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Evasive Maneuvers
Sandwich Artists Profess Great Insight
Wed Aug 04 00:00:00 EDT 2010
I can only imagine how annoying the words Twitter and tweet are to people who haven't gotten in on the microblogging phenomenon. It's been over a year since I embraced all things tweet-y, and I like it so much that I continue praying to Zeus daily that Twitter never goes the way of Friendster and the pet rock. (Public service announcement: Neuter your pet rock. You can never be too careful.)
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Blog Excerpts
Further Thoughts on "Refudiate"
Wed Aug 04 00:00:00 EDT 2010
Still mulling over Sarah Palin's use of the word refudiate? Check out these two commentaries. In his Good magazine column, Visual Thesaurus contributor Mark Peters uses Refudiate-gate as an opportunity for a "Sarah Palin retrospective" here. And Geoff Nunberg argues on NPR's "Fresh Air" that the reactions to Palin's gaffe were more telling than the gaffe itself, here.
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Candlepower
Weird Words from the Corporatese Lexicon
Tue Aug 03 00:00:00 EDT 2010
English is my native tongue, language is my beat, and corporate America is where I earn my daily crust. Nevertheless, every so often I encounter an English word — in a corporate memo, speech, or email — that mystifies me. I've seen the word before; I've just never seen it used that way. I've always assumed the word meant one thing; here it obviously means something very different.
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Blog Excerpts
How to Speak American
Tue Aug 03 00:00:00 EDT 2010
The monumental Dictionary of American Regional English is finally nearing completion after 45 years. In Newsweek DARE editor Joan Houston Hall writes that despite reports of American English becoming homogeneous, "DARE's research shows that American English is as varied as ever." Read Hall's column here.
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Language Lounge
Don't Quote Me
Mon Aug 02 00:00:00 EDT 2010
A specter is haunting English — the specter of abused quotation marks. We notice this more and more in our reading and editing in the Lounge: the unthinking or misguided use of quotation marks where they are not required or serve no clear purpose seems to have become epidemic, perhaps nowhere more so than in the recently well-publicized open letter that the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers posted on the team's website, in which he responded to star player Lebron James' move to another team.
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Blog Excerpts
American English? What's That?
Mon Aug 02 00:00:00 EDT 2010
Robert Lane Greene, a journalist for The Economist who contributes to the magazine's excellent language blog Johnson, has contributed a fascinating column on the Macmillan Dictionary blog about American English. Greene uses his own personal linguistic biography to question the whole idea of a monolithic "American English." Read the column here.
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Training Videos
Creating a Graphic Model of a Word
Mon Aug 02 00:00:00 EDT 2010
How to use the Visual Thesaurus to facilitate creation of a Frayer Model Map, a graphic organizer for developing student vocabulary.
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Contest
The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: July Edition
Fri Jul 30 00:00:00 EDT 2010
It's the dog days of summer, but the Visual Thesaurus crossword puzzle should perk you up. Solve it and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt!
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Training Videos
Understanding a Challenging Text
Fri Jul 30 00:00:00 EDT 2010
How to use the Visual Thesaurus to make a text, filled with difficult vocabulary, easy to understand.
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Word Routes
In Defense of Harding the Bloviator
Thu Jul 29 00:00:00 EDT 2010
During my appearance on WNYC's "The Leonard Lopate Show" yesterday to talk about Sarah Palin's much-ridiculed use of the word refudiate, I found myself in the odd position of defending Warren Gamaliel Harding, one of the least admired presidents in American history. In the commentