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I also offer personally-tailored, individualized English conversation practice (including etiquette) and coaching in writing techniques. Finally, I edit texts such as magazines, business proposals, memorandums, emails so they are presented in English which does not embarrass you or your organization. For further details, please mail me at: language.etiquette@gmail.com

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12 May 2013

Expressive mistakes in English: "clittirous"?

The ladies toilet in the smart steak-house in Biisk
Thank you, readers, for your patience. I have been away to the Altai for a fortnight and have not been posting. I do not take my computer on holiday with me, as I like to have holidays rather than distance working breaks. Yet you have continued reading this blog in large numbers, despite the absence of new posts. I am flattered.
     The Altai was such a wonderful experience (including six days on the train) that I have decided to change the top picture on this blog. I will write about this all somewhere else shortly, and post a link here. In the meantime, I have put up a couple of pics and a bit of narrative on my daily diary page on blipfoto. You can access it here.
      I got back a day ago to a huge mountain in my in-tray, amongst which was a sex novel which I have been editing for a Russian lady friend of mine. I am trying to remove those mistakes which detract from the text, but leave in the style and tone, which is far from standard English but which is often all the more expressive for that.
     Just now, I came across the following sentence with a misspelled word in it. I would normally change something like that, but I think the mistake is actually a revealing and artistically suggestive one and so am reluctant. This is what my friend wrote:
“He puts his hand into my underwear and reaches my clittirous.”
     Should I correct the spelling of the last work or leave it as a weirdly expressive mistake, which seems to me to carry  suggestions of the word “desirous”? What do readers think?


1 comment:

  1. UnknownJuly 28, 2013 at 9:24 PM

    I would get rid of this sentence completely :)
    'Reaches my clittirous' - it's not getting a can of baked beans from a cupboard shelf :)
    And it's not underwear, it's knickers or panties, right?
    On the other hand the very thought of beating '50 shades of grey' might be so tempting!

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