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Culturomics Looks at the Birth and Death of Words

Roughly 30 to 50 years after their birth, they either enter the long-term lexicon or tumble off a cliff into disuse. The authors suggest that this may be because that stretch of decades marks the point when dictionary makers approve or disapprove new candidates for inclusion. Or perhaps it’s generational turnover: Children accept or reject [...]

Aesthetics | Culture | Design | Humanities | Language | Writing

15 Grammar Goofs That Make You Look Silly

Beautiful synergy of word and image. Proofreading errors aren’t always related to “grammar,” and the explanations are not as instructive as I’d like to see. Students who are already unhappy about being in a freshman writing class might not appreciate being told they are fools and goofs, but I’m always looking for ways to make [...]

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The importance of “show, don’t tell”

XKCD

Academia | Culture | Education | Humanities | Language | Literature

Poetry Out Loud : Learning Recitation

I’m one of the judges in a “Poetry Out Loud” competition tomorrow afternoon. I regularly assign recitations in my literature classes, and resources like this may help students from stressing out, since the site is full of well-phrased dos and dont’s for reciting poetry.

Please keep in mind that there is no definitive recitation or [...]

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The Love Song of J. Alfred Proofreader

Was it worthwhile, Throwing off my shawl, Turning toward the writers to say: “That is not it at all, That is not what you meant, at all”? They thought me Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse. They just wanted to dish about Johnny Depp on the loose.

I grow old…I grow old… But [...]

Current_Events | Journalism | Language | Literature | Modding | Writing

Newspoet: Tracy K. Smith Writes The Day In Verse

Smith sat down with All Things Considered’s Melissa Block to talk about writing a poem in a hurry. She called the day she spent with NPR’s producers “delightful, and a little terrifying.”

But reflecting on the headlines isn’t exactly a new activity for Smith. In fact, she said she often finds that news events are [...]

Books | Culture | Humanities | Language | Psychology | Writing

Notes on The Death of the Author

Some passages that struck me as I reviewed the influential Roland Barthes essay.

[I]n ethnographic societies the responsibility for a narrative is never assumed by a person but by a mediator, shaman or relator whose ‘performance’ — the mastery of the narrative code — may possibly be admired but never his ‘genius’.T he author is [...]

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John Branyan – The Three Little Pigs – YouTube

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London’s Big Ben is leaning, parliament sinking: reports | Reuters

Note headline; here is the only time this Reuters article refers to the “parliament was slipping into the Thames” issue:

[Professor John Burland of Imperial College London] dismissed concern in the media that parliament was slipping into the Thames, while the commission’s spokesman denied the walls around the palace were suffering from a particularly bad [...]

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Revisiting ‘Zork’: What We Lost in the Transition to Visual Games – Atlantic Mobile

In my mind, the house is clapboard, with a black, precisely shingled roof and shutters in a bit of disrepair. The sky is always an intangible, faded blue, and the forest surrounding the clearing is dark green. In other words, it’s always summer — and hot, since I imagine the house surrounded by long, tan, [...]