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…
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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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…
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…
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…
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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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 subsidence…
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,…
When my daughter was five or six, and she got into trouble along with her older brother, she would overhear me explaining to my son why I would punish him more severely than his sister. Pretty soon, when they both got caught, my daughter would shriek, “You have to punish Peter more than me, because…
I don’t know what Kid #1 will do with his BA in English (OK, writing…whatever!). Maybe he’ll write the next great American novel. Maybe he’ll be a marketing rockstar. Maybe he’ll write for ZDNet. Maybe he’ll be the next Sondheim. It doesn’t matter. The more I think about it, the more I wish my doctors…
The sermon was so powerful that the designers of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington selected those lines to be inscribed on the memorial’s towering statue of the civil rights leader. But because of a design change during the statue’s creation, the exact quotes had to be paraphrased, and now one of the…
My daughter was amused that, even with a cheat sheet in my hand, I automatically responded to “Peace be with you” with the traditional “And also with you,” every time this Sunday, instead of the new translation “And with your spirit.” Not once did I get it right. Similar:Opening night. Support local artists in your…
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I believe I feel like a pribbling idle-headed mumble-news. (Thanks for the link, Jessica!) Tastefully Offensive | Premium Funny: Shakespeare Insult Kit – StumbleUpon. Similar:Dance of "the awkward nerd trying to act really cool" Carolyn (doing a really cool dance m…AestheticsA very shallow story that doesn't provide any context for who is giving the high…
The local paper’s headline spins the news a bit more negatively than it probably deserves. I rather enjoy the opportunity to look at some familiar words in a fresh light. Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer: (Current Text) Priest: Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us. (New text)…
Dr. McCarver calls herself a doctor because she returned to school to earn a doctorate last year, one of thousands of nurses doing the same recently. Doctorates are popping up all over the health professions, and the result is a quiet battle over not only the title “doctor,” but also the money, power and prestige…
In honor of the cold I am fighting, I just adopted the word “gleimous,” meaning “slimy, full of phlegm.” —Save The Words. Similar:Eye of Sauron, Hobbit Door, Palantir and One Ring Easter Eggs.AestheticsIn January 2001, I was blogging about Bill Clinton's #WhiteHouse security deposit, anachro…In January 2001, I was blogging about …AcademiaKorean News Station…
At some point, using “syllabi” as the plural of “syllabus” started to bother me. Being “correct” about egg-headed words such as phenomenon/phenomena or criterion/criteria is among the most visible markers of education and class — and insufferable pedantry. For instance, those who wear tinfoil hats while blogging from their parents’ basements are likely to wave…