New Words

Think you've found or created a new word? Well if you can define it, you can add it to the Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary.

poopshmere (noun) : 1. When an organism shmeres its or others poop 2. A mammal that searches for poop for living. 3. A person who gets amused real fast or easily
1) That person's dog poopshmered its poop all over the ground 2) The poopshmere had worked hard searching everyday and night. 3) My friend Shantay gets really poopshmered sometimes.

Go to the site, add your word and share your discovery.

Classics on-line

ClassicReader.com offers a large collection of free classic books by authors such as Dickens, Twain, Shakespeare and many more...320 authors and over 3,000 works of literature. Now I find it uncomfortable reading a book off of a computer screen. A page or two I can handle. More than that and my eyes start giving out and the old noggin' starts hurting.

But, I use a program called TextAloud which verbalizes the written page. I can listen to a book as I work on other things, or I can save it to an MP3 file and listen to it later in the car. Check it out....and yes, I'm a nerd.

Looking for Something

I've caught myself looking for information, but not quite sure what I'm looking for. Searching the Internet is an art more than a science. The info eludes me, but I keep searching for word permutations and ideas show up. And when I get lost on the web, I go to my librarian. Remember her? (or him as the case may be, but I always remember the "lady" librarian.) The librarian doesn't know everything, but she does know how to find just about everything.

Most of you would say, "Google it." I actually use Yahoo as I find the results more relevant for me. Yagoohoo!gle actually does both for me, but they must of run into lawyers since the name has been changed to Twingine. Dogpile does the same and adds AskJeeves to the mix, but the results are listed in one list rather than side-by-side. And I like Teoma because it provides suggestions on how to narrow my search to get to precisely what I'm looking for. That works only when I know what it is I'm looking for!

As you can see, there is a myriad of search engines, databases and indices available to us. Knowing where to look and how to search, can mean the difference between finding that essential bit of knowledge and getting lost in a bottomless pit of irrelevant information.

I wonder why no one has come up with a "Dewey Decimal System" for the Internet?

Da Vinci Code B'day

Everyone I know has read The Da Vinci Code, the bestseller by Dan Brown. It was released two years ago and has been on the best seller list ever since. I enjoyed the book, but I don't understand all the hype. I mean there's the Special Illustrated Edition, the same novel with drawings. It spawned its own cottage industry with add-on books and videos such as The Da Vinci Code Decoded, The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction, The Truth Behind The Da Vinci Code, Breaking The Da Vinci Code, Inside The Da Vinci Code, Secrets of the Code, and many, many more. It's been featured on prime-time TV news programs, and the Catholic Church denounces it.

This is a novel right? A work of fiction. So what drives people to explain the meaning of the code or to point out factual errors? How does a work of fiction have factual errors? I enjoyed this murder-mystery, but all this spurious talk about church, Jesus, artwork and Leonardo Da Vinci seems to diminish the book for me.

Anyway, happy birthday Da Vinci Code and may you milk it another two years. Oh, and don't forget to pick up Da Vinci For Dummies.

NaNoEdMo

National Novel Editing Month - one week down, three to go - and I've given up! You remember that novel I wrote a couple of months ago during NaNoWriMo? I have not looked at it since then and started to read it in preparation for editing. Wow, what a piece of crap. I quickly began redlining words and sentences, moved on to paragraphs, and finally began butchering entire pages. The last 20,000 words didn't even make sense.

I'll keep chipping away, but I think my 50,000 word novel will soon evolve into a 3,000 word essay.

Thanks WD

Writer's Digest has published the Personal Writing magazine. Now that's not earth-shaking news, they put out special editions all year long. But in this issue there is a short blurb about this blog. Cool! It's a sidebar called Blog Spot in an article titled Blogged In. So go ahead and stop by your favorite newsstand and take a peek. Let me know if you'd like me to autograph your copy.

