We naturally adapt our language based on our social surroundings: we choose different words to describe the same thing when addressing our pals in a pub, our professor at a pub, our professor in class, or our grandmother on the phone. I’ve written about this before as code-switching. When code-switching appears in written language, some folks experience … Continue reading »
Check out today’s US Navy ends dependence on capitalised communications from BBC News. Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, told the BBC, The US Navy has made up its mind that not everything is a crisis and some messages are just normal. The change appears to mean the organization has … Continue reading »
“Carefully defined writing activities” in a learning situation have an even less direct relationship to “writing” than “pasturized process cheese food” has to “cheese.” Photo Credit: dadadreams via Compfight cc This wonderful quote comes from a post by Professor E. Shelley Reid on the Writng Program Administrator’s listserv last April. Professor Reid was involved in … Continue reading »
My first new post in a while. And I’m ranting — albeit somewhat quietly. This time I’m reacting to a newly published research article about assessing student writing within MOOCs. Balfour, the author, provides a review of two technologies for assessing writing when you have a huge student-to-teacher ratio: Automated Essay Scoring (AES) and Calibrated … Continue reading »
Purpose is unchanged. But the blog has a new look and organization. Feedback is welcome! Continue reading »
After something of a hiatus from Pros Write, I’m (finally) continuing the series on writing the different sections that make up a research article (RA). I’m tackling the Methods section here. (See this post for a discussion of the overall structure of the RA.) The Methods section is usually the easiest section for researchers to write. So I recommend they start … Continue reading »
I meant to post this Monday morning — when many in the workplace could use a happiness boost! (That’s what dopamine does for your brain.) You may think positive psychology is mostly platitudes. But Shawn Achor could change your mind. The psychologist’s research into happiness shows that success does not lead to happiness. Instead, happiness leads to … Continue reading »
Check out this TED talk by linguist John McWhorter about the language of texting. McWhorter makes the point that texting operates less like the language of writing than the language of speaking. So “fingered” speech. McWhorter also provides examples of people complaining about young people’s failure to follow the linguistic conventions established by older generations for hundreds — even … Continue reading »
Because it’s Friday and we all need a little more fun, I’m sharing The Dirty Etymology of 9 Everyday Words by Romy Oltuski, who wrote this piece for mental_floss.** I don’t know Romy, but I share her sense of humor about word origins. Enjoy! Within our lexicon lives a library of forgotten stories, developed over … Continue reading »
Within Western culture, there are few workplaces with ONLY men or ONLY women. In theory, our workplaces are gender neutral. Our language, however, sometimes perpetuates a world in which women are subservient to men. Sexist language is commonly characterized using six issues: pseudo-generic pronoun, he (e.g., When an employee asks for a raise, he should be brief.) pseudo-generic noun, … Continue reading »
