From The Millions:
A lovely piece by Jessica Francis Kane on where we write.
Archive for the ‘Words’ Category
Where we write
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010Rules for writing?
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010The Guardian asked several authors for their writing dos and don’ts. Here’s a sampling, picked out by Shelf Awareness:
- Margaret Atwood: “You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality.”
- Roddy Doyle: “Do keep a thesaurus, but in the shed at the back of the garden or behind the fridge, somewhere that demands travel or effort. Chances are the words that come into your head will do fine, e.g. ‘horse,’ ‘ran,’ ’said.’”
- Geoff Dyer: “Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.”
- Anne Enright: “The first 12 years are the worst.”
- Richard Ford: “Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.”
- Jonathan Franzen: “When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.”
- Neil Gaiman: “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
- Jeanette Winterson: “Enjoy this work!”
3-minute fiction
Monday, February 22nd, 2010NPR has brought back its “Three-Minute Fiction” contest.
For rules and the photo, go to: www.npr.org/threeminutefiction
Help for writers
Friday, January 29th, 2010
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From FreelanceFolder: “20 Writing Mistakes That Make Any Freelancer Look Bad”
AND
Resources to Help You Improve Your Communication
Here are four great resources that can help you improve your writing:
- Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. Grammar Girl provides regular tips and podcasts to help improve your grammar.
- The Purdue Online Writing Lab. This is probably the best known of all the grammar sites. If you have an English usage question you’ll find the answer is here.
- Grammar Monster. This site contains interactive writing lessons and quizzes.
- Grammar Slammer. You’ll find some good snippets of information here.
Internet language
Friday, January 22nd, 20104 countries clear hurdle for non-Latin Web names
NEW YORK (AP) — Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the first countries to win preliminary approval for Web addresses written entirely in their native scripts.
Until now, the Internet domain name suffix — such as “.com” — had to be in Latin characters, even if the parts before it could use other strings. Thursday’s announcement paves way for the entire domain name to appear in Cyrillic or Arabic by the middle of this year.
The countries now have to formally request the suffixes, and the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has to sign off. That’s expected now that the ICANN staff has cleared the proposed suffixes to make sure they won’t cause technical problems or confusion with an existing domain name.
Misspelling
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010From The Oatmeal: Ten words you need to stop misspelling.
The science of reading?
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Fascinating. Alan Rinzler blogs about how your brain reacts when you read in “Lighting Up Your Reader’s Brain: Can Neuroscience Teach You to Be a Better Writer?”:
“… There’s scientific evidence that books really do turn on our brains. The brain’s response to the written word can be seen in scans using technology called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), that illuminate in bright lights and colors the increased flow of blood through synapses of the brain as we read. …”
New fonts
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Alison Morris blogs about her new favorite fonts.
Oxford Word of the Year
Monday, November 16th, 2009Every year the New Oxford American Dictionary picks a Word of the Year. Its 2009 Word of the Year is “unfriend”:
unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook. As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”
Spell that!
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009A spelling bee among writers and publishers took place recently, according to Vanity Fair.
Fun with collective nouns
Monday, October 12th, 2009One of the fun features I’ve come to love about Google is the community feedback on a topic. One Web site asks us to contribute our suggestions for the names of collective nouns. Here are a few:
a service of waiters – a remembrance of dreams – a party of mustaches
a slurry of bagsnatchers – a pestilence of 10 year olds – a deposit of millionaires
a squabble of politicians – an interference of mangers – an extravagance of millionaires
a correction of editors – a scribe of editors – an output of managers
a kindle of kittens – a soupline of journalists – a vault of millionaires
a tipple of whiskies – a proof of whiskies – a yowling of cats
a balance of judges – a swoon of zombies – a grandiosity of opera singers
a flight of dragons – a flush of plumbers – a flame of dragons
a conflagration of dragons – a prickle of hedgehogs – a huddle of hedgehogs
Pick a name — any name
Thursday, October 1st, 2009This is very fun, especially for writers. Stella at The View From Here lets us in on some helpful Web sites that can aid writers who need to find names for their characters. It’s also good if you’re expecting!