Words of the Year - 2004

Merriam-Webster Online announced their top ten words of the year based on dictionary searches, and with no surprise, blog is the number one word of the year in dictionary searches. The others:

incumbent
electoral
insurgent
hurricane
cicada
peloton
partisan
sovereignty
defenestration

Well I guess I need to add peloton and defenestration to my vocabulary!

Emptying the Queue

I've been voraciously reading all my piled-up books and magazines, making room for all the soon-to-be-here Christmas presents. And of course all that reading makes for a good excuse not to keep up with my writing. I even treat my Christmas shopping as I do writing. . . .putting it off until deadline! What a procrastinator I am. Now I'm snowed in, my 4-wheel Explorer is in the shop getting winterized and brakes checked out, and only one-and-a-half shopping days left. I feel an embarrassing situation arising. Well, at least my reading queue is empty.

The Paradox Of Our Time

I received an e-mail today, just one of those holiday time greetings that went out to a couple hundred thousand people, meant to inspire and give you that warm fuzzy feeling. It was a poem-like essay titled The Paradox of our Time and attributed to George Carlin. I grew a little suspicious because there was not one cuss word in the entire diatribe.. It does make you think. So I thought I would surf over to George's web site to see if there was more info about his writing and was surprised to find a page on his site that denies the attribution of this essay to him!

So I Googled "The Paradox Of Our Time" and received the results....1,640,000 pages! The essay is attributed not only to Mr. Carlin but also to some fellow named Jeff Dickson, a "survivor of the Columbine shooting," and those famous authors "anonymous" and "unknown." Amazing.

So who is the author? Dr. Bob Moorehead, a pastor from the state of Washington. The essay appeared under the title "The Paradox of Our Age" in Words Aptly Spoken, Dr. Bob Moorehead's 1995 collection of prayers, homilies, and monologues used in his sermons and radio broadcasts. But before you go on to hold this pastor in high regard, he was forced to retire from his pastoral duties and found guilty of molesting several male churchgoers. Read the original essay and more about this Internet hoax at Snopes, the Urban Legend Reference Page. I had fun tracking this information around the Internet and it was eye-opening to learn about many Internet hoaxes.

But if you don't take the time to click over and read the entire essay, let me at least leave you with a tidbit:

Give time to love, give time to speak, and give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

To Read or Not To Read

After dumping 51,000+ words out of my brain last month, I guess I needed some time to recharge the reservoir. I do that during various "keeping busy" routines. One is going through accumulated mail and magazines. I just received January's issue of The Writer when I noticed November and December still sitting there unopened. Two issues, not bad, but I also found two issues of Writer's Digest, a whole bunch of Time, a couple of Business 2.0 and a tall stack of daily newspapers. The newspapers are easy. Yeah sometimes I'll read yesterday's paper, but I never go deeper into the pile. A daily goes stale as soon as the next issue hits the street. That stack went to the trash. And Time is like the newspapers only it has a lifespan of a week. So they get old fast.

Monthly magazines are a different story. I can't get myself to trash them until I have at least flipped through, read the article titles and glimpsed at the graphics. I think this explains why magazines in my doctor's waiting room are a year old. Now if something does catch my interest, I don't read it right away. It goes into a "to read" pile. If the magazine is undeserving of such stature, I trash it. If only one article looks attractive, I sometimes rip out the page while trashing the rest of the magazine.

I admit it, I'm oversubscribed. At least one new magazine arrives every day and some days a half-dozen will show up. Add all the catalogs this time of year and you know why the mailman asked for a bigger mailbox. (But, let's not even discuss catalogs.) As I writer I feel obligated to read every written word. But I am coming to terms with my limitations.

Between my wife and I, there are 26 magazine subscriptions. About half we actually pay for the privilege, the others are trade journals and we "qualify" for free subscriptions. We agree that we are too busy to read all that we receive, and slowly but surely over the next year, subscriptions will expire. Then I can read all my other mail, like the letter that came today: "Use your airline miles for free subscriptions. No cash required..." Oh crap!

