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Week 10 Day 66 Friday 19 March I really am going to Albany with the trAce team. My hotel confirmation came through today. A big American conference- like in a detective novel. I will spend all my time wondering who is going to be murdered and who the murderer is. That Plaza makes a good setting. Now there's a theme for a collaborative novel we can play on the long plane journey. Meanwhile I have to make a `poster, or posters to show the use of the internet in my writing, trAce has a printer with an enormous footprint but I am told it will accept nothing larger than A4. Pity, every time I try to stick paper together it goes bumpy. Sometime ago trAce members discussed whether the English used by a member of one nationality was understood by a member of another in the way the speaker intended. I have had been pondering a similar question about writing style. Are some styles acceptable in one country but not in another. In the UK for instance the occasional use of the passive voice is considered to add variety but it offends many in the USA as do the progressive tenses which many of the Americans, confusingly for a Brit, also refer to as the passive. When reading English language newspapers in Delhi I was struck by the way the article and the verb tenses were used so differently from the way we use them in England although the meaninng was still perfectly understandable to a UK reader. This may be my last chance this week to add to the journal as the trAce server is being overhauled so I will try to ftp now before it is too late Go to Week 11 Back to title page |