Collective nouns
Monday, September 14th, 2009They’re fun, they’re informative, they’re descriptive, they’re head-scratching: collective nouns. Sure, there’s a school of fish, a pride of lions, a herd of cattle, but there’s also a murder of crows, an exultation of larks. Ah! the wonders of the language.
Via Twitter, people can make up new collective nouns and vote for their favorite suggestions. Check it out.
Hope
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
— Emily Dickinson (1830–86)
Complete Poems. 1924. Part One: Life, XXXII
Why ‘I’ and not ‘me’
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009The New York Times gives us some history on why we capitalize the first-person singular nominative pronoun “I” and no other pronouns.
An editor’s work is never done …
Monday, July 20th, 2009Someone at Vanity Fair took a red pen (and a green and a blue) to Sarah Palin’s resignation speech. It’s so hard to find good editorial humor.
Hey, word lovers: This is fun!
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009from the Nieman Journalism Lab:
If The New York Times ever strikes you as an abstruse glut of antediluvian perorations, if the newspaper’s profligacy of neologisms and shibboleths ever set off apoplectic paroxysms in you, if it all seems a bit recondite, here’s a reason to be sanguine: The Times has great data on the words that send readers in search of a dictionary. As you may know, highlighting a word or passage on the Times website calls up a question mark that users can click for a definition and other reference material. … Anyway, it turns out the Times tracks usage of that feature, and yesterday, deputy news editor Philip Corbett, who oversees the Times style manual, offered reporters a fascinating glimpse into the 50 most frequently looked-up words on nytimes.com in 2009. …
Click the link above to see their chart of the top 50 words. Very fun! (bonobo, Sisyphean, etc.)
Baby names you don’t hear anymore
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009We deal with a lot of names at the newspaper. That includes newborns. And today there are a lot of Britneys, Aidans (both of these spelled about four different ways), Emmas, and Tylers. But many of the grand old names from the past have fallen into the well of forgetfulness. Let’s start a list of names you never hear babies being named anymore. (Except for the offspring of various Hollywood-celebrity types.) Here are a few:
Girls:
Maxine, Beverly, Doris, Marilyn
Ruth, Hazel, Suzanne, Irene, Mary
Esther, Louise, Estelle, Geraldine
Wilburta, Alberta, Roberta, Bertha
Gladys, June, Phyllis, Edna, Mabel
Florence, Betty, Patsy, Blanche, Josephine
Mildred, Gertrude, Pearl, Opal (and most of the jewels)
Rose, Iris (and most of the flowers), Elsie, Bessie
Charity, Prudence (and most of the virtues)
Shirley, Ann, Margaret, Peggy, Priscilla,
Nellie, Ernestine, Thelma, Wanda, Wilma
Lavinia, Myrtle, Lottie, Viola, Ethel
Hortense, Heidi, Lillian, Caroline, Jean
Anita, Jane, Rita, Frances, Bernadette
Daphne, Sylvia, Helen, Maureen, Lorraine
Lena, Clara, Kathleen, Nadine, Denise
Barbara, Dinah, Patricia, Christine, Dell
Beatrice, Eugenia (other than the princesses)
Rosemary, Laverne, Tallulah, Joan
Boys:
Herbert, Wendell, Wilbur, Edgar, Cornelius
Egbert, Harold, Morton, Fred, Burt
Luther, Lloyd, Clarence, Dwight, Marvin
Carl, George, Norman, Ralph, Walter
Theodore, Millard, Willard, Woodrow, Chester
Abraham, Rufus, Ernest, Simon, Louis
Franklin, Jeremy, Raymond, Donald, Francis
Douglas, Bradford, Silas, Victor, Conrad
Gerard, Calvin, Martin, Dennis, Albert
Sebastian, Henry, Harvey, Everett, Malachi
Gregory, Arnold, Albert, Frank, Edmund
Maurice, Craig, Stanley, Gene, Eugene
William, Harry (other than the princes)
Barry, Sidney, Robin, Lawrence, Peter, David,
Thomas, Willie, Clyde, Vernon, Roger
Vincent, Perry, Alistair, Gordon, Homer
OK. There’s a beginning list. Can you add to it?
What’s in a word?
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009Do you love the word love? Do you hate the word moist? Here’s a humorous look at some of the words we love and hate.