Bush and Kerry Side By Side

Are you one of those "undecideds?" Then this website may help: Bush and Kerry Side By Side. It displays the RSS feed from both campaigns on one web page. At least you won't have to spend time going back and forth while you decide. It's an interesting site no matter which side you're on.

Favorite Words

Did you submit your favorite word? Actually I was surprised that I knew seven out of the top ten words without grabbing for the dictionary! Here they are:

1. defenestration
2. serendipity
3. onomatopoeia
4. discombobulate
5. plethora
6. callipygian
7. juxtapose
8. persnickety
9. kerfuffle
10. flibbertigibbet

Jump to Merriam-Webster Online - 2004 Top Ten Favorite Words to see the definitions, if you need.

Why Read?

You are what you read. If you read nothing, then your mind withers, and your ideals lose their vitality and sway.

A thought-provoking Op/Ed piece in the NY Times today (but I guess all Op/Ed's provoke thought :-). The Closing of the American Book by Andrew Solomon, discusses the correlation between the decline in reading for pleasure and the decline in health, politics and education.

Reading is not an active expression like writing, but it is not a passive experience either. It requires effort, concentration, attention. In exchange, it offers the stimulus to and the fruit of thought and feeling... . . .The metaphoric quality of writing — the fact that so much can be expressed through the rearrangement of 26 shapes on a piece of paper — is as exciting as the idea of a complete genetic code made up of four bases: man's work on a par with nature's. Discerning the patterns of those arrangements is the essence of civilization.

[Free registration may be required to get to the NY Times site.]

On Writing

I'm not an avid horror fan, so I haven't read many of Stephen King's books. But, I have read and often re-read his memoir of the craft, On Writing. It is very much like two books. The first, a memoir of his life, curriculum vitae as he calls it, and the second, telling us all what he has learned about writing. Together, he has scribed a classic book while looking at and within himself.

It is inspiring to read about his trial and tribulations growing up while writing. But, as a writer, I especially enjoyed him describing his tools of writing, grammar and vocabulary. King offers advice about adverbs, character development, revising your work and a lot more. He includes an example of his edited writing, including all editor markings. He closes be describing his accident in 1999, what he remembers of it anyway, and how writing has helped him survive.

I don't think you have to be an aspiring writer nor a lover of Stephen King's writing to enjoy this book. After I read it the first time I picked up one of his novels.... Not that he's convinced me to read horror books, but I do interpret his words differently after reading On Writing. Go ahead, read it.

"Read a lot. Write a lot."
                --Stephen King

Passion for Books

I've been reading A Passion for Books, a book lover's treasury of stories, essays and lists on collecting, reading, borrowing, lending, caring for, and appreciating books. While reading, my mind wondered to titles and authors of books that have affected my life, affected enough that I remember them after many years.

The Odyssey, Homer
Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
The Goal, Eliyahu Goldratt
University of Success, Og Mandino
Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill
Flawless Consulting, Peter Block
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Thriving On Chaos, Tom Peters
On Writing, Stephen King

There's about a thousand others, but these books stick in my mind. Why these? I'm not sure. They're each a classic in their respective genre and they have in some way affected my mind, my heart and my soul. I'm sure others will percolate up to the surface. What books have affected you?.

A Literary Dream Job

Years ago, I dreamed of opening a book store, but that was before Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon..In Vermont, town browses for a new bookstore could be the seeds of another dream.

The Word Spy

The Word Spy web site is devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren't "stunt words" or "sniglets," but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources.

Every week the site posts The Top 100 Word Spy words as measured by page views from the past seven days. This weeks Top 5 are:

metrosexual
Google bombing
jump the shark
furkid
technosexual

You'll have to get to the site to find the definition of these and the other 95 words. Each word is also accompanied by an example citation and the first known use citation. This site is a field day for anyone interested in words, lexicons, and the morphing of language.

