Buzz Mother Earth
ecology
biodegradable
ecosystem
One World
organic
One Straw Revolution
back to the land
gaia
Earth Mother
renewable resource
slow food
green
sustainability
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Listen to this article| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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accuses me of being a stuck-up snob because I use "big words" and encourage other writers to learn and use them. Well, I'm not going to jump up all spraddle-legged about it.Labels: English, fiction, words, writing
Listen to this articleHere at Wordnik, we show you what people actually do with language, not what we'd like them to do. We think it's important to show real information about every word—even the ones that aren't considered standard.They feel that you learn a word better by seeing it in context [even if it is used incorrectly?] and that some information is better than none. [same query]
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Misspellings are, however, the heart of LOLspeak, seen in captions at icanhazcheezburger.com
(home of the LOLcat dynasty and part of a vast empire of silly sites I liek).Labels: English, words, writing
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The 10 most popular adjectives: good, first, new, last, long, great, little, own, other and old. OMG! How colorless, bland and deaf, but stinking, do you want your conversation and writing?Labels: English, words, writing
Listen to this articlean all-out effort, [and] comes from the world of aviation. On an airplane, the handles controlling the throttle and the fuel mixture are often topped with ball-shaped grips, referred to by pilots as (what else?) balls.
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It is not uncommon these days to see a sentence like The new rules apply to all the members, especially myself. Wrong! There is no I in the sentence for myself to reflect. The word required is the objective form, me. Most people get I, myself, correct. The problem comes in when trying to express more than one an action in one sentence: The teacher gave the tests back to myself and the others. Try putting the actions into two sentences, and your ear will tell you which form to use: The teacher gave the tests back to me. The teacher gave the tests back to the others.Labels: English, words, writing
Listen to this articleMr Mousebender: And I thought to myself, 'A little fermented curd will do the trick,' so, I curtailed my Walpoling activities, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some cheesy comestibles.This little scene is the intro to L. Diane Wolfe's 12/18/09 blog post, Spunk On A Stick's Tips: And Now For Something Completely Different!. It often typifies the resultant condition when I verbalize. See? I meant, "When I talk, people don't understand me." Or else they laugh.
Henry Wenslydale: Come again?
Mr Mousebender: I want to buy some cheese!
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The idea of this website is to make your name easy to pronounce. The dictionary does not have your name, how do you get people to pronounce your name right?Yes, I see or, rather, I hear every time an Asian call me "GAY-OR-GANNA", but I forgive because they are phonetically correct.
How many times have you been in this situation when you have heard your name mangled, twisted, contorted into something you yourself can barely comprehend?
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On Twitter today are two chats I usually participate in. Beginning at noon Pacific time (you right coasters--count forward) the Write Chat takes place under the hashtag #writechat . It lasts about three hours.Labels: technology, words, writers, writing
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Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style. Great editing posts to help writers from the NYTimes After Hours blog:Labels: English, reference, words, writing
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The ancient régime, or Ancien régime [F.] the former political and social system, as distinguished from the modern; especially, the political and social system existing in France before the Revolution of 1789.Thanks to the Webster 1913 Dictionary edited by Patrick J. Cassidy, via Answers.com. And Google, of course. Everything comes from Google.
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Listen to this articleThe strategy often either looses money or posts flat returns...The writer didn't mean that the strategy loosens up money, either. This was a flat out proofreading failure, because the correct word is "loses". However, I see the words confused too often in writing from the youthful and ESLs.
You may lose your loose change through a hole in your pocket.Does this help to remember the difference? See the man walking along, jingling coins in his pocket and the coins dribbling out from the cuff, scattering on the pavement? See me coming along picking them up? To lose coins, your bad luck. Loose coins, my treasure! Listen to this article
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Listen to this article1. don't confuse acronyms with proper names (LASER & Lazar)
2. use a lowercase s to form plurals (LASERs)
3. spell out the word the first time it is used, then enclose the mnemonic in parentheses like this: frequency modulation (FM)
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Listen to this articleLullaby, and good night,
With pink roses bedight,
With lilies o'erspread,
Is my baby's sweet head.
