• 100 Most Common English Words: How many can you get in five minutes? I only got 55. Pooh. [Link: Dawn]
• How to Feed the Innovation Pipeline.
• Digital Image Resources on the Deep Web: Hard to find digital images…
• The Secrets of Storytelling [Link: Copyblogger]
• Hated sentence diagramming in school and don’t think I benefited. However, the activity helps some that learn better through this process.
• What are you chewing? Check out the brand name pencils.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Wired looks at history’s greatest gadgets.
• Comics Curmudgeon: Comments on and analyzes the latest comics… funny snarky stuff.
• Weird Olympic images with humorous captions.
• iPhone Magic Tricks: Creative!
• Fantastic Contraption: Indeed! An online physics game where you add wheels and
• Recycle electronics at a spot near you.

My mom sent me this joke (have yet to see proof this is a true story) and it’s making its way around inboxes everywhere. Regardless, it makes me laugh.

Some five-year old students are learning to read.

Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said, “Look at this! It’s a frickin’ elephant!”

The teacher took a deep breath, then asked, “What did you call it?”

“It’s a frickin’ elephant! It says so on the picture!”

And so it does…

Early links. Spring break.

• Loads of offline resources for design inspiration.
• TypeFlash: Enter text, pick a typeface, modify it, and have fun. My youngest kept wanting to return to this site to see his name in different designs and colors. I told him we have lots more to explore!
• Four words that prove how difficult the English language is. How do you pronounce ghoti (hint: not goat-tee).
• Perfect for my husband and my oldest… find everything you lose with Smart Goggles [Link: Guy Kawasaki]
• 55 Ways to Have Fun with Google: Free ebook or buy the tree version if you want it in print. [Link: Steve Bass]
• Google Logo Rejects. [Link: Steve Bass]

Go Eagles! Beat Tennessee!

OK, if this poll by British pollsters of YouGov is accurate — then prepare to cringe. The ten most hated words on the Internet — based on a poll of 2,091 adults — reports the following words making the list:

1. folksonomy
2. blogosphere
3. blog
4. netiquette
5. blook
6. webinar
7. vlog
8. social networking
9. cookie
10. wiki

Folksonomy earns its rightful place on the top. Can’t tell you how much work it took me to understand what it means, spell it right (kept writing “folksomy”) and pronounce it (probably still saying it wrong).

The other words make sense. They feel phony. Especially in the earlier days of blogging, it always felt weird to see “blog” and even “weblog.” Saying it sounds too personal like mentioning certain parts of the body.

Cookie may not sound bad, but who wants to see the delightful treat in a sometimes bad light? While cookies save us typing, the bad sites also abuse them giving them a bad name.

Wiki … Hawaiian sounding words are fun, but this one just looks out of place especially in the world of business. “Hey, have you checked the wiki for changes?”

We’ve discussed apostrophes many times here, and we’re not going to stop anytime soon as long as the abuse continues. WikiHow’s How to Use Apostrophes mentions the frequent use of “photo’s” and it’s true. I know a few PTA parents who add an apostrophe in photos. I don’t understand why. It’s not as if it looks weird like saying your child gets straight A’s. Never been a fan of A’s, B’s, C’s… but As can be hard to distinguish.

Ew. Is anyone bothered by this recommendation? “Similarly, apostrophes can be used when talking about a word (e.g., this list contains a lot of do’s and don’t’s) but quotation marks can make it clearer (“do”s and “don’t”s).” I think the use of “” looks worse than without it. Typically I use “dos and don’ts.” The adding of an “s” to indicate a plural on a one or two letter word looks awkward, but “do”s is horrific. Other than that nitpick, the article contains helpful advice.

Be careful when using here’s especially when you’re referring to more than one item. Here’s does not represent “Here are…” I’ve been guilty of this one — habit!

