I took a class in early 20th century American literature while I was a student at the University of Florida. Every essay, book, or article we read struck someone somehow. I got so disgusted by students saying, “What struck me about…” or, “I was struck by…” that I wrote a response paper asking the professor to imagine me striking a student on the head with my Norton Anthology the next time someone said something about being struck. I found a list of world wide web dangerous words today and it reminded me of that class.
Posts in the category “writing”
The English Language
I really get aggravated when people try to argue their way out of what are really meaningless mistakes by saying that the English language is flexible and there aren’t any hard and fast rules and who cares if they’ve spelled something incorrectly because it doesn’t matter as long as you get it and blah, blah,
a hucklebuck response
my hucklebuck response from Peter Bowler‘s The Superior Person’s Book of Words defenestration n – the act of throwing someone or something out of a window napiform (adj) – shaped like a turnip quiddity n – the essence of something; literally, its whatness a quibble, or trifling nicety subderisorious adj. – mocking, but gently and
Missing PermaLinks
It really kills me that she can’t get her permalinks working the right way so I can never link to a single post, but haha – no, serious is apparently ga-ga over Elvis pens. I say we start a crusade to get her as many as possible.
This Living Hand
Notes on an essay I wrote
Hate Me for This
A quick lesson on it’s versus its: it’s is a contraction of the two words “it” and “is”; if what you are trying to do is say, “it is,” and you want to do it without using that pesky middle i, use it’s its is possessive; try to think about how neurotic you would be
Contentville
The previous post got me thinking about all the continuing hullabaloo about content. Continuing? Yeah. Continuing as in, the same thing people were debating 300 years ago. I took entire classes in college about content and what it is and where it originates and why it’s good or bad. What I learned was that nobody
Mathematical Physics
Embedded in Week 152’s essay by John Baez for This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics is a very sad love story. I mean it. I think I will subtitle this post, Love Surrounded by Confusing Mathematics.