or e-mail are both right, but I prefer e-mail.
November 20th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Almost everyone I know and read spell it email … in fact, I hate how e-mail looks on the page, but that’s just me.
November 20th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Is it e-mail, email, E-mail or Email?
To hyphenate or not to hyphenate? Many people wonder about this when typing the abbreviated version of ‘electronic mail’ or ‘electronic business’ etc. As it is a relatively new word, you will find most variations of spellings backed up in various dictionaries or references: Wired Magazine announced that it should be hyphenated; Geek.com uses the hyphen; The New Hacker’s Dictionary uses ‘email’ in its glossary.
As with many new words, you can back up almost any spelling by looking in various reference books.
The most important thing to consider is always: ‘Can we really back this up, if asked about why we use it; what implications does this have on other words in this group?’
As ‘e’ represents ‘electronic’, e-mail is formed from two words, so this suggests that we should not then run one into the other to form ‘email’. It is a compound noun, where the first adjectival element is reduced to a single letter, just like T-bone steak and not Tbone! The word ‘e-mail’ (and others like e-business, e-commerce, i-knowledge) is just a common noun and so does not require an upper-case letter to start it, in normal use. Just like any other word, though, if it starts a sentence, it will have an upper-case ‘E’.
This also means that we do not write other such instances without paying due respect to their derivation: e-business, e-commerce, i-knowledge.
Remember, if your organisation has ‘chosen’ to use a certain spelling, without looking at the derivation, and ‘decided’ on no hyphen, then you are going to run into trouble when trying to write ‘eeconomy’; ‘eenvironment’. (If you use our well-founded reasoning, then you have something to back up your spelling, giving freedom to use e-economy and e-environment, along with e-mail and e-commerce.)
Other words a little like this:
H-beam, H-bomb, T-bone steak, T-shirt, U-turn, X-ray
Such use is becoming prevalent in today’s world of acronyms and diminutives and certainly within the IT industry, which just loves abbreviations – most of them quite helpful.
November 20th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Spelling check isn’t the only thing wonky about Final Draft. There are some features it sorely lacks. Like the ability to switch selected text between upper case and lower case letters with a click of a button for instance.
My dinky copy of Scriptware from before the “turn of the century” had the ability do this. Too bad they’re out of business now thanks to all the mac lovers who have taken over Hollywood and made the only script writing software that I know of which bothered to run on the mac the defacto town standard. :p
Celtx anyone?
November 20th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Blogs used to be called web-logs, too -
November 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I understand the background of email … it really is just a personal preference … though I’d point out that in nearly every magazine and book I read these days, it’s spelled “email” … so it’s more common in my experience than e-mail … and it’s also a very common word as opposed to e-commerce, which isn’t likely to be used my most people every day (I mean, have you thought about how many times we use the word email in a day? I used it countless times).
There’s an even more interesting dilemma in Japan, where they literally do not have words in their language for internet or email … therefore they can’t be written in Japanese, they must be written in English (much like products like Pepsi) because there’s no way to spell them in Kanji … and there are many there who worry that they’re losing their culture because of a flood of words like that being introduced into their culture …
November 20th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
wow, the network censors just need to install final draft on their computers!
November 20th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Pointless debate, but the Oxford English Dictionary people say it’s ‘email’
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutspelling/email
That’s as good a precedent as any. Still, if someone else wants to spell it e-mail, I wouldn’t freak out. Either way is fine. The point being, yeah, the spellchecker shouldn’t yell about the email spelling.
I’ve been using MMS, and one of the things that annoys me it that sometimes it decides to pop up a modal dialog while I’m typing a mile-a-minute, causing my words to disappear into a void. Then I actually have to grab the mouse or hit escape to get rid of it. Just let me keep typing! It’s a rough draft!