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11 September 2005: A pressing problem for me at the moment is what to call those infraverbal devices in which words are meddled with. I have a name I'm satisfied with for each individual kind of meddling: infraverbal fission, infraverbal fusion, infraverbal . . . Hmmm, I can't remember my terms for adding letters to words, or subtracting letters, or mixing up the letters in a word. The latter would be anagramming. No matter. What I want now is a general term for these kinds of things. I keep feeling the need for one in my Cummings essay, for these kinds of things happen all the time in his poems, particularly those I'm writing about. In fact, I almost feel I can't continue my essay without one.
"Infraverbal vandalism" was one attempt of mine. I suppose "infraverbal alteration" would suffice--but it's so drab. "Disruption." I just found that in my thesaurus for "destruction." But how to use it. "Derangement" is another fairly obvious possibility. "Micranism." That'd be great if it at all suggested it had to do with words.
Ah, I think I have it: "heterography," the opposite of "orthography," one meaning of which is "correct spelling." But I'll use "errography" instead, for the sake of sound. Ha, I can bring in "eme": an "errographeme" is a grapheme that has been misplaced in a text for some aesthetic effect or effects. No, on second thought, "errographeme" is out because the device has to do with more than one grapheme. I'll have to go with "errographism" for text that has been poetically misspelled. "air RAH gruh FIZ um." And "air RAH gruh fee." There, now I can get back to my essay on Cummings.
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