I live in Texas and haven’t been to a single high school football game since moving back to Texas in 1995. And, my daughter is a senior at a high school … a giant one (2600 in two grades) compared to mine (less than 2000 in four grades). Oh, I love football, y’all. My dad took me all around Dallas/Fort Worth to meet a few of the Dallas Cowboys and get their autographs.

Photo by Cherie A. Thurby

When the Cowboys won the Super Bowl in 1994, I was nine months pregnant. Although an exciting game, I couldn’t jump — thank goodness. Everyone wondered how I didn’t go into labor that day. (She arrived 10 days later — maybe that explains her disinterest in football.)

I joke that I didn’t graduate from a real college because it didn’t have a football team. Growing up in Fort Worth, I caught a few games at TCU where I went for my freshman year of college. Loved that experience especially when TCU played against Texas A&M. No matter how you feel about the Aggies, they have an incredible and precise band that puts most bands to shame. And no, it wasn’t because my husband had played in the Aggie band.  You just have to watch the Aggie band to understand.

My most memorable football memory has to be the 1986 Cotton Bowl: Texas A&M vs. Auburn and Bo Jackson. I have my brother, an A&M graduate, to thank for getting to see the game.

What’s your most memorable football memory? If soccer is your thing — go for it.

Brain food…

• Freelancer’s Guide to SEO – More Visibility, Traffic, and Clients. A well-organized doable guide with simple steps that won’t overwhelm you like others.
• 9 Ways Your Business Needs To Change To Become Social. This is how I try to work with social media. I truly love the interactions. I could spend all day listening and helping people if I could. [Link: Adam Helweh]
• How to Write a Good Freelancer Bio. Suggests various elements to include along with some tips.
• How to understand regret — and 2 ways to avoid it. I don’t think I have any big regrets in my life. Sure, I wish I had done some things differently, but if I had never done them … my path may not have ended up where it has today.
• 10 words worth collecting and how to use them. These aren’t insipid words. Quite the opposite.

For fun because we’re allowed…

• Social Media Explained… in very simple terms. Hilarious.
• Duck Tron. What happens when you throw duct tape into a scene from Tron.
• George Washington Autocorrect. HA!

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

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. Oxford also lists runners-up.

Webster’s New World new word of 2007 is grass station.

Dictionary.com selects a word of the month, you can see all 12 words of the month for 2007.

On the other end, Lake Superior State University identifies its banished words of 2007. One of those being combined celebrity couple names like TomKat and Brangelina. The Office‘s Michael Scott, in his unwanted toast at his employee’s wedding, announced if you combine their names, they’d be Phlob (Phyllis and Bob Vance).

Updated: 16 November 2010 (100+ resources)

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

1. About Freelance Writing
2. All Freelance Writing
3. Be the Story
4. The Blood-Red Pencil
5. Bob Bly
6. Book Marketing Bestsellers
7. The Book Sistah
8. C. Hope Clark
9. CatalystBlogger
10. Christina Katz
11. Confident Writing
12. Copyblogger
13. The Copywriter Underground
14. The Copywriting Maven
15. Copywriting That Sells High Tech
16. The Creative Penn
17. Crime Fiction Dossier
18. Daily Writing Tips
19. Diary of a Wordsmith
20. Evil Editor
21. Freelance Parent
22. Freelance Writing
23. Freelance Writing Jobs
24. Get Paid to Write Online
25. Grow Your Writing Business
26. How Not to Write
27. I’d Rather Be Writing
28. Inkwell Editorial
29. Jane in Progress
30. Joel Falconer
31. Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog
32. JohnAugust.com
33. PoeWar
34. Macabre Ink
35. Mad Young Thing
36. Men with Pens
37. Michael Hyatt
38. Mike’s Writing Workshop
39. Newbie’s Guide to Publishing
40. Paul Conley on trade journalism
41. Publishing Careers
42. Problogger
43. Robust Writing
44. Quiet Rebel Writer
45. Quips and Tips for Freelance Writers
46. Rachelle Gardner
47. The Renegade Writer
48. Remarkable Communication
49. Rogue Ink
50. Sites and Soundbytes: Library blog that began as a list of cool places online now features many resources and online references that would prove useful to writers.
51. StoneWriter
52. Storytellers Unplugged
53. The Struggling Writer
54. There Are No Rules
55. Tumblemoose
56. Urban Muse
57. The Wealthy Freelancer
58. The Web-Savvy Writer
59. Web Writing Info
60. The Well-Fed Writer
61. WOW! Women on Writing
62. Words for Hire
63. Words on the Water
64. Word Sell Blog
65. Write from Home
66. Writer Beware
67. Writer Dad
68. Writer’s Digest Writing Blogs
69. A Writer’s Words, an Editor’s Eye
70. Writer’s Helper
71. Writer’s Notes
72. Write to Done
73. Write Well Me
74. The Writing Journey
75. The Writing Life
76. Writing on the Web
77. Writing White Papers Blog
78. Written Road