Lay thee down now, and rest,
May thy slumber be blessed.
Lay thee down now, and rest,
May thy slumber be blessed.
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Listen to this articleAn important kind of metonymy is synecdoche, in which the name of a part is substituted for that of a whole (e.g. hand for worker), or vice versa. Modern literary theory has often used ‘metonymy’ in a wider sense, to designate the process of association by which metonymies are produced and understood: this involves establishing relationships of contiguity between two things, whereas metaphor establishes relationships of similarity between them.Clark, Robert and Todd, Janet eds. The Literary Encycopaedia and Dictionary. London: The Literary Dictionary.
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Listen to this articleNo results found for alot:As Paul Brian of Washington State University surmises, "Perhaps this common spelling error began because there does exist in English a word spelled “allot” which is a verb meaning to apportion or grant."
The grammar section of EnglishPlus.com further explains that "A lot (two words) is an informal phrase meaning 'many.' It can take an adjective, for example, 'a sizable lot.'" Better writers use more descriptive words like greatly, often, or very much. For example:Labels: business, websites, words
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Listen to this articleadj.I had a problem swallowing casual dining, but casual games absolutely sticks in my craw. As opposed to what--major league baseball? The Olympics?
- Occurring by chance. See synonyms at chance.
- Occurring at irregular or infrequent intervals; occasional: casual employment at a factory; a casual correspondence with a former teacher.
- Unpremeditated; offhand: a casual remark.
- Being without ceremony or formality; relaxed: a casual evening with friends.
- Suited for everyday wear or use; informal.
- Not serious or thorough; superficial: a casual inspection.
- Showing little interest or concern; nonchalant: a casual disregard for cold weather.
- Lenient; permissive: a casual attitude toward drugs.
- Not close or intimate; passing: a casual acquaintance with avant-garde music.
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This Friday, as every year on the spring equinox, we celebrateIn 1997, storytellers in Perth, Western Australia coordinated a five-week long Celebration of Story, commemorating March 20 as the International Day of Oral Narrators. At the same time, in Mexico and other South American countries, March 20 was already celebrated as the National Day of Storytellers.So we salute the probable origin of all entertaining writing. Listen to this article
Nothing, when they are used moderately and with good judgment.However, that isn't exactly what I meant. There is a difference between moderately and in moderation. I want you to avoid an excess of adverbs. How can I get away with it when the editor slashes up your manuscript if you use adverbs? Because in my judgment, this post does not contain an excess of adverbs, and the word was an appropriate example. It fit the sentence and I did not throw it in on a whim or because I could not express the thought in any other manner.

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Occasionally I flaunt (not flout) my ignorance on Yahoo Answers, a loosely vetted sort of public Q&A forum. I stick to the category closest to what I know best and the most about. Maybe.Labels: words
Listen to this article....Steichen’s beautifully toned landscapes, sensual nudes and still life’s, and psychological portraits...I thought perhaps "still life" was a special term. Should it be "still lives", I pondered. The apostrophe just didn't look right to me.
*Dictionary: still lifeI even scoured references from the Art Dictionary and Photography Dictionary at Answers, but they neatly skirted the issue by using the term as an adjective preceding words like images and pictures.
n., pl. still lifes.
1. Representation of inanimate objects, such as flowers or fruit, in painting or photography.
2. A painting, picture, or photograph of inanimate objects.
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If I never again hear the following phrases, I won't miss them:on a daily basisI suspect these are clichés in the making, hence the title of this post. What about you? What contemporary overused phrases are driving you up the wall?
life as we know it
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Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger? has been a favorite website of mine for a couple of years. I'm sure I've mentioned it, especially as an inexpensive antidepressant. The original was just "LOLcats", the LOL being text-speak for "laughing out loud" and cats--well, pretty self-explanatory. I'm not sure where the "I Can Has Cheezburger?" came from, featuring similar silly cat shots with captions, but apparently the two sites merged to the benefit and amusement of all.Labels: English, silly, words, writing
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Just as I watched the incorrect spelling 'definately' make the rounds of the Web in previous years, the mistake du jour that I see is 'alright', and it is not all right with me. I find it in posts and articles from people who purport to be writers.The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing ...From Answers.com, the Word Tutor considers the adjective form as Nonstandard usage, as does Word Net. If you like the Wikipedia as a source of information about words, it states, "Even though it often appears in print, the use of "alright" in any context other than slang is generally frowned upon and may be perceived as purposefully breaking convention." Nonstandard is also the verdict of the American Heritage® Dictionary as provided online by Bartleby.