Thou shalt catch all typos

Do you think someone who proofreads the Bible has more pressure on them than someone proofing a murder mystery? Bible proofreaders: Thou shalt catch all typos says "yes!"

"Bible readers are less forgiving of errors because they expect perfection in the Bible text."

Treat your writing like the Bible.

I Blog

What great sorts of conversation I had at the Ryze mixer. Blogging, journalism and writing were big interrelated topics at the table I shared during our "work session of strategic importance." I sat with some bloggers that I read weekly: Anita Campbell, Chris Seper, Bill Callahan and Mary Beth Matthews. I slept on our words and wanted to add more:

I blog. Anybody with a web browser can access my blogs to read what I've written. My weblogs connect me to many diverse people. I first started a business blog, which let me write about project management and business issues for my clients. I enjoyed it so much, I then started this blog about writing, speaking and thinking. It is a way to express my point-of-view for others to consume, digest, and respond to.

But I also blog for myself. Writing my ideas forces me to look at them more intensively than I would by randomly running them through my head. Blogging helps me to expose fuzzy thinking. If I can’t write my ideas down clearly, I know I haven’t thought them through. Good blogging, like good writing, is good thinking.

While blogging I often end up learning more about my chosen topic. First, the act of organizing my thoughts to explain them helps clarify them in my mind. I then gain more understanding through readers’ comments and questions. I learn both from what the reader said, and by researching more information to back up my point of view to rebut their points of view.

I consider myself a decent writer. My best writing comes when I have weeks to work on a document that I can continually revise. But, my spontaneous writing often falls short. Blogging helps me to expand my extemporaneous writing skills, and thus is helping me become a better writer.

I'm hoping some New York publisher notices one of my blogs, likes what he reads, and offers me a seven-figure multi-book deal. Then I'll get well-paid to pontificate my views on the lecture circuit. Now that would be nice.

But for now, I’ll just have to blog about it.

Online Books, Poems, Short Stories - Read Print

When searching or surfing the Internet you come across all kinds of sites, much of them garbage. But every once in a while you find a real gem. Online Books, Poems, Short Stories - Read Print is a real gem! Read Print is an online library website offering classic books, poems and essays. You can search within each individual book for passages or words. Authors range from Louisa May Alcott to William Butler Yeats and much of their collective works.

Now since this is all free, they can only publish books in the public domain, which means before 1920. But that does not diminish the literature available. Shakespeare, Doyle, Poe, Melville, and Orville can keep you busy for weeks and there are many more. I've bookmarked many classics to re-read and many more to read anew. Check it out.

S P E L L

The Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature, or Spell, is an organization of people who love the English language and are determined to resist its abuse and misuse in the news media and elsewhere.

English boasts by far the largest vocabulary of all languages, almost four times the number of words as its nearest competitor, German. As a result, English possesses a plethora of synonyms that allow greater nuances of meaning than are available in other tongues.

You should not be aghast, alarmed, amazed, appalled, astonished, bewildered, blown away, bowled over, confounded, dumbfounded, electrified, flabbergasted, flummoxed, overwhelmed, shocked, startled, stunned, stupefied, surprised, taken aback, or thunderstruck at this capacious cornucopia of synonyms in our marvelous English language.

Membership in SPELL is open to anyone who shares SPELL's love of language ($20).

Business Book Blog

I came across this blog just following links this evening and think it's great. I'm addicted to business books, while working on writing one myself. 800-CEO-READ Blog, "a talk about everything that is business books." This blog has multiple authors so there is a lot of information on and about business books. Enjoy!

Book Meme

I don't know who started this meme, but I've seen it all over the place. So what the hell, I'll play along:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

From The Best American Essays:

It was the early sixties, the tail end -- as I think of that era now, almost forty years after our father fell in love with another woman, and our family began coming apart -- of the heyday of Southern intellectualism in the style of the Agrarians, when the newly married Episcopalian children of Presbyterians were reading Finnegans Wake, escaping Ph.D. programs, drinking bourbon, martinis and bargain beer, and staying up all night quarreling and having affairs and finding out about the affairs, then tossing their children into the back seats of VW bugs and driving by night up or down the coast.

