Tag: spam

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Spam On a Blog

carolyncordon

So spam on a blog is a given, I suppose, so really, why get all angsty about it? The world wide web is just that web of people all across the world, and we all have our own reasons and motivations for what we do here.

Some of us write blog posts we hope will attract interested readers for information or amusement, others have quite different reasons for delving around the blogging world. The Spammers, for instance, want to get more people visiting their own blog, so drop links to it almost at randome, with comments that don’t necessarily make any sense at all, to my mind.

But then I am an Australian, and English is the language I use, while I suspect many spammers I meet on my blogs have a language other than English as their first language. Well done to them for trying, I suppose.

I don’t get angry about such unwanted comments, I just check my blogs, when I think of it, and delete such comments. And sometimes I have to admit, I have a giggle at the ‘mis-writings’ I read there!

And to be honest, the way my blogs are not attracting many comments at all sometimes, even a bit of spam is welcome, it gives me something to read … How sad is that little confession? Never mind, I have new platform to write on, and it’s far more interactive than blogging on WordPress is.

The new platform is Medium, and this is a link to my most recent post there: link Why not take a look at the site, maybe you could make tiny little bits of money there too! That comment will make more sense after you’ve read my post on Medium …

Writing

I Love the English Language, but …

carolyncordon

Yes, as a writer, I adore our language, the way it changes, and grows, taking bits from here and there, and using them in sometimes different ways. And the sounds of words, too, when they fill the mouth with the essence of the meaning of a word, accidentally, perhaps, or maybe on purpose.

The word SCRATCH, for instance, compared to the word MAMA. One of those words is painful and nasty, the other word feels like a warm hug from a beloved parent. Do you agree? Of course, knowing the meanings might taint my attitude, but even so, say the words out loud, and you’ll get what I’m saying, I’m sure. Words have power beyond their meaning …

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

And speaking of meaning, I had the most weirdly interesting use (misuse?) of a word. It’s one I’ve never encountered before, and suspect I may not ever again, unless it were to take off amongst a certain group of writers, Spammers. I was checking the spam on my website/blog, and came across a sentence, and had to share it with my writing friends here. Is it a brave attempt to reshape a word, or is it simply misuse of a word by a person whose first language isn’t English?

This is the sentence, picked out of the spam post, and copied, just before I deleted the spam. “I did however expertise several technical issues using this web site, as I experienced to
reload the website many times previous to I could get it to load properly.”

It’s an awkward sentence for sure, but really, a brave attempt, I suppose to make a person want to use the spammer’s expertise to fix a problem. But they’ve confused two words, using ‘expertise’ when they obviously meant ‘experience’, and then they use ‘experienced’ incorrectly when ‘tried’ would have been a better word for what they meant. And then they made a mish-mash of the final part of the sentence. With ‘previous’ instead of ‘before’ and ‘to’ instead of ‘so’.

I’m not laughing at this person, or trying not to. If I had to write anything in a language other than English, my attempts would be equally as dodgy, I suspect. But if this person had stuck to smaller words, they may have been more successful. Short words, when used correctly, have far more gravitas than longer words used incorrectly.

I’d love to have some comments about this from my writing friends here, lets have some fun with words. Who has a favourite word they’d like to share? I like the word softly, said in a gently voice, with the ‘s’ extended, like a blanket, and the ‘of’ sound, a person snuggling down and the ‘tly’ sound the blanket being tucked in …

Tell me about your favourite word, I’d love to hear about it!