January 28, 2010
Actually, I don't have ten, but it's a nice number to project authority on a subject matter, which is why using lists and touting them in a blog post's title helps make the thing go viral. I guess people cannot digest paragraphs, or good ol' expository writing or–heaven help us!–essays anymore. They need lists, so they can have etch little compartments in their tiny little brains and also have food for fodder when trying to sound authoritative on a subject: "Yeah, there are three good reasons why…blah, blah, blah."
So my main (numbers one through ten) reason for generally shunning lists is this–you can't develop a logical argument or a good piece of exposition by hanging it all on lists. Oh, sure, you can squeeze in a list in lots of written pieces, but I'd say for the most part lists are mere shameless expositions of laziness (when it comes to writing) and hasty ploys to go viral for an audience that disdains having to read and be led to a logical conclusion.
When I read the following article on "blogging like the British," I kept trying to figure ways I could use lists on my restaurant review site, but nothing seemed to really fit the challenge. What am supposed to write, something that goes "the ten reasons I hate Jenny's Slop House are…"?
Anyway, the article has lots of good advice in it, but I would not agree that you have to spell out numbers through 100 (read: one hundred). I start using digits at 10, and that's a good enough artifice (most books might say to use digits after ten) for everyday writing.
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
Using (and Misusing) the Colon
Do You Subvocalize When You Write?
Welcome to the New World of Abbreviated SubSpeak
‘It Is What It Is’–Or Is It?
Web World Words
January 13, 2010
Earlier, the Oxford Dictionary named unfriend the Word of the Year, and now the American Dialect Society has proclaimed google (lower case for Web searches) as the Word of the Decade.
Bing, the Microsoft search engine, has chimed in by announcing that Twitter was the most popular word of 2009.
What does all this mean? That we spend too much time on the Net, and we should remind ourselves to get a life in 2010.
Google that, will ya?
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
‘Unfriend’: Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year
Random Words and Creativity
How Math and Language Relate–or Don’t
Difference Between ‘Don’t Do Evil’ and ‘Don’t Be Evil’
Notwords Addition: To Google
January 12, 2010
I guess it’s best to start with the positive (no plural). At least disgraced baseball slugger Mark McGwire had the courage to own up to his steroid abuse–partially anyway.
In admitting yesterday that he had used steroids (whose names he conveniently couldn’t remember), McGwire fell back on what has now become the number-one cop-out defense of their use. He used them for medicinal purposes.
He was okay up until that point, had he just gone on and said he didn’t realize he’d get hooked when he saw what they did for his performance on the field. Instead, during an hourlong interview with Bob Costas, he repeatedly denied that using steroids gave him any performance boost. He instead thanked "The Man Up Above" for his power to whack 70 home runs at an age (34) when most baseball players are fading fast.
Those who have been exposed as steroid users have now fallen on three standard defenses: complete and utter denial (Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds), "I didn’t know I was taking them because they were in a vitamin a teammate gave me" (Rafael Palmiero), and medicinal use (McGwire, Andy Pettitte).
Another approach is MLB-sanctioned and team-complicit silence (Manny Ramirez), but one should expect nothing less from a sleazeball organization like the L.A. Dodgers.
Anyway, call McGwire’s defense "The Super Acetaminophine Explanation": Using steroids in "low doses" healed my body without giving me any additional strength or endurance, so it was all okay.
Then if it were all okay, why the hell did you break down and cry on TV and make the rounds of apologizing to everyone, including the Roger Maris family? Remember, Mark, they were just pain killers and body healers, not performance enhancers. No need to apologize for that, now is there?
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: Welcome to the English Hall of Shame, Roger Clemens
Mitchell Goes Yard, Fehr Whiffs
When Is Silence Golden?
To Bork, v.t.; To Sosa, v.i.
Body Language
December 7, 2009
College and universities have long required applicants to write essays to evaluate their ability to reason and use the English language effectively.
However, what on earth would answers to any of these questions ever reveal on the reasoning side:
How do you feel about Wednesday? (University of Chicago, 2002)
Are we alone? (Tufts, 2009)
Make a bold prediction about something in the year 2010 that no one else has made a bold prediction about. (University of Virginia, 1999)
More silly essay topics here.
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
Txt Spk Is Good for You (4U), TechDirt Claims
Media Hyperbole: ‘Worst Ever’
Don’t Listen to ‘Em
Sportslish: Not Needed
Chunk the Text and Fight the Bull
November 18, 2009
First we had Roger Clemens and his use of misremembers, and now the New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen unfriend as its Word of the Year.
The dictionary defines unfriend this way:
"To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook."
What next, "I unlove you and want a divorce"?
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
To Google or To Tweet, That Is the Question
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire: Welcome to the English Hall of Shame, Roger Clemens
Vuvuzela Joins New Words in Oxford Dictionary of English Language
Group Anoints ‘Subprime’ Word of the Year
Word Confusion: Gleam and Glean
November 4, 2009
As I’ve noted before, I’m sure the Democrats would love to own the major media to censor any opposing viewpoints. However, they don’t really need to buy any of the major media because the folks running them already censor, pummel and/or exclude any opinion other than the left wing’s (Fox being the only major media exception).