No kidding, this sentence has 103 words.

Light Reading Redux

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
   -- Albert Einstein

Or as the American Heritage Dictionary defines tax:

A burdensome or excessive demand; a strain.

My extension is in the mail. I'll take another 4 months before completing this.

Light Reading

Well since it's only 3 days away, I thought I'd start on my taxes this weekend. Besides all the forms and associated pamphlets to read, the Tax Code is a measly 17,000 page conglomeration. But to get an understanding of all the rules and loopholes, you have to read through the 47,000 pages of the Internal Revenue Service Regulations and associated court cases. Good thing I'm a speed reader.

Income tax has only been with us for 90 years or so and the code back then was only 14 pages long. How do you "tweak" the rules over the years to add 16,986 more pages? I guess that's why 56% of the taxpayers pay someone else to prepare their forms. I'm wondering if it is the same 56% who oppose a simplified flat tax because they'd have to give up all their deductions....even if their tax bill would be less!!

And why do people want to repeal the tax cuts? Do people really think re-instituting the "marriage penalty" is fair? This crap about taxing the rich is even worse.

More Searching

I continued my research of search engines last night and found a few more very interesting sites.Vivisimo Clustering technology automatically categorizes textual information into meaningful, hierarchically sorted category folders.

Teoma does not rank results based upon the sites with the most links leading to them, like Google. Instead, Teoma analyzes the Web as it is organically organized—in naturally-occurring communities that are about or related to the same subject—to determine which sites are most relevant. After trying them out, I did find sites with each of these engines that I didn't find on Google. This is pretty cool stuff!

All these search engines that I've mentioned the last two days provide you with a list of links, some interesting, some good, some bad. You really don't know until you check out each of the links in a linear fashion. They are terrific tools when your plan is to spend some time surfing.

Now a completely different approach is GuruNet . GuruNet brought the answers to me in a quick, concise, authoritative, readable snapshot, instead of a list of hundreds or thousands of links for me to follow, one at a time. It was one neat package with the definition, biography, description and facts immediately, without the frustration of linear searching. Well for all this convenience you do have to pay for a subscription, but go ahead and try it for 14 days free. I'm just in my second day, but I'm thinking the 30 bucks may be worth it.

Searching, Searching, Searching

I spend much of my time researching. I'm either trying to flesh out an idea, looking for information for an article I'm writing, or researching for a client project. So I'm getting better and better at on-line searches. I picked up Google Hacks and learned quite a lot on Google specifically and searching in general. But there are many, many ways to search on the Internet so I needed more. I found SearchEngineWatch and it has everything about doing searches, optimizing searches, how to get placed on search engines, and plenty of reviews, ratings and test results.

You'll find links to all types of search engines. Yes there's the Major search engines like Google and Yahoo, but if you can't find it there, try AllTheWeb.com. How about engines just for kids, others for specific countries, shopping engines, and science engines? And more. Wow, I think I spent my whole day searching search engines. Cool! Now if I could just finish what I was looking for in the first place.

Too Much To Read, Too Little Time

My reading list is long and backlogged. . .a lot! I've got three books scattered about the house in the process of being read, one by the couch, one in my office and one on the nightstand. The time of day can pretty much tell you what and where I'm reading. In between the books I have magazines, newspapers and blogs to be read.

The mailmanperson brings at least one magazine a day, ranging from Time, The Week, Economist and Futurist, to Writer's Digest, The Writer, and Publisher's Weekly. And of course, a multitude of trade magazines in technology, speaking, presentations, business and project management, training and organizational development. The paperboyperson delivers the Akron Beacon Journal and The Plain Dealer 7 days a week,and the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily 5 days a week. Whoa boy!