Resources

1. 100 posts and articles worth link love: Great selection of articles and content related to writing, business, blogging, and freelancing.
2. 150 Writing Resources: Organized by categories.
3. A to Z of Alternative Words [pdf file]: Why “utilize” when a simple “use” will do?
4. AbiWord: Open source Word
5. About Freelance Writing: Job postings, articles, and more.
6. AbsoluteWrite: The first place I recommend to wanna be writers. Of course, it’s great for experienced writers.
7. Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts: Collection of about 14,000 “classic” public domain documents from American and English literature as well as Western philosophy.
8. American vs. British Grammar: Differences go beyond color vs. colour, optimize vs. optimise.
9. Authors of Historical Fiction resource
10. Bartleby: Resource has been around for a long-time that contains reference and verses for writers, researchers, and the “intellectually curious.”
11. A Beginner’s Guide to the Business Side of Freelancing: From creating a business plan to dealing with taxes.
12. CARRIE: Internet’s first full-text online electronic library.
13. Community Mottos and Nicknames. Great info for stories and inspiration for names.
14. Confusing Words: Over 3000 troublesome words.
15. Digital Library of the Commons: An archive of full-text articles, papers, and dissertations; the Comprehensive Bibliography of the Commons; a Keyword Thesaurus, and links to relevant reference sources on the study of the commons.
16. Disability Writes: Site to help people with disabilities overcome barriers in getting support and encouragement to write.
17. e-write: newsletter, courses, articles, tools, resources, challenge.
18. Etymology: Study of word origins.
19. For Copywriters Only: Articles and newsletter.
20. The Free Dictionary: Dictionary, encyclopeida, thesaurus, and more. Huge resource.
21. Freelance Folder: More about the business of freelancing, but writers benefit greatly.
22. Freelance Writing Success: Articles and resources.
23. FundsForWriters: Articles, newsletters, and more.
24. Fun with Words: Wordplay
25. Google Book Search: Access thousands of books based on your keywords. How much you get depends on the book and its copyright.
26. Guide to Grammar and Writing: Guidelines and resources for writing proposals.
27. Little Known Online Research Sites: List of online research sites and apps.
28. Long Story Short: Ezine with book reviews, excerpts, interviews, articles, poetry, writing school.
29. Luciferous Logolepsy: Collection of obscure English words.
30. Manuscript Analyzer can help dump those trouble words and phrases. It looks for frequently-used words and “identify junk phrases, ‘frequent offender’ word patterns, and adverbs.”
31. NewsTrust.net: Discover good journalism based on quality not popularity.
32. OnceWritten.com: Introduces new fiction writers, contains a community, and provides resources for contests and marketing.
33. ParaPublishing: Newsletter and resources.
34. Phrase Finder: “Search beginnings and endings of phrases.”
35. Publication Coach Newsletter: Power Writing newsletter provides quick tips.
36. Publishing Central: Find articles from around the Web on just about every topic related to publishing.
37. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL): Superb resources covering writing, research, grammar, and MLA and APA style.
38. ResearchCopyright.com: Learn about copyright law in simple language.
39. Research Guides from New York Public Library: New York Public Library research guides in alphabetical order by topic.’
40. That White Paper Guy: Articles, FAQ, and other great white paper writing resources from Gordon Graham.
41. Top 25 Books for Writers and Writing-related Topics: As voted by writers.
42. The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resources: Top ten lists for free apps, online apps, bookmarks, communities.
43. Visuwords: Online graphical dictionary.
44. The Well-Fed Writer: Site behind the books of the same name. Sign up for the free newsletter.
45. Writing for Dollars: Articles and newsletter
46. WhitePaperSource: Excellent resource for white paper writers.
47. Worldwide Freelance Writer: Markets, newsletter, and articles.
48. Writer Magazine: Not only a print magazine, but also has lots of online articles.
49. Writing White Papers: Everything white papers including a community, blog, links, and newsletter.
50. WritingSpirit.com: Resources, strategies and support for writers.

