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Best of 2007: Words
December 13th, 2007 |I love this word that has the honor of being Merriam-Webster’s word of the year: W00t! It is fun to type and not easy to say (at least, not for me). And of course, we love it when woot.com has its woot off. Oxford’s choice doesn’t have fun interjected. Its word of the year is locavore. [...]
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Free Tools and Sites for Writers
November 28th, 2007 |I had planned on putting this list up ages ago, but kept adding more. It could take a long time to capture many resources, so this is a living entry that I’ll update as soon as I get new resources. Blogs All Freelance Writing Be the Story [...]
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Cut the Modifiers and Using “Only”
March 6th, 2007 |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 [...]
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Pluto Gets Plutoed
January 19th, 2007 |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 [...]
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Zeitgeist Definition and Pronunciation
December 13th, 2006 |Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-”gIst, ‘zIt So that’s “zight” “guise+t” like geyser only stop at the “s” and add a “t” on the end. Right? Dallas Columnist Steve Blow [may require free registration] brought “Zeitgeist” to my attention. While reading his column, I realized I had seen this word appear often especially thanks to Google Zeitgeist, which searches for trends [...]
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Create New Words with Neologisms
October 11th, 2006 |Roy Peter Clark talks about neologisms — new words. In the article, he tells a story about a child who referred to something as “ginormous” because “It was bigger than gigantic. It was huger than enormous.” The child didn’t create the word as Clark points to the Urban Dictionary — so it’s not impossible for [...]
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Overused Cliches
February 16th, 2006 |Textual annoyances shares three things that annoy Mark Hurst, who wrote the entry. Maybe it has to do with where I live and what I do because I haven’t run into the problems he has. Of course, when I’m trying to think of an annoyance, only one comes to mind (and there are plenty that bug [...]
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