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Did you know some books have lovely headbands which serve no practical purpose? And if you think PMS has to do with moody women, you haven't met the Pantone Matching System. Rachel Toor reveals these and many more esoteric publishing terms in A Publishing Primer at The Chronicle of Higher Education online. My favorite entry is the very last one with its little snarky jibes at some controversial authors:Warranty: Your promise to the publisher that you are who you say you are (Margaret B. Jones!), that you have written the work (Kaavya Viswanathan!), that everything you say is true is true (James Frey!), and that you have the right to be named as author.Via The Practicing Writer Vol. 5, No. 8: September 2008 newsletter from Dr. Erika Dreifus. Listen to this article
People who love the English language are familiar with the commonly felt gag reflex when they see signs with violations of apostrophes. We are, as Lynn Truss ably noted in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, charter members of the apostrophe posse. We'd love to carry apostrophe zappers capable of eradicating those erroneous superscript commas on the run. Drive by apostrophicide, as it were.WHEN I SAY..............WHAT I MEANThese are short-hand definitions, and I haven't yet wrestled with the more controversial ones (to me) like creative nonfiction. Maybe I'll add to the list. I think I threatened to do this a long time ago, but didn't carry through because I hadn't made up my mind on exactly what each term means to me.
professional......................paid for writing
amateur.........................not paid for writing
published.....................work has appeared to public
unpublished...................work not appeared to public
writer....one who writes as a large part of a job or as a profession; one who writes regularly with the hope of becoming a professional or published
nonfiction....................true story presenting facts
fiction...........................untrue story made up
written story.............a complete story in written words
complete....containing a beginning/introduction, middle and end/summation presenting a whole story in facts or fiction
success.......personally-defined goal, often a moving target
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One of the basic editing tasks is to ensure that subjects and verbs match in number . There are three numbers—singular, dual, and plural—that are distinguished in both the noun and the verb, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Let's not worry about the archaic "dual" form here. The greatest problem for writers is the fact that many nouns, which are used for subjects, don't always become plural by the regular method of adding an s or es to the end of the singular form: dog, dogs/church, churches. In fact, most words that end in s, x, ch, or sh form plurals this way.Fishes fill the dish.Other unchanging nouns include:
Fish fill the dish.
A fish fills the dish. (singular)
barracksFind help with forming plurals of all forms of irregular nouns at the University of Victoria's 330 Grammar and Georgia State University's Joanna Crump's grammar pages.
deer
crossroads
offspring
dice (although die can be the singular)
gallows
headquarters
sheep
means
series
species
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Listen to this articleUSAGE NOTE The phrase try and is commonly used as a substitute for try to, as in Could you try and make less noise? A number of grammarians have labeled the construction incorrect. To be sure, the usage is associated with informal style and strikes an inappropriately conversational note in formal writing. Sixty-five percent of the Usage Panel rejects the use in writing of the sentence Why don't you try and see if you can work the problem out between yourselves?via Answers.com
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Before the year 1200, the word silly meant "blessed," and was derived from Old English saelig, meaning "happy." This word went through several incarnations before adopting today's meaning: "stupid or foolish."Listen to this article
For some people, confusion reigns supreme over the use of 'may' and 'might' and about the uses of 'can' and 'could'. Perhaps I should include 'will' and 'would', 'shall' and 'should', but you'll get the picture from the first two pairs.Labels: English, words, writing
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Did you ever wonder how many search engines scan the Internet? The search engine optimization (SEO) company Trellian claims to gather data on 36 billion searches performed on 200 search engines worldwide. Scroll down the referenced web page to see a list. Impressive, huh? Only three really matter, though, when it comes to fiddling with keywords.Labels: technology, websites, words
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