Don'T
I always wanted to write a fiction book, and I planned to do so when I retired. Life threw me a curve in 2016, in the form of a healthy bout of unemployment. I had three “solid” ideas and started with the second so I would gain enough experience to write the first, which I felt was the better story.
Now, jumping into being an author is not as silly as it may seem for a technical (right-brain) person like me. My father was a successful author of ceramic textbooks, so it is reasonable that I could be successful in fiction. (My mother has a term for this: wishful thinking.)
Plus, I had two huge advantages. The first was that there is “a group of readers who purchased every new book,” and the second was “the internet makes it easy to submit a book to publishers.” Translation: get rich quickly and skip all the hard work my father did. Where did my two huge advantages come from? My imagination! Had I done a five-minute internet search, I would have seen the brutal truth of publishing.
I mindlessly began with a blank page, and on the way to a first draft, I learned many harsh lessons. The biggest was that my technical English skills were nowhere near up to the task.
Since that fateful decision, I have been on a quest to improve them. This meant reading books by authors, studying articles, and, most importantly, spending endless hours reviewing my own work. In addition, I also seek out internet content and analyze movies.
There is an upside and a downside to my improvement. I appreciate excellent writing, which allows me to enjoy a well-written book or movie on many levels.
The downside is that bad works stand out like a dumpster fire on a moonless night. I cannot stand sloppy writing, and this has ruined movies that were well acted/directed. Plus, I will put down a book in a heartbeat if I see the slightest flaw.
My distaste pops up everywhere. Billboards with flawed grammar, misspelled words all over the internet, and entire television series with the worst plots in human history. Yuck!
All was going fine until my hypercritical mindset discovered something that stopped me dead in my tracks. However, I need to take a side track to explain.
I have been a fan of the BBC series Top Gear for many years. Despite being a reality show, there was excellent writing behind the scenes. One host, Jeremy Clarkson, is a snarky individual with brash opinions. A famous quote is “I don’t believe what I write, any more than you believe what you say (about the Iraq war).” He makes statements like this to shock his audience. This translates to sales, and I wish I had the skills/guts to be as outgoing as Jeremy is.
The Top Gear Show abruptly ended, and the trio went on to another reality show, The Grand Tour, which also ended. In a radical twist, Jeremy became a television farmer as a retirement hobby. Yet he had an ace up his sleeve: a vast reality television experience, which turned a basic farming show into a successful series and business. But that was not the biggest surprise.
British farming has been undergoing intense government scrutiny for many years, and the show publicized the farmers’ frustration. Suddenly, they had a mega-hero, and there is no bigger mouth than Jeremy Clarkson. To drive the point home, he made insightful YouTube videos.
I am not a British citizen or a farmer, but I enjoyed the YouTube videos because he makes solid/well-written arguments (great writing). All was going fine until this video caused my English analyzing mind to do a backflip:
Now, jumping into being an author is not as silly as it may seem for a technical (right-brain) person like me. My father was a successful author of ceramic textbooks, so it is reasonable that I could be successful in fiction. (My mother has a term for this: wishful thinking.)
Plus, I had two huge advantages. The first was that there is “a group of readers who purchased every new book,” and the second was “the internet makes it easy to submit a book to publishers.” Translation: get rich quickly and skip all the hard work my father did. Where did my two huge advantages come from? My imagination! Had I done a five-minute internet search, I would have seen the brutal truth of publishing.
I mindlessly began with a blank page, and on the way to a first draft, I learned many harsh lessons. The biggest was that my technical English skills were nowhere near up to the task.
Since that fateful decision, I have been on a quest to improve them. This meant reading books by authors, studying articles, and, most importantly, spending endless hours reviewing my own work. In addition, I also seek out internet content and analyze movies.
There is an upside and a downside to my improvement. I appreciate excellent writing, which allows me to enjoy a well-written book or movie on many levels.
The downside is that bad works stand out like a dumpster fire on a moonless night. I cannot stand sloppy writing, and this has ruined movies that were well acted/directed. Plus, I will put down a book in a heartbeat if I see the slightest flaw.
My distaste pops up everywhere. Billboards with flawed grammar, misspelled words all over the internet, and entire television series with the worst plots in human history. Yuck!
All was going fine until my hypercritical mindset discovered something that stopped me dead in my tracks. However, I need to take a side track to explain.