Will technology save me? I'm beginning to convert some of my mail subscriptions to digital subscriptions. I read PC Magazine on my Zinio Reader. This is NOT an online edition or web-enhanced re-writes. It's the actual magazine in digital format. Electronically I flip through the magazine, page by page, including the advertisements, front and back cover, and all the little tear-out subscription cards throughout the mag. It even handles foldout pages, so I can see a digital future for Playboy. I can print out an interesting article, email an issue, highlight passages, search keywords, and post notes, just like writing in the margins.

Without my RSS Reader, FeedDemon, it would be impossible to keep track of the 300+ blogs I try to read. Well I actually don't read them all, but I do "watch" by keyword each one, and collect the postings I really do want to read. And FD updates what has changed about every 3 hours, sooner if I asked it to.

Will I ever catch up? No, but I do believe I'll reduce that backlog eventually, especially if I stop watching Perry Mason reruns. Oops, there goes my TV Guide subscription.

Message From Garcia

I'm a pretty big fan of motivational books, because they seem to be exactly what I need at any particular time. I actually found out about A Message From Garcia through an email spam. It was touted as "different." I'm not sure how different since many books of this genre are usually speaking the same message, just with different examples and perspectives. But, it was easy to read and kept me turning the page. I really liked the "how to" aspect of the book. After all, it isn't any good reading about other people's success if you don't know how to make your own.

A big "different" -- The book was augmented with a website called Success Compass which helps you set goals and then e-mails you a reminder at whatever frequency you wish, even several times a day. I guess the key to success is not allowing yourself to forget what you want, and the Success Compass website doesn't let you forget. I liked it and I think you'll like it too.

"Get busy living or get busy dying."

How the world sees us

Back a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about "the hoopla" on breasts, specifically Janet Jackson's. Well, I guess the rest of the world, outside the U.S. agrees with me. From an editorial in Spain's El Mundo:

If this had happened in Spain, people would merely laugh. But millions of Americans were scandalized, and are demanding that everyone connected with the breast baring be punished for polluting the airwaves. Is America still a nation of Puritans?

From Germany's Franfurter Allgemeine Zietung:

We, the poorly informed old Europeans, wouldn't have realized that Jackson's breast was a more important issue than Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction. But the U.S. media is covering the breast-baring incident like the story of the century, repeatedly showing Jackson clutching at her chest, just in case a single American missed the "contaminating image."

From the London Independent:

Perhaps we should all grow up and stop making such a juvenile fuss over breasts.

And probably the most poignant quote comes from the Munich Suddeutsche Zeitung:

What's particulary hard for Europeans to grasp is the moral standard that allows every Uzi and every explosion to be shown, but--for God's sake--no breast.

I pulled these quotes from The Week magazine. This periodical is a witty and informative digest of the best reporting and writing from the U.S. and international press. It is just 40 pages long, and brings me up to date on what’s happening in this country and abroad, and what the experts are saying about it. Check it out online or at your favorite newsstand.

War of Reviewers

Why would you not want anyone to know who you are when reviewing a book? I may hate it, I may love it, either way I would want you to know whose opinion you are reading. I've praised books and movies that the critics have bashed, and have been disappointed in others they have loved. I'm not ashamed. It's just my opinion and if you don't like it, write a review of my review belittling my thought process.

"...many people say Amazon's pages have turned into what one writer called "a rhetorical war," where friends and family members are regularly corralled to write glowing reviews and each negative one is scrutinized for the digital fingerprints of known enemies.

One well-known writer admitted privately — and gleefully — to anonymously criticizing a more prominent novelist who he felt had unfairly reaped critical praise for years. She regularly posts responses, or at least he thinks it is her, but the elegant rebuttals of his reviews are also written from behind a pseudonym."

Last week, Amazon mistakenly "outed" anonymous reviewers, allowing us to find out that writing reviews is a cut-throat competitive process. Read the NY Times article (registration required, but free.)

