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cat63 ([personal profile] cat63) wrote2010-12-02 02:50 pm
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People who deserve to be slapped with a fish, Part 903.6

Anyone who uses the word "drabble" to mean "any short piece of writing".

The longer the piece they use it of, the larger the fish they should be slapped with.

The thing that really irks me about this is that there are plenty of words already for short pieces of writing - short story, vignette, ficlet, to name but three - but there is no other word which means " a story of exactly one hundred words" so if the "language evolves" gang get their way, we will lose a word with an exact meaning and gain not very much at all. If anything. Grr!
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[identity profile] trishtrash.livejournal.com 2010-12-02 03:08 pm (UTC)(link)
Huh, isn't that interesting? I had never encountered the word before the fan-ficcer's got to me, and so always assumed it meant 'short work of fan-fiction'. Thanks for the informative rant!

*ducks the fishies on the way out*

[identity profile] rhiannon-s.livejournal.com 2010-12-02 03:09 pm (UTC)(link)
True and for really short bits, a minific, which is basically a Statler and Waldorf style skit which is usually just scriptfic style and maybe a sound effect.

I give use of Drabble a pass if it is a couple of words either side of it. I mean ninety or one hundred and five is probably excusable, but not two, or three hundred. Not fifty either, except that they must pass it to reach one hundred. One hundred is the number they must count to. I mean really, is it truly that bloody hard to do, really? I think not.

[identity profile] jaelle-n-gilla.livejournal.com 2010-12-02 03:16 pm (UTC)(link)
*ducks head from flying fish* I guess I used to be guilty of that - mainly because the first time I read it it was as a verb and meant "kept on talking" or something along those lines. Can't really blame people because it sounds to much like babbling.

I know, it's mostly used for 100 word stories... It might be good to have a better word for that than a pure slang word, though. Like "centaurs". No, wait, they exist already. Centuries? Centifics? Centinels? Hm....

[identity profile] femsc.livejournal.com 2010-12-02 05:03 pm (UTC)(link)
You will write out "I must not abuse drabble" twenty times.

[identity profile] edith-jones.livejournal.com 2010-12-03 04:55 am (UTC)(link)
I hear the word 'drabble' and I immediately think of the British author, sister to A.S. Byatt among other things. I had no idea the word could be used insultingly. And now that I've drabbled on [trying out the word], I shall be sure never to use it to describe anything you've written, ever :)
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[identity profile] ximeria.livejournal.com 2010-12-03 07:09 am (UTC)(link)
It's been a source of annoyance to me for ages, but I've sorta given up on people now. It still bugs me, though, because writing within 100 words exactly isn't all that easy when you should have an opening, middle and an end within those. 300 words means you've failed at saying what you wanted within a drabble and it's become a ficlet/vignette. It doesn't mean I notice if people hit 101 or 99 words - sometimes it's a matter of how your word processor counts dashes and words etc. but yeah, if they KNOW that a drabble is 100 words, they have NO excuse for doing 500 words.
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