I’m guessing many of you don’t understand how a dictionary is created. It’s true of the vast majority of people — even highly literate ones. So here’s your chance to get educated about lexicography. That means dictionary-making. The misconception that dictionaries are authorities on language is pandemic. John McIntyre’s piece”You Could Look It Up” appeared…
TEDEd brings us short lessons on many subjects. There are currently eight lessons in the TEDEd Playing with Language series. That’s where I found one called How did English Evolve that explains why some words are less “plain” than others. So I flipped it to create my own lesson related to plain language. (It’s a very simple process.)…
No matter how well you’ve mastered the etiquette of “proper” English — like confusing word pairs (its vs it’s) — this game from Us vs Th3m will challenge you! I got to Level 8. Can you?
Has anyone given you grief over splitting an infinitive in your writing? If so, they would claim “to better understand” is wrong because the adverb better appears between to and the verb understand. The “rule” to avoid splitting infinitives originated in the 18th century due to a faulty comparison of English with Latin. (For more…
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…
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…
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,…
Although I don’t have much time today, I promised the doctoral students I met with at LSU last Friday that I would share an interesting phrasebank from the folks at the University of Manchester for those learning to write like a researcher in English. Here are some examples for use in the Introduction section of…
It’s a mistake to think your readers aren’t forming perceptions of you based on your written messages . . . My favorite in this amusing image about text messages is the first one. It’s no coincidence that readers label someone who doesn’t get to the point until the end the “professor.” Students don’t learn to put the bottom line first until…
This post has nothing to do with writing in the workplace. But I discovered the Inky Fool not long ago. An entertaining site for those who love language. You’ll find a post by Mark Forsyth on Cod English that includes the delightful video below, which is credited to an Italian entertainer named Adriano Celentano. I assume…