I have been a fan of the BBC series Top Gear for many years. Despite being a reality show, there was excellent writing behind the scenes. One host, Jeremy Clarkson, is a snarky individual with brash opinions. A famous quote is “I don’t believe what I write, any more than you believe what you say (about the Iraq war).” He makes statements like this to shock his audience. This translates to sales, and I wish I had the skills/guts to be as outgoing as Jeremy is.
The Top Gear Show abruptly ended, and the trio went on to another reality show, The Grand Tour, which also ended. In a radical twist, Jeremy became a television farmer as a retirement hobby. Yet he had an ace up his sleeve: a vast reality television experience, which turned a basic farming show into a successful series and business. But that was not the biggest surprise.
British farming has been undergoing intense government scrutiny for many years, and the show publicized the farmers’ frustration. Suddenly, they had a mega-hero, and there is no bigger mouth than Jeremy Clarkson. To drive the point home, he made insightful YouTube videos.
I am not a British citizen or a farmer, but I enjoyed the YouTube videos because he makes solid/well-written arguments (great writing). All was going fine until this video caused my English analyzing mind to do a backflip:
The video had overlaid closed captions, and a sentence jumped off the screen, “It Was About People Who Don’T Understand Farming.” Why was the T capitalized in don’t? That did not make any sense.
As I watched more of the video, there were more hyphenated words with capitalized letters: It’S, That’S, Wasen’T, Weren’T, Couldn’T… I could not believe my eyes; this was so outrageous.
Umm, now what? Well, I needed to do some major thinking and eventually understood that Jeremy was doing what he does best, shock me. And I fell for it big time. Yet, his efforts were crafty and subtle. Alright, job done. I was shocked, on to the next video. Umm, no.
There had to be more to it, and I applied more noodle time. Is it proper to capitalize the T? Absolutely not, according to the gold standard, The Chicago Manual of Style. Yet… it worked.
There are many ways to shock English readers with sentences and words. Sam is in BIG trouble. Sally had some “thinking” to do. I am eXciTed to bE on teLevIsioN. Plus, bold letters, italicized words, different fonts, invented words, non-English words, and profanity. Why, I could even misspell words. Have you seen this fantastic dance video by Fik-Shun?
As I watched more of the video, there were more hyphenated words with capitalized letters: It’S, That’S, Wasen’T, Weren’T, Couldn’T… I could not believe my eyes; this was so outrageous.
Umm, now what? Well, I needed to do some major thinking and eventually understood that Jeremy was doing what he does best, shock me. And I fell for it big time. Yet, his efforts were crafty and subtle. Alright, job done. I was shocked, on to the next video. Umm, no.
There had to be more to it, and I applied more noodle time. Is it proper to capitalize the T? Absolutely not, according to the gold standard, The Chicago Manual of Style. Yet… it worked.
There are many ways to shock English readers with sentences and words. Sam is in BIG trouble. Sally had some “thinking” to do. I am eXciTed to bE on teLevIsioN. Plus, bold letters, italicized words, different fonts, invented words, non-English words, and profanity. Why, I could even misspell words. Have you seen this fantastic dance video by Fik-Shun?
So, the T is capitalized. Big deal. Right? I am going to go with no for the simple reason that I have never seen this before, which puts this technique in a unique shocker class.
Now, you might be thinking, “Are you really concerned or are you faking interest?” While my writing effort began without a proper foundation, I still applied maximum effort. I have never let up, and a big part of that is identifying issues, fixing them, and doing my best never to repeat them.
It is a slow, organized, and meticulous process. Some discoveries are easy to grasp, like avoiding multiple sentences that begin with the same word. Bob went to the store. Bob purchased ice cream. Bob left the store. Yet other concepts are not easy to understand, and I may never understand others, like the word existential. I still think it is a trick that dictionary writers played on us years ago.
I treated this capitalized-letter issue like a puzzle and was not going to let it go until I either fully understood the concept or formally gave up. So, yes, I was truly interested in learning what was going on.
In prior articles, I have talked about my writing tool belt. This is a mental collection of techniques I used to pump up, polish, or fix my work. Is this one of those tools? In a future article, I will attempt to impress you with a capitalized T?
It took even more noodle time to decide the answer is no, because it is too bold; even for a book title which is supposed to be the boldest thing on the planet. To me, Don’T reads like a curse word in a peaceful setting; too strong. Another way of looking at this is that this type of grammar/spelling shocker reads as out of place; it is offensive to a reader’s eyes.
