(This is the fourth in a weekly series about tools for writers. For the rest of the series, go here.) Here’s a big list of journalists’ personal web sites, compiled by Sreenath Sreenivasan. This came in handy for me recently when I was updating my resume and wasn’t sure how to phrase certain items. I … Continue Reading
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A plug for diglots and avocados
This is something new for this blog: a plug for a book I have not actually read. But Anu Garg’s newest book, The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words, looks to be pretty great. Anu Garg is the guy behind the A … Continue Reading
Metro alerts
DC has introduced some new (to me) safety alerts that play while you are waiting in a station for your train. There’s the usual “If you see any unattended bags or suspicious behavior, please report it,” which is nothing strange. Then there is some bizarre recording comparing escalators to alligators. DCist has the text version … Continue Reading
Buy a Friend a Book week
I love this concept. From the site: “Just get yourself to a real-life or virtual book store… and, well, buy a friend a book! But here’s the fun part: you can’t buy your friend a book because it’s their birthday or they just graduated or got engaged or had a baby or anything else. You … Continue Reading
On commas
This week I have had two proofreading gigs (actually, one gig and one test that may become a gig–keep your fingers crossed for me!) that have severely strained my comma rule knowledge. I’m proud to say that I know mostly by “feel” where to put the little buggers, but again, that doesn’t cut it in … Continue Reading
Tracking the corpus: sporks, eccentric millionares, and herding cats
An old On Language column on the Oxford English Corpus came across my desk today. This is a huge compilation of text from novels, newspaper and magazine articles, blogs and chatrooms, and even spoken transcripts in an ultra-powered searchable database. The corpus allows you to see words in context; for example, as the column says, … Continue Reading
Tuesday’s tools: track your time with The Printable CEO
(This is the third in a weekly series about tools for writers. For the rest of the series, go here.) The title of this gizmo is a bit of a misnomer, because the tool I’m discussing today is accessed online. I discovered David Seah’s Printable CEO through Lifehacker (a blog that purports to make people … Continue Reading
Hyphen in decline
The BBC reports: “The sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has knocked the hyphens out of 16,000 words, many of them two-word compound nouns.” The cause? Since the majority of our communication is typed, and hyphens slow down typing, people have been using the hyphen less and jamming two words together — or … Continue Reading
New look
Those who aren’t reading this in their RSS feed readers should have noticed some major changes around here already. I’m still tweaking, but I invite everyone to check out the new look and the (I hope) much easier navigation. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Quickie: Theater vs. Theatre
Something I wondered about for a while is explained in this Chicago Sun-Times article. In short: “ER is a facility, a room where you go and watch RE.”