i said he said she said

I noticed with amusement one day that one of my subordinates had an electronic English-Chinese dictionary on her table. "What on earth are you doing with that?" I asked, trying to squint at her screen for those incomprehensible squigglings that I used to learn in school.

"Oh, I'm just using it to find synonyms for 'said' so I can write my minutes," she said.

Ah, minutes. I haven't written any in a while, but finding enough synonyms to lend variety to the script is one of the most pain-in-the-ass things for any secretary. I mean, there is only so many times that A said this, B replied that, C commented and D remarked. E opined and F averred while G stated his support. Finally, H directed and the meeting ended.

It reminds me of a recent discussion I had with Shadow over whether or not J. K. Rowling is a good writer. Shadow opined that she was not, because her dialogue is bland and puctuated with Harry said, Hermione said, Neville said etc, etc. No variety, no synonyms, no class. Then again, I retorted that I had never noticed this before, and likely neither had the millions of other readers that have made Harry Potted probably the bestselling book of the 21st century to date.

So as long as the storyline (or content) is good, who really cares whether you nuance all the comments from various people at a meeting. So the next time I write minutes, it shall just be said, said and more said. I'll see how that goes down, at least it will be a lot less headache on my part.

Bogglific words of the day: eastings (longest), stymie (most exotic), toenail (cutest)
(Click on the link to see a pretty cool site that ranks all Facebook apps by polularity.)