To learn the history of the English language, I had to take an entire 15-week university course. (And read Baugh’s book shown in the photo here.) But you can get the big picture in an entertaining — if not entirely vetted by experts — way in only 10 minutes.
Enjoy getting fit!
A couple of months back, Forbes.com published 10 Tips For Better Business Writing. Tip #3 was “Omit needless words.” The author echoed the time-honored advice of William Strunk, Jr., in The Elements of Style published by Cornell University, where he worked as an English professor, in 1919. (You may be more familiar with later editions of the book by Strunk…
I have been totally consumed with my day job the past few days. The semester starts at Bama next week. Cause I don’t want ya to think I forgot ya, I’m sending you to a nice piece by Stan Carey, who blogs at Sentence First. He talks about word choice and defines “inkhorn” and “sesquipedalianism” for…
Readers understand a message better when writers use explicit signals of what they want readers to get out of a document. Transitions like “unfortunately” are one type of explicit signal. (Headings are another — see Think long-term and be kind to readers with well-formatted documents.) In fact, transitions are also sometimes called logical connectives. Maybe that makes…
If you’re entertained by invented languages, you’ll enjoy this podcast from The World in Words. It lists both old and new novels which include an invented language. Plus a weather report in Elvish for Tolkien fans. Enjoy! Related articles New Zealand Weatherman Gives Forecast in Elvish (VIDEO) (blippitt.com) Auden and Elvish (newyorker.com)
Anyone who avoids full responsibility after making a mistake counts as an amateur in my book. This past week, my students discussed the purpose and effectiveness of a letter from a publications manager to a group of volunteer editors. The consensus was that it effectively informed readers about the reasons for performance issues in the manager’s area, as well as plans to address them in the…
Like to play with words? Need a diversion today? I suggest a visit to the Oxford English Fictionary. From their About page: Have you ever read a book and come across a word and said to yourself, “Hmmm, self, I wonder what that word means?”, and then gone to a dictionary to look up the…
Thanks for stopping by my site and for the kind words. I stumbled upon your site after reading the grammar blog post this week on WordPress. Professionally, I am a writer/editor, and I thought your analysis about how to teach writing was spot-on. Somewhere between journalism (my undergrad major) and good literature, there lies the elusive intersection of art and science that makes clear prose.
Btw, I thoroughly enjoyed this short video as it made me LOL several times. What DID happen to the Jutes, anyway? 😉
I appreciate hearing from folks — especially the ones who agree with me! I’m not sure why the Jutes’ name didn’t take on the same level of importance as the Angles’ and Saxons’ did. I think they might have appeared first — as mercenaries from modern-day Denmark. Maybe there were too few of them. Or maybe they more successfully integrated with other tribes. I’ve read that their most famous leaders, Hengist and Horsa, were actually Angles. Interesting stuff!