The Break Down of the Canadian Style Guide
Or
I Bastardate English Before Going to Bed

The Canadian Press, or CP as I will use here (sounds more like PC) is the Style Authority for every journalist and competent media writer in the country. It is heavy, paperback, and written in friendly type are the words “A Guide for Writers & Editors” on the front cover. It sells for around $60 in universities and high-end mega bookstores and is regarded as the Canadian Writers Style Road Map. In its inside pages, the guide keeps a writer up to date with the appropriate use of the English language within the country.

At some point, a group of editors, writers and humanists sat around a cold boardroom table and conferred the proper general writer’s style that would be accepted clearly and unmistakably on a national level.

Horribly however it only shows how not to piss off readers by adopting a more wishy-washy tone to a piece of writing. Canadians acting polite or it is really a brave new world?

Example #1:
CP became the first western news agency to drop the courtesy titles MR, MRS, and MS from all copy. The rule of style is use the full first name (eg: Annalea Kornuta) to identify or introduce a subject first, then resort to the surname for the rest of the writing. This was due to what the CP guide described as an “erratic” system of style to assume consistency within media style.

Example #2:
Descriptive or Identity words, such as cripple, housewife, and Indian, are to be rejected and replaced with “softer” descriptive words such as disabled person, homemaker, and aboriginal. Sadly this attempt backfires in time when due to the media’s constant use of them they become the labels that fall out of flavor. Due to this factor, the style changes slightly from year to year to spin away from the faddish to apply a stark and an almost routine manner of explaining blatant examples of sexism, racism or abuse.

The CP Guide also acts as the 21st century “miss manners” reference by setting down basic rules that each Canadian reporter must abide to when working for any publication within the country.

Example #3:
“The best exercise for impartiality is to stop regularly and ask yourself “am I being as impartial, honest and fair as I can be?” -quote from the guide.

The top sections under “IMPARTIALNESS” go into subjects such as:
Obscenities, Language, Aboriginal Peoples, Age, Disabilities, Race, Names of Races, and Sexism. There are hard rules against stereotyping that trickle down into modest forms of writing (such as: we do not call them firemen anymore). By changing the way the language is written, no one is offended, no one is sued, and everyone goes home happy. This polite attempt is to keep Canadian news stories inoffensive and accepted on a wider general level. By not including anything offensive in your style of writing, the piece takes less of an individual voice further distancing reader and writer and replacing it with a voice more conformed and dictated.

The Guide then gets tired of this forced manner of conservative PC preaching and then starts to tell you what you really need to know for Canadian grammar and punctuation.

The Guide also is too large to stick in your back pocket and refuses to sit flat beside a desk or computer.

The last reason is the most highly used excuse to refuse the CP Style Guide by Canadians everyplace since simple functionality is strongly taught among writers. Irony is really the four-letter word of the Canadian writer.

I CRADDLE WATER AROUND LIKE AN INFANT CHILD
I actually feel rested for the first time in almost two weeks. What a feeling to wake up in the early morning and not have to feel as if I need to electrocute myself in order to get the body moving. I guess I had better put a stop on the order I made on that defibrillator.

So KC has me on more wacky dealings for this month to which I am still confused to why I am taking them but I blame myself for just skimming the info which was given. Every morning I have the routine: Wake up, feed Scoot, then start administrating vials of liquid metal ampoules down my pipes. You should have seen KC’s face when I told him how much water I was drinking in a day. I thought I was impressed with the 2 bottles I was packing in. I was wrong! FOUR. That is right- I have to start drinking four bottles a day. Is there enough time in one day for four bottles of water? I will be like those “trying-to-lose-weight-all-the-time” nut jobs I used to see in the mall when I worked retail- carefully walking around in their day suits clutching at a water bottle like an infant child as IF water was a controlled commodity and not readily available everywhere. Nope, not them- they think the water we conveniently have tapped in from the plants are “contaminated” or “full of something”. They must feel great in paying $3 for a bottle of water that came from a place across the ocean (water) up in snowy hills (water again) from a place that most likely doesn’t have running tap water readily available in most areas of the country (fiscally sound as water running thru the fingers). Now that is drinking! Snobs. Just drink the damn water.

***A Few Personal Words From AnnK on the Heritage Awards***


Again, thank you to everyone who came and supported me in the afternoon. As I reflect on winning, I must say I was very nervous sitting up at the front with Leslie Fitch from the Library and occasionally I kept turning around to see if I could catch a glimpse of Sarah and Luke a few rows behind me. Garth made a very lovely speech where he did note about the website and the work between Inkz and myself, but forgot to mention Luke! I would like to take this moment to thank Luke so much for all of his hard work and for being such a good friend of mine.


The Award itself is "TOO MUCH ROCK FOR ONE HAND" (if you know it, throw it up!) and is actually a piece of stone from the old Milton Bruce Street School that was built over a hundred years ago and was demolished in 1970. It weighs in at 20 pounds of Kickin' Frickin' Escarpment stone and has a nice scrawled plaque.



I have never won anything like this before and its an honor to receive this. I remember I was having a conversation with Lauren on Thursday where we talked about all the stuff we would win as kids and how on track day we were always the one’s at E.W. Foster school who got ribbons that read “PARTICPANT” for just coming out. I hated competition as a kid and was ruthlessly teased by my peers for being such a lousy girl at sports. One year, I got into my head that if I signed up for the longest track race I would win some place out of default because no one would be that stupid to sign up for such a ridiculous competition. To my horrors, over 15 other students signed up and all the mean boys from my class came to tease me in my defeat. I just ran and tried to keep my pace and suddenly after a few laps I noticed that half of the girls I was running against just gave up and the boys who had came to tease me started cheering me on. I came 6th place, but I remember the boys were stunned when I crossed the finish line. “We didn’t think you’d even finish, but you did!” At that moment in my life, I didn’t listen to them really, but that thought came back to me when I was sitting up at the front of the Heritage Awards.

It was like a scene from Key the Metal Idol (which is a great anime series if you can find it) where in a moment in my life when everything was loud and confusing. The room just went silent and I noticed I was standing with a crowd around me with faces of people I have known from many aspects of my life cheering me on. It was in that moment I realized that within me I had something I have always longed for with the encouragement of my peers.
I could not have made it here without all of you! Thank you for your support and please keep rooting for me in 2006 and towards the future!

To see the current uploaded photos of the days event, please check out:

http://www.agentorange.digitalinkz.com/gallery/Heritage-Awards-2006

More photos will be uploaded soon! (Thanks to Luke for taking the pictures!)

In addition, if you want to check up on all the stuff I am working on, please stop by my website! www.agentorange.digitalinkz.com

Thank you again!

~AnnK