Literary Excursion

After lunch, I stopped at Barnes & Noble to use the bathroom and pick up a decaf latte. I can never just go there to browse. I always leave with a book or magazines. And today was no exception. For my book loving self, I got A Passion for Books, a book lover's treasury of stories, essays, humor. lore and lists on collecting, reading, borrowing, lending caring for, and appreciating books. To get my writing juices flowing, I picked up On Writing by Stephen King. The Cleveland Plain Dealer called this "The best book on writing. Ever." I'll put these in the queue on the night stand and let you know what I think.

The Prolific Writer

Where do the words come from? How are they created? From within? Her surroundings?

Joyce Carol Oates writes faster than I can read. She writes novels and story collections. She writes mysteries and children's books. She writes poetry, essays and non-fiction. She writes thoughtful long book reviews, edits anthologies. She writes as herself and she writes pseudonymously.

The article RE: Joyce mentions her subjects, her books, her output, and details her new novella, "Rape: A Love Story."

What a screwy language

Sara Hickman Huh!? page has some great examples of this language we seem to butcher everyday.

For example... If you have a rough cough, climbing can be tough when going through the bough in a tree! Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple....And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

There's more to make you think and giggle.

Words of the Year - 2003

Merriam-Webster Online has announced the top ten word searches by users of their online dictionary and thesaurus.

1. democracy
   
2. quagmire
   
3. quarantine
   
4. matrix
   
5. marriage
   
6. slog
   
7. gubernatorial


8. plagiarism


9. outage
   
10. batten

Surprisingly, these are all "normal" words, not the latest slang, hip-hop or high-tech nomenclature.

Punctuation!

It is not always clear how important punctuation is to reading, and thus writing. Punctuation tells us when to stop or to take a breath while speaking those words. But interpretation is much easier when listening rather than reading. Read this sentence:

That that is is that that is not is not is not that it it is.

Yes it's not punctuated. Yes it's one of those trick sentences to teach punctuation. I'm sure if the writer had spoken the words to me I could figure it out, but just reading them, I had to laugh as I kept trying to sound it out in many ways. It may not be the only way, but here is a solution:

That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is not that it? It is.

The words were meaningless without punctuation. Periods and commas become part of the meaning, or at least an interpretation of the words. I love it. I'm looking for more strings of words that need punctuated. Please pass along any trick sentences you may have.

What the "frigging?"

Boy, this is a challenge: Trying to explain the usage of the word "fuck" in a family, or at least mainstream newspaper. The eff factor is an effing good article from the Boston Globe.

If all our cuss words are detoxified and domesticated, we'll have to invent new ones.

Stop the spell checker

Aoccdrnig to rsceearh at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod apepar. The olny iprmoetnt tihng is that the frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Marginalia and Other Crimes

I am a bibliophile, a lover of books. I use Readerware to keep my inventory and value of books. At last count I have 576 books which cost me a little over 17 grand to purchase. Most are hard covered, but I do have a few paperbacks. I haven't read them all.Some are bought because the cover caught my eye, or the book jacket blurb was interesting or just knowing that someday I'll read it.

I keep a book diary to make notes of fact or interest about everything I read. I am not afflicted with Marginalia and Other Crimes. This is an interesting thread and subsequent comments from Metafilter about those of you who write your notes and comments in the margins of a book, along with other defacements such a bookmarking by folding pages, highlighting and underlining. I think the concensus is that it's okay to do with books you own, but not in books you have borrowed from friends or libraries. Here are pictures and examples of defaced books at the Cambridge University Library.

I admit I have written in some of my paperbacks, but those books are generally workbooks or training manuals that already have allotted space for writing. The hardback novels, non-fiction and reference books I try to keep as pristine as possible. Yes, some of the books I use often and show it, but I'm not intentionally going to mark it up. Besides I want to keep my notes together because someday they may become a book of their own.