Tools

1. About Writing Tools: Best writing tools on the Web.
2. Abbreviations: Search and browse abbreviations.
3. Anagram Genius
4. Cliche Finder: Identify and kill cliches.
5. ClicheSite: Cliches, euphemesms, and figures of speech.
6. Chris Pound’s Name Generation Page: Includes fantasie, parodies, and more links.
7. The Editorium Freebies: Tools and templates for Microsoft Word.
8. The Free Dictionary: Includes English, Medical, Legal, Financial, and Computer Dictionaries, Thesaurus, Acronyms, Idioms, Encyclopedia, and a Literature Reference Library.
9. Freelance Switch Hourly Rate Calculator: How much should you make an hour? Complete this form to find out.
10. Global Acronyms: Search for acronyms.
11. Good Keywords: Find the right keywords.
12. Google Docs: Online-based word processor
13. Instant Anagrams
14. Instant Rhymes
15. Microsoft Word Shortcuts: Exactly as it sounds.
16. The Naque: Tools for coming up with names.
17. NetLingo: Online text and jargon.
18. The Passivator: Eliminate passive phrases.
19. Phrase Finder: Find phrases and their meanings.
20. Reference.com: Dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, reference material Wikipedia and Lexico’s On This Day.
21. Rhymezone: Tool for finding words that rhyme. Also includes other resources such as Shakespeare, quizzes, quotations, Mother Goose, and famous documents.
22. Scrivener Gold: Helps writers organize projects — for Macs. Apple Matters review gives it a rating of 9 out of 10. Scrivener requires a Mac running OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
23. Seventh Sanctum: Name generators (look on the left).
24. Text Block Writer: A virtual index card program.
25. ThinkFree Office: Free “Office” application.
26. Tools for Creating Ideas: Nice list of ideas of what you can do to brainstorm and come up with new things.
27. U.S. Newspapers: Find Web sites for US newspapers.
28. VocabTest.com: Boost your word power.
29. Wordsmith: Love the site’s anagram server. Also has A Word a Day, Wordsmith Chat, Wordserver and more.
30. World Newspapers, Magazines, and New Sites in English: Nice resource that sorts resources by categories.
31. WordWeb: Thesaurus and dictionary accessed with one click.
32. Zoho Writer and other apps

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Meryl Evans

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.

A person or a business can do everything right and still struggle to move to the next level simply because it doesn’t stand out from the crowd. Sam Horn opens with a great example of this from American Idol. Judge Simon Cowell told an eliminated contestant, “You have a good voice and you’re a nice guy. You just didn’t do the one thing necessary to go through to the next round. You didn’t stand out from the crowd.”

How does an average, hard-working person stand out? POP! answers that question with plenty of approaches to help a person be purposeful, original and pithy (notice this makes up POP?). This means whatever you use needs to accomplish its purpose, be different and short yet meaningful.

The challenge of a how to book is to teach the reader a new skill and help the reader apply and remember that new skill. Not an easy task. Horn’s conversational writing style coupled with real-life examples and exercises for each covered technique drills the message in the reader’s head for better use and retention.

The book’s organization makes it possible to try different techniques and move on when one doesn’t work. I didn’t feel pressure to read the book in order. The book succeeds for those who want to skip around and those who must start on page 1 and finish on page 256.

Bold headers divide the book’s sections for easier scanning and reading. The busiest professional can read one section to learn something new and then read another section the next time five minutes open up.

I’ve read many articles and tips on how to come up with names, slogans and other wordy things. Horn introduces a few more creative ways to brainstorm names that I hadn’t considered before. One strategy to try is Onomatopoeia. Words like “quack,” “bang” and “click” are Onomatopoeic words. “Yahoo!” too, but that’s not how the founders came up with its name. They used another technique as explained in the book.

We can use these strategies almost anywhere in our personal and professional lives — from making presentations and naming products, companies and books to marketing and phrases. Seriously, just about anyone can get a bang from this poppin’ book.

Title: POP! Stand out in Any Crowd
Author: Sam Horn
Publisher: Perigee Trade
ISBN: 0399532765
Date: September 2006
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Cover Price: USD: $22.95 Amazon: $16.29

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 and patterns.

