Well, that didn’t hurt… much.

I finally managed to finish up the website I was working on. I think I may have to redo one of the pages. It has an awful lot of images on it. I’ll wait and see what comes back in terms of feedback.

Feedback. Hmph. Makes me feel like a microphone too close to a speaker. Isn’t it odd how we try to treat humans like things? I heard an ad on the radio the other night and it made me cringe. It was a fundraiser for people “impacted by diabetes.” Impacted? No. They’re not a colon, they’re human beings. All over. They are affected by diabetes, not impacted.

We give our input on subjects. We no longer seem to share ideas or brainstorm. I’m not a computer. Neither are you. When we reduce our behaviours, I think, to terms used for inanimate objects then we’re making ourselves inanimate.

Personification of inanimate objects has been done for years, hundreds of them. That’s just the way we write or tell stories. It puts a ‘face’ onto something that may otherwise be frightening (or normal, depending on the story). It’s a step to make the unfamiliar seem familiar, or the mundane seem extraordinary.

So why can’t we do that any more with humanity? Describe us as people, as human beings, not inanimate objects. Use people-verbs. Use people-nouns and adjectives.

Above all, when you write, keep your characters human.