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FREE VERSE refers to poetry that break the old rules of meter and rhyme – so i named my iconoclastic writing style which utilizes minimal punctuation along with simplified spelling FREED PROSE

im not being arbitrarily heretical – while the motives behind punctuation in english are well-meaning – it has become too complicated – and many people – like my dad – can speak like native born americans – but cant compose a simple letter – cuz to them – written english is an alien language

how did it became alien

first of all – it was bound to be alien to some degree – when speaking – much is conveyed outside of words – such as pauses – tonal changes – vocal emphasis – facial expressions and gestures – etc – and most of these conveyances cannot be reproduced in written english

verbal pauses are one spoken element that should easily be represented in written language – altho – strangely enuf – its rarely represented by spacing – instead we use periods – commas – hyphens or dashes – semicolons – ellipses – etc – thats a good indication of the difficulty associated with evolved punctuation – its redundant – and confusingly vague in its usage

consider the apostrophe – is that little stroke really necessary

the apostrophe is accidently left out – does possessiveness fail to be conveyed – i frequently never notice when its – or it’s – being misused

many contractions work fine without it – for instance – dont instead of don’t – it takes a little time to get used to it – but not long – however – i confess that i found a few contractions without apostrophes difficult to read – so i use we’re rather than weer – that probably means weer or some alternative will take longer to insinuate itself into conventional writing

take the following as a sentence spoken aloud – he said you don’t have to do it – when we hear it – we instantly know it includes a direct quote – there’s no need to use the 2 finger quote gesture – or say quote unquote

anyway – i decided to start fresh – dispense with punctuation marks – and even paragraph breaks – then add in those i felt were absolutely necessary – this project is still in the beta phase

i quickly restored paragraph breaks even tho they dont occur in spoken english – but ive found that a single forest of words stretching to the horizon is off putting

yet there is almost anarchy in paragraph forming – different people will take the same wordage and insert paragraph breaks in different places – in both conventional writing as well as in freed prose

i think this proves that any grouping into paragraphs is unnatural – maybe Wittgenstein had it right – a sentence at a time is more natural

instead of writing in complete thoughts as prescribed – i write in phrases – altho – i might break them at arbitrary places – struggling for a clear expression of my thought

i find this necessary cuz in writing we dont have melody and the other speechifications that we use to direct the reader along our thinking path – so while writing – i depend on careful phrasing for that

as for simplified spelling – the advantages are obvious – its been attempted many times over the years – many simplifications i thought were recent – go back a century – such as altho and nite

by coincidence – running parallel to my heretical practice – has been internet and phone texting – i consider them proof that breaking the rules doesnt inhibit communication – no doubt it will produce a generation willing to break from tradition – who – like me – will look with dismay at traditional writing – and wonder how it survived for so long

we are breaking rules – breaking with tradition – removing straitjackets – but we must necessarily stay close enuf to the familiar to communicate – this isn’t anarchy – its evolution

i once wrote a letter in freed prose to the editor of a libertarian magazine – i thought political libertarianism would nourish a mindset friendly to cultural innovation – but no – the letter was published with corrected english punctuation – i almost wrote them a letter saying “so you are regulatory after all” – but a prescriptivist would be unlikely to see the humor cuz the definition of prescriptivist must necessarily start with the word anal

(from my book of short stories to the author’s surpr!se)