The dictionary (and Google’s Zeitgeist page) define the noun: “The general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.” The definition also says the word is often capitalized. Why? The word comes from two German words that mean “time” and “spirit.”

Steve Blow had a conversation that referred to a Dallas Morning News article that said, “…and NBC has a winner with its zeitgeist series Heroes.” Does that make sense to you? Not to me.

I did a search for zeitgeist on the newspaper’s web site and surprisingly found many articles using the word. A sampling:

“YouTube is the latest Web site to emerge as the symbol and focal point of a zeitgeist.”

“First, a follow-up from last week’s rant about Wikipedia. Must have been something in the Zeitgeist last week.”

” The group’s million-selling 1994 debut, Rubberneck, captured the post-grunge zeitgeist with seething tunes…”

After reading these articles, I still can’t figure out how I would use it in a sentence. Are these even used correctly?

The word is a nice one with its interesting spelling and pronunciation. But it isn’t one we can use everyday. Blow thinks it’s one of those words people use to impress others. Whether people used it right or wrong, Google gets it with its Zeigeist tool.

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 multiple people to come up with the same word.

Want to create a new word? Try blending multiple words, which are easy for others to figure out after determining words on which they’re based. Clark references Wanted Words, books that list words suggested by listeners and includes tidbits and letters. The book’s web site held contests that gave readers a chance to create new words based on a brief description. Here’s the last contest. Just click Previous to see more.

Protologism also means creating a new word… but unlike neologism, the creator wants to make it an accepted word in the language as it’s based on “prototype” and “neologism.”

WordSpy collects new terms that have appeared in multiple resources — they’re not sniglets.

Other ways to create words:

* daffynitions: Ex: “alarms — What an octopus is. (all arms)”

* sniglets: Ex: cheedle — “The orange residue left on fingers after eating Cheetos or some other cheesy snack.”

* goofinitions: Ex: “balderdash — rapid hair loss.”

I can’t find a clear definition of “stunt words” as referenced in Word Spy. All the searches refer to Word Spy’s description except for one that points to Wordlustitude, a blog that’s “a growing dictionary of ephemeral words — also known as nonce or stunt words. All readers are strongly encouraged to use these terms in their blogs, poems, prophesies, and recipes.” So “stunt words” are word fads, words with a short life.

Collins Word Exchange How to Make a Dictionary is a good read [Link from Language Log]. Still stuck? Try the Random Word Generator.

Or take an existing word and give it a new twist. “Shut up” isn’t always an insult. It can also be a surprise or a shocker that translates to “No way!” Grey’s Anatomy got my friends and me on a “seriously” kick — to mean “Yeah” or “telling the truth.”

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 me as a word freak). “[Fill in blank] anyone?” as in “Chess, anyone?” “Science Club, anyone?” You might not see this much as this phrase frequently appears in local and community publications.

What phrases or words annoy you? Why?

Just remembered another one. The use of ‘s to make things plural not possessive. FAQ’s. Picture’s. Those who think nothing of FAQ’s have a good argument because it’s an abbreviation rather than a word. Since Q represents “questions,” why bother using an S at all?

From the sponsor: Viral Marketing may have a strange name but it can be a very effective way to create exponential growth and greatly increase your company’s visibility and influence.

Need quick content about your business that sounds like you took your time to craft? Let the Corporate Gibberish Generator do the work for you. Al you have to do is enter your company name and click “Generate.” Ta da! Look at this amazing paragraph it created within seconds (before you read it, double up on your caffeine):

“Company ABC practically invented the term ‘co-branded, user-defined, distributed, leading-edge performance.’ Think revolutionary. We invariably synergize transparent versioning. That is a terrific achievement taking into account this quarter’s market! The aptitude to visualize virtually leads to the aptitude to matrix ultra-virally. We will implement the term ‘cutting-edge.’ A company that can innovate correctly will (at some point in the future) be able to benchmark easily. We think we know that if you harness holistically then you may also facilitate extensibly. What does the term ‘deliverables’ really mean? It may seem unbelievable, but it’s completely accurate! Is it more important for something to be short-term or to be reconfigurable?”

How incredible is that? This is only recommended for companies that do not use the KISS philosophy. Those who do will catch on quickly. [ Link: Forbes ]