That didn’t stop the Washington Post from pleading for a federal bailout. They even cited Barack Obama, saying he used to teach Constitutional Law, to make it clear that there would be no legal problems in the feds bailing out the media. I got a huge laugh out of that one, however, since Obama doesn’t even regard the Constitution as relevant. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he produce his (Kenyan) birth certificate? (I can’t wait for the Supreme Court to rule his health care mandates unconstitutional.)
Anyway, the Post folks make a fool of themselves with their editorial and, worse, make their whole profession tawdry by begging for a handout. (I, by the way, am a trained journalist and former executive editor of two newspapers, and I say, "Get on with your life and find a new business model if you want to stay in journalism" to all those who want taxpayers to fund their publications.)
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
L.A. Times Fakes Objectivity, Throws (Liberalism) Long
Obamatalk: False Choices Abound, Full of Sound and Fury and Signifying Nothing
False Promises Through the Modern Use of English
To Bork, v.t.; To Sosa, v.i.
Bring Back the Copyeditors, Part II
October 29, 2009
France, the model upon which Obama is reshaping America into mediocracy and public obeisance to government, has already decided that its print media are ailing and needing of a bailout, so the government is injecting millions of Euros into the industry’s advertising pages.
Poor print media. Hit on one flank by the cyber-reality of free competition and the concomitant loss of paying readers, and on the other by the flight of classified advertisers to free sources like Craigslist and display advertisers to online resources, they hardly know what to do. Why not turn to the guy whose elected they mandated through their pages?
Obama, of course, is more than willing to oblige. He’s having trouble silencing Fox News and other critics through the traditional Democratic devices of mockery and demonization, so why not own a few newspapers and magazines here and there, at least figuratively speaking? (Probably a waste of money, though, since the traditional media are already his lapdogs.)
Argentina has a long history of supporting its print media through the purchase of advertising. Problem is, as government ad dollars rise, the print media’s watchdog goes to sleep and critical stories recede from the pages of the newspapers. This is what a study by the Neiman Journalism Lab showed:
Their analysis found a ‘huge correlation’ between, in any given month, how much money went to a newspaper and how much corruption coverage appeared on its front page. For example, if the government ad revenue in a month increased by one standard deviation — around $70,000 U.S. — corruption coverage would decrease by roughly half of a front page.
Many people today probably take newspapers for granted, but it was once again Thomas Jefferson who summed up the correlation between press and freedom best: "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."
Of course, it was also Jefferson who foresaw our nation’s eventual Frenchification: "When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."
Sacre bleu!
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
Writing Is on the Wall (Street)
France Bails Out Its Newspaper Industry
Newspapers Get Pinched by Web
Surprise Source for Newspapers’ Woes
Shrunken WSJ, My Last Take
October 22, 2009
I stumbled upon a blog called zippitydodah and further titled/subtitled "Reflections in a Petri Dish: As the Landfill Burbles with the Toxic Wastes of a Disintegrating Culture, I’ll Be the Voiceover" that proved both interesting and perceptive–and refreshingly written.
No byline accompanied the article, but it was written in the first person. The commentators seemed to know the author by name, though I never discerned who was who in the back and forth of the dialogue. Names didn’t really matter, though.
The article I read was entitled "The Rise of the Stupids and the Fall of Rome," and in it author guy posits that stupidity reigns in Rome, i.e., the United States of America. (I agree.) In fact, author man goes on to personify this trend as a ruling deity named Stupid.
I won’t go into more detail but will quote a couple of paragraphs from toward the end of the article, which I hope all of you read. Here goes:
The impressive and indomitable force of stupid, [sic on the comma] reigns supreme over the land. Stupid is genius. Stupid is God. Stupid is as stupid does and stupid does what it pleases. Stupid will kill itself before you day after day and then rise from the dead to lead the legions of stupid to the place where stupid rests.
They have not yet opened the gates of the chittering worlds that wait behind them, in the coliseums where you have been marched, at the behest of Stupid. There is still a semblance of order and the highways of hope are constructed by the hour and woven out of the words of the liars who have led you to this place. The true beauty of Stupid is that it will never occur to Stupid what it cost and what was lost. Perhaps Stupid is indestructible and is the heir to a kingdom that only he can see. Some certain and profound confidence motivates Stupid and only Stupid knows what that is.
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
Will Feb. 10 Become Our Equivalent of May 10, 1933?
Do You Subvocalize When You Write?
TV Title ‘Newlywed, Nearly Dead’ Not Nearly English
Silence Not Golden This Time
Ten Reasons Why Lists Suck
October 14, 2009
I’d pick dude and awesome as the most annoying words used in conversation (most meaningless too), but a recent Marist poll shows that whatever is the most hated word.
For full results by age, region and education, view the chart.
Print This PostYou Might Also Like:
‘Whatever’ Voted Most Annoying Word, but I Nominate the Overused ‘Awesome’
When a Word Becomes Meaningless, Or Worse…
Heard at Lunch Too Many Times: ‘Dude’
Notwords Part II
Can’t Anyone Spell ‘Their’ Anymore?
