An easy one for the educated amongst you! As my book is being edited in house, that house being ours house... I am at an impasse with my editor, she being the one with the an education unlike me!!! I think Hmm she thinks Mmm. Context I can hear from here every one shouting, Ok I will put it into context.
"The handsome looks... hmm, well maybe! however, just now they were hidden behind the grime and grit that also covered his clothes.
or mmm
My Wife, sorry my editor thinks that modern day speech has changed it to the latter. Well who is going to be smug, the educated one or me?
Thank you, Paul.
Advertising slogans thrown in the bin:
#4,698 ""Hmmmm, Bisto?"
For once (SHOCK, HORROR!) I disagree with Lorraine. Why should books perpetuate speech that sounds as if it came out of books? For how long did people go around saying "Do you not think that Gordon is handsome?" because they read it in a book? (In fact, I hear speech like that fairly often: from Spanish people who've learnt their English from books and [learned it from] English teachers who aren't English-as-a-first-language speakers themselves. I tell them: "No matter how good your accent, when you go to Britain, people will tell you how well you speak English... and think to themselves 'must be a foreigner'.")
It's getting difficult for me to think back to the Stone Age, but I can imagine a teacher of mine back then correcting "Don't you think" to "Do you not think". (According to Jane Austen, the correct form was "Do not you think".)
As much as I shudder when I hear people answering "How are you?" with "I'm good!", and saying "My bad!" instead of "Sorry!", this is the way that people talk. And a book should reflect the way that people talk, hmmms and mmmms and errrms and warts and all. (Though expressions such as "My bad!" might date your book horribly within a few years... Personally, I wouldn't use it, because a) I hate it, b) I don't want to help in spreading its usage. I wouldn't hesitate to use "errrm", because I doubt very much that I'd be encouraging others to pick up the habit.)
Maybe, meaning possibly, is one word (Oxford Dictionary for Editors and Writers).
'That's as may be' - means something quite different, so is two words. It implies a fuller 'That's as it may be'.
I'd avoid Hmm and mmm altogether. 'Well, maybe' says all you need to say. What you use in everyday speech doesn't necessarily translate well to the page, and if I were your editor, I'd cross it out however you spelt (UK)/spelled (US) it.
Lorraine
Thank you all,and thank you for the humour Jimmy, I take the point that mmm is usually taken as "That's a nice thought or experience" and Bisto, nah I'm an OXO man myself!!!
Thank you Jonathan, thank you for the positive answer I like being smug not easy with a woman who wins most of her court cases!
Adrian, Hmm Maybe I will have to consider what you have pointed out but only may be! I think you are correct about the doubtful thought it means considering and you only usually consider if there is an element of doubt.
Penny, yes I know what you mean I haven't used "Ums erms and em's" in the book as a general way of narration, in this case it is used in way of the narrator considering the handsome in one so young then coming to the conclusion it is OK to use handsome for a thirteen year old boy. But I take on board that we can not hammer the story with those ugh moments. to me they work like buffers at a railway station that stop a runaway train, it takes effort to pick pick up again after being stopped by them.
Sorry I do go on.
Again thank you all I will leave the considering Hmm as it is. I love this site.
Regards to all Paul.