I was asked to identify the five words or phrases that mattered more than any other. If I was limited to just five recommendations--and these phrases had to work in every aspect of life--what would I say?
Before you take to the comments to ream us out about the above headline: “OMG,” “LOL” and the symbol for “heart” have all been added to the Oxford English Dictionary Online. => http://on.mash.to/gRofsI
In this new RSAnimate Steven Pinker shows us how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings.
It may have been word of the year in some wheelhouses, but "refudiate" wasn't looked upon favorably by many who sent in nominations for Lake Superior State University's 36th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness, which was released on New Year's Eve.
In a busy U.S. election year, "the American People" told LSSU they were tired of not only "refudiate," but also "mama grizzlies" who wanted their opponents to "man up."
Read more ... http://bit.ly/eYJntT
More than most people, politicians are acutely aware that what they say and how they say it can affect their future success. But a recent study suggests that a tiny twist of grammar—one that they’re probably not aware of—could influence their electability.
... continue reading here =>http://bit.ly/hpoxzO
The Inkys are Australia's only teenage choice book award
See the 2010 shortlist and longlist, where to vote, and a display competition for schools and libraries
http://bit.ly/ci8gZd
Maurice Sendak reads his book "Where the wild things are" and so does Barak Obama - videos => http://bit.ly/dzuIYH
Free Software that converts text to voice - reads text directly from other applications, without copying or pasting Free downloads available => http://bit.ly/9j4njR
When did we start speaking in sets of capital letters? Lane Greene looks into the rise of the acronym and its sibling the initialism ...
From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Autumn 2010
Perhaps the perfect modern movie is the cult classic “Office Space”. The anti-hero, Peter, begins his working day with a dressing-down from a droning boss about forgetting to put the cover-sheets on his TPS reports. We never find out what a TPS report is. Nor do we have to; the name alone tells us all we need to know about the life seeping out of Peter’s days, three capital letters at a time.
Acronyms have become so prevalent that they suffer what anything does when coined without end: devaluation. “Oh, my God” still packs quite a punch in the right circumstances. “OMG”, by contrast, is barely effective as a plaything any more.
Read more ...http://bit.ly/bp558z
I just love this list - "A tongue-in-cheek guide to business jargon and management buzzwords since 2002"
Anyone can make a typo or a spelling mistake, and fixing those is pretty easy in the spellcheck era. If you want your writing totally error-free, you also need to avoid using expressions which you think you’re using correctly but which you’ve actually misheard. Here are ten examples to watch out for.
Having studied linguistics as my main subject at university many years ago, I do recognise that language usage changes over time, and that time period can be quite short. Prescriptive rules eventually give way if the majority of speakers of a language adopt a different approach (the switch from using “he” to “they” to refer to an unspecified individual is one obvious recent example).
However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t rules that continue to apply in particular contexts, or expressions that are, for all standard purposes, flat-out incorrect. For some reason there are few things that irk me more than writers using a phrase such as “different tact” and being blissfully unaware that they’ve got it quite wrong.
This is a list of some of the most common errors in that field. They’re mistakes which you won’t necessarily notice during conversations, but which should stick out like a sore thumb (not a saw thumb) in written work. Many spell-checking systems won’t pick these errors up, though Word did flag about half of them while I was writing this piece. (Confession: I’ve gathered quite a few of these examples from my Lifehacker US colleagues.)
Some of these mistakes attract their own false etymologies. People construct a pseudo-logical explanation for the version they’re using, and over time these can become quite widely believed. Leaving aside the fact that language is not always based in obvious logic anyway (see “beyond the pale” below), the existence of an apparently plausible explanation doesn’t make those expressions correct. It just makes it a little less likely that you’ll realise you’re wrong.
Read on => http://bit.ly/a5sqSL
