Fancyclopedia

ACKERMANESE

from Fancyclopedia 2

The grammatical practices followed by Forrest J Ackerman and in part -- the degree varying from fan to fan -- by those in whom his example propagated. Several minor wars were fought over the question of its uses but the invention went on insidiously spreading till about the time of the Insurgent War in LA. The practice, tho not the name, was revived about 1954 as described under DEMOLISHISMS.

Lapse of Ackermanese was not directly caused by the Blowup; it was abandoned by 4e himself, with the explanation that he was disgusted with a lot of things like this that he'd tried to popularize with slight success.

Originally it was a radical form of simplifyd spelng, like "U & I r to b praps th lst 2 men to go roketng to an xtra-galaktik planet wher a rekt ship is strandd". This sort of thing ("Ackese") was a little too much even for 4e, and as it eventually developed Ackermanese included a toned-down simplifyd spelng. Stylistic peculiarities included nonstoparagraphing, a colloquial style with plenty of scientificombinations, and punnery wherever the opportunity presented itself. Quotes were rendered with all their typing peculiarities and errors; only one set of quotemarks was used on a series of consecutive words or phrases from various sources; the native names were used for geographic locations ("Moskva, Deutsche, Ceskoslovensk", etc -- and the use of quotemarks here illustrates the preceding point). Syntactical oddities like omission of "of" in "another th fans" and placing modifiers outside verb phrases as in "He undoubtlessly'd say so" instead of "He'd undoubtlessly say so", should be noted. Mechanical characteristics, as seen in the writings of Mirta Forsto and others, are the use of green pen and mimeo ink -- green is the official Esperantist color -- neotric green-and-brown typeribbon, and the Vogue sans-serif typeface.

 
 
 

Last Modified 6/6/07 1:13 PM