A sign in Beijing’s airport says, “Careful Landslip Attention Security.” With the Olympics coming to Beijing in 2008 and over 500,000 foreigners, officials promise to take care of the bad grammar according to this CNN article. They’ve gone so far to ask for help from the public to watch for poor grammar. Other poorly translated signs:

* On a billboard, “Shangri-La is in you mind, but your Buffalo is not.”

* In an elevator, “Please lead your child to tare the life.”

* Danwei (top 10 volunteer for helping correct poorly worded signs) has a photo of a sign that says, “Racist park.” Yikes! Beijing International explains it’s the Park of Chinese Ethnic Minorities along the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing.

* “Oil Gate,” “Parking this way,” “Export” and “Goods Return” from CCTV.

This podcast with David Tool, also known as Du Danwei, discusses his helping with English and putting the spotlight on the issue of more wheelchair accessibility.

Pick the Brain nicely abstracts George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing and provides the link to the original essay. I just came across this tool that helps you eliminate cliches from your writing. This helps with Orwell’s first rule of avoiding the use of metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you’ve seen in print.

Rule #2, use short words instead of long — “use” works better than “utilized.”

Rule #3: Cut out a word. Less is better. So eliminate “very,” “really,” “so,” and “much.” Really, the sentence sounds better without them.

Rule #4: Active not passive voice. Came across another tool to help with this: The Passivator.

Rule #5: Use everyday English instead of jargon, foreign words or scientific terms. Many of us had the flu works fine. Using “influenza” won’t go over well.

Unless you’re following specific rules for a college paper or a technical paper, keep it simple. No one thinks less of you for using simpler words and shorter sentences. These rules help smooth the reading experience.

Two simple writing tips

**Stop with the Overdone Modifiers**

On Writing Well taught me to cut the use of modifiers such as “really,” “very,” “so,” and “quite.” I save those for when I *really* mean something It’s amazing how many articles I’ve edited that abused these words that they lose meaning.

**Using Only in Sentences**

An Ode to Only shows how the placement of “only” in a sentence can change meaning. For example:

She was the only child who sang in the talent show.

She was the child who only sang in the talent show.

The first one indicates no one else sang in the talent show. The second one implies others did more than sing. The advice is to “place ‘only’ as close as possible to the word or phrase it modifies. The article cites examples of reputable newspapers misuse of “only.”

Imagine how different the James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only would be had it been “For Only Your Eyes” or “Only for Your Eyes.” All three say the same thing with the sentence having one phrase to modify. But these two don’t “sound” as good as the original title.

Thanks to poor Pluto’s recent declassification as a planet, the American Dialect Society — an organization founded in 1889 that “is dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by” — picked “plutoed” as its 2006 Word of the Year. The word means “to demote or devalue someone or something.”

Expectedly the word originated when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union announced Pluto was no longer considered a planet. Other considered words for the Word of the Year include climate canary (“an organism or species whose poor health or declining numbers hint at a larger environmental catastrophe on the horizon”), murse (“man’s purse”), flog (“a fake blog that promotes products”) and macaca (“an American citizen treated as an alien”).

The winning word was the right choice compared to the others. It sounds natural and it’s instantly obvious what it means, if you know that Pluto lost its planet designation.

Murse sounds made up or fake (funny, words are generally made up). I haven’t come across climate canary nor macaca. The latter isn’t attractive considering the last part of the word has an ugly word. Flog has another meaning and the general public is still getting used to the idea of blogs.

When I created the Grammar Gotchas page a few years ago, I had hoped to creat a resource similar to the one at Innocent English. It didn’t work out, but sites like these fill the gap for us grammar geeks. Occasionally, I find a This Is Broken post that involves a language boo boo.

I’m all for recycling, but these classified ads aren’t worth it.

* Toilet Paper

* Tombstone

* Dentures

* Partially-eaten Turkey

Be sure to check out the other ads. Are they for real?

Non-Bush fans will appreciate the site’s capture of a TV caption, “Bush: One of the Worst Disasters to hit the U.S.” Here are more Bush bloopers and Bushisms.