“What answer do you want?” “Just tell me what you want me to write, and I’ll write it for you!” I once had a student in a literature class who almost had a panic attack when she found out, from the mock final exam, that the final exam would contain poems and prose passages that…
I had a similar experience, with a mentor who very rarely praised my work. But when he read my first full draft of my dissertation, and along with his notes told me to schedule my defense, I knew he wasn’t being polite or friendly or sympathetic — I knew he was treating me like someone…
Headline Capitalization Generator! Simple concept. Type your headline in a box. Invisible typing fairies will capitalize your words for you. One of the settings is for AP Style. You should probably actually learn the rules for capitalizing first, but this is a useful tool for checking. Similar:That one ungraded assignment is an early submission due…
Normally, students and teachers in Finland take a 15-minute break after every 45 minutes of instruction. During a typical break, students head outside to play and socialize with friends while teachers disappear to the lounge to chat over coffee. I didn’t see the point of these frequent pit stops. As a teacher in the United…
The conscious awareness of Comic Sans promotes — at least among some people — contempt and summary dismissal. But is there a typeface that promotes, engenders a belief that a sentence is true? Or at least nudges us in that direction? And indeed there is. It is Baskerville. Believe it or not, the results of…
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Apple is skilled at attracting praise. Often, it deserves that praise. This isn’t one of those times. […] For Apple to prove it truly stands with artists, Rabhan says, it would have to fundamentally change the way these contracts are negotiated, striking deals directly with the artists instead of music labels. Until that happens, he argues,…
Apple changes its plans, after initially intending not to pay artists during the three-month free trial of its new music streaming service. Three months is a long time to go unpaid, and it is unfair to ask anyone to work for nothing. I say this with love, reverence, and admiration for everything else Apple has…
An employer will never ask you to write a five-paragraph essay, but your employer will expect you to demonstrate the critical thinking skills that you will develop while mastering the college essay. How will you set yourself apart from all the other job applicants who have also passed freshman comp? These are all specific skills I…
Around 1990, when I was studying for my MA at the University of Virginia (and also working as a writer/editor for the engineering school), I sometimes had 30 people over at my place for “Star Trek parties.” The local TV station aired the show at midnight Sunday. My friends and I would rotate through different locations, but…
What does a reporter do when a source rambles, misspeaks, or otherwise botches what would have been a good quote? “Generally, I fix quotes for grammar, especially with average, ordinary people,” says Ellyn Ferguson, a regional reporter for Gannett News Service. “I am doing the interview to get information from them, not make them look…
Fascinating video journalism from the New York Times. They didn’t shed, chew the sofa or bite the postman, but for thousands of people Sony’s Aibo robotic dog was the closest thing to a real canine companion. So when the Japanese company stopped servicing the robots last year, eight years after it ended production, owners faced…
I tell my students that if what they want is specific job skills, they should learn how to lay cable or get a Class-2 rating to drive a P-5000 Power Loader. But the specific job skills I teach a freshman or sophomore may be out of date by graduation day. Rather than teaching students how to use…
Saving this article. What a story. Nowhere does the reporter insert an opinion, but the take-away message is powerful. “I think it’s phenomenal,” Dieter said. “If you don’t think out of the box, you can’t get anything done out of the box.” Dieter and about 75 other conference delegates were clearly hoping for an entertaining…
My daughter is playing the “Caterpillar Head / Butterfly,” in her first ballet performance this weekend. The cast has been rehearsing for months, but only a few days ago did Carolyn first get to practice with the professional dancers who will be doing the lifts. Similar:Infinite Scrolling: XKCD's Creative Insight on a Common Interface IndignityAmusingFacebook, really? More…
From the tangled tale of mass literacy one can pluck a few specific objects—books that were to be found in every household where there was somebody who could read and people who wanted to listen. Aside from the Bible, a typical list would run like this: “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and “Gulliver’s Travels,” to…
I probably should not be surprised, but when I saw this run of several headlines on the ABC News website, I was struck by how deliberately uninformative they are. I added some useful information that could have been in the headline. A print journalist writes a headline for someone who’s already holding the newspaper, so…
If we are going to treat college as a commodity, and an expensive one at that, we should at least grasp the essence of its economic nature. Unlike a car, college requires the “buyer” to do most of the work to obtain its value. The value of a degree depends more on the student’s input…
What is the story behind this image? What is the source of that text? Why is that word “allegedly” doing in the headline? The image is a screenshot from Facebook’s trending news stories. Who wrote those words? I searched Google for “officer on leave after video allegedly shows him pulling gun on unarmed teens” at 10:30am…
Hermann Zapf, the designer of fonts such as Palatino, Optima, Zapfino, Melior, Aldus, and the bizarre but much beloved Zapf Dingbats, has died at age 96.The revered German typographer and calligrapher passed away on June 4. In his long and prolific career, Zapf worked on many fonts, but his personal favorite was the humanist sans serif typeface Optima, the lettering chosen for the…