Well, on the flip side, what about the above-mentioned Fik-Shun? Does his name read out of place? I would argue no, his name reads amusing. Therefore, I think the category for a capitalized T should be used only in a location that describes something very important. The problem is that this kind of shock writing is far outside of my comfort zone.
Well… What if I could write a specific topic created just for that circumstance? Hmm. More noodle time. Well, that only took getting away from my keyboard to make an iced tea for me to develop an answer. In a recent article, I pointed out that anybody can use AI to generate (fake) video evidence. And I Feel The Media Isn’T Giving The Topic The Attention It Deserves.
Yeah… That sentence does not read right at all. Simply put, I am not a shocker. Now hold on. What about my characters? Hmm. More noodle time. Dang, I have only taken two sips of iced tea.
After finishing my tea, some editing, cleaning, and outline work, I have a solution. My characters indeed go far beyond an extension of me. They span boldness, weakness, cruelty, and cunning that is above whatever I will become or could hope to become. Three of them have even traveled to a different planet.
Long ago, I realized that to be a successful author, I needed to have a bold attitude. Thus, it should be possible to write anything my bonkers mind can dream up. Meaning I can include a capitalized T in whatever sentence I want. Right?
Um, major hesitation. The more I think about it, the more I want to say yes. So, I made a decision. I am going to jam this awkward tool into my writing tool belt. And I have the perfect place. In an upcoming book, I plan to have a scene with a shocking video. And some closed captioning? Probably going to have a few extra capitalized letters.
You’re the best -Bill
March 04, 2026
Now, you might be thinking, “Are you really concerned or are you faking interest?” While my writing effort began without a proper foundation, I still applied maximum effort. I have never let up, and a big part of that is identifying issues, fixing them, and doing my best never to repeat them.
It is a slow, organized, and meticulous process. Some discoveries are easy to grasp, like avoiding multiple sentences that begin with the same word. Bob went to the store. Bob purchased ice cream. Bob left the store. Yet other concepts are not easy to understand, and I may never understand others, like the word existential. I still think it is a trick that dictionary writers played on us years ago.
I treated this capitalized-letter issue like a puzzle and was not going to let it go until I either fully understood the concept or formally gave up. So, yes, I was truly interested in learning what was going on.
In prior articles, I have talked about my writing tool belt. This is a mental collection of techniques I used to pump up, polish, or fix my work. Is this one of those tools? In a future article, I will attempt to impress you with a capitalized T?
It took even more noodle time to decide the answer is no, because it is too bold; even for a book title which is supposed to be the boldest thing on the planet. To me, Don’T reads like a curse word in a peaceful setting; too strong. Another way of looking at this is that this type of grammar/spelling shocker reads as out of place; it is offensive to a reader’s eyes.
Well, on the flip side, what about the above-mentioned Fik-Shun? Does his name read out of place? I would argue no, his name reads amusing. Therefore, I think the category for a capitalized T should be used only in a location that describes something very important. The problem is that this kind of shock writing is far outside of my comfort zone.
Well… What if I could write a specific topic created just for that circumstance? Hmm. More noodle time. Well, that only took getting away from my keyboard to make an iced tea for me to develop an answer. In a recent article, I pointed out that anybody can use AI to generate (fake) video evidence. And I Feel The Media Isn’T Giving The Topic The Attention It Deserves.
Yeah… That sentence does not read right at all. Simply put, I am not a shocker. Now hold on. What about my characters? Hmm. More noodle time. Dang, I have only taken two sips of iced tea.
After finishing my tea, some editing, cleaning, and outline work, I have a solution. My characters indeed go far beyond an extension of me. They span boldness, weakness, cruelty, and cunning that is above whatever I will become or could hope to become. Three of them have even traveled to a different planet.
Long ago, I realized that to be a successful author, I needed to have a bold attitude. Thus, it should be possible to write anything my bonkers mind can dream up. Meaning I can include a capitalized T in whatever sentence I want. Right?
Um, major hesitation. The more I think about it, the more I want to say yes. So, I made a decision. I am going to jam this awkward tool into my writing tool belt. And I have the perfect place. In an upcoming book, I plan to have a scene with a shocking video. And some closed captioning? Probably going to have a few extra capitalized letters.
You’re the best -Bill
March 04, 2026
