Nothing really new here, just calling attention to how President Trump uses parentheses to demonstrate that by “fake news,” he means “news that is critical of me.” Similar:New Graphic for MLA Style Paper HandoutThe other day, I noticed that if you Goo…AcademiaJust Doesn’t LIke MasksCurrent_EventsThe Period, Our Simplest Punctuation Mark, Has Become a Sign of…
I wrote my college application essay on how I negotiated social situations by storing up an array of dumb puns on a random general topic. At a social gathering, I would sit around awkwardly until a certain topic came up — shoes (“lace be serious”), or cameras (“lens be serious”) or astronomy (“let’s be Sirius)…
A few weeks ago, I had students in my upper-level media class collaborate on a Google Docs study guide for The Name of the Rose. In my freshman writing class yesterday, I did something else with Google Docs… I created a page with three columns, and asked students to type their preliminary thesis statements on…
I ran into this problem several times in the last set of student papers, so it’s time for another illustration. When you’re talking about making a change, you mean the verb “affect,” and when you’re talking about something that results from a cause, you mean the noun “effect.” It’s rare to encounter “effect” as a…
For an article on communicating research findings in poetic verse rather than academic prose, an article in Qualitative Inquiry cites my Top 10 Poetry Tips handout.
Is your child texting about recursive acronym palindromes? lol = linguists overinterpret lol gtg = gtg tokenizes gatekeeping mcm = man-crush-monday connotes mania wcw = whoever created woman-crush-wednesday brb = befoggedly redefine brb Similar:Why You Hate Google’s New LogoThe new logo retains the rainbow of colo…BusinessMore Evidence that Choosing a Typeface Is ImportantAestheticsIt's “Alexander’s…
I’ve taught Plato’s Phaedrus before, but in the past I have mostly focused on brief passages in which the characters discuss writing, which is really just a side issue. The purpose of today is mostly just to accustom my “History and Future of the Book” students to oral classical culture, in the hopes they’ll get…
In English grammar, we use the definite article in front of a noun when we believe the listener knows exactly what we are referring to. Further, use of the word “the” suggests singular, as in The Pope. When you meet The Pope, then you’ve met The Pope. When you meet “the elderly” you’ve really only…
Don’t spend three pages establishing that some people burn to death, some people freeze to death, and some people drown. Start by saying what we need to do now that the iceberg we are stranded on has caught fire. Similar:I just finished recalibrating the port scanner station and lookout post. If you need help…
I’m frustrated by these accursed conference proposal maximum word counts. (10) Curse you, conference proposal word limits. (6) Damn proposal word counts!! (4) Cut wherever possible. (3) Trim wordiness. (2) Simplify. (1) Actually, that helped. Back at it. Similar:STEM Education Won't Solve the World's ProblemsI love STEM. My SAT score for math was e…AcademiaIn "World…
When is it legal to make a video in a public place? A kerfluffle at my local mall involves a restaurant owner accused of mocking and taking video of a special needs person having a meltdown. Several times a week I take my son to the food court and hand him my credit card. More…
Most of the students in my “News Writing” class don’t want to be journalists, but they all want to make a living from their writing skills. I’m trying to emphasize some of the markers that journalists put into their work, in order to signal that their work is credible. For instance, one saying in journalism…
Here is the transcript the girl provided, of her pun battle with my former student and Stage Right’s resident lyricist & character actor Greg Kerestan.
Sometimes when I find myself putting more than a usual amount of creativity into a comment on a student paper, I take a break from churning through papers to make another meme.
The Girl: I’m sorry I’m being so… Me: Self-deprecating? The Girl: No! Me: Testy? The Girl: No… the term I was going for is “bitchily modest.” Similar:MisSpelled: Premiering Oct 1In this podcast series, I voice a mage w…AmusingKate Upton and Ryan Gosling Explain the SequesterApparently these are two famous and phys…AestheticsRoyalty: For the Irish, it’s like…
If a goggles-for-brains Lego character can master the difference between active and passive verbs, you can too.
Wildcard? You mean quitter tile! Similar:I went down fighting.PersonalAmong today’s major professional accomplishments: installing this hook. #springbreakMy office door feels more complete now. …AcademiaWhere are Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, etc. in your "American Literature" syllabus?The following comment appeared recently …AcademiaDear readers: Please stop calling us ‘the media.’ There is no such thing.When my students refer…
“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
I first heard that quote from a newsroom mentor. It’s now one of many pithy sayings I often used in my journalism classes. As I was prepping for this fall, I realized I had never researched its origin. Boy was I surprised!
Fascinating contemplation of color perception, as mediated by language. The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just…
To master a topic, pretend you are teaching it to someone. Use simple language and analogies. If you stumble, study the topic some more, then try again. Richard Feynman was a physicist who received a nobel prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics. He was notorious for asking his mathematicians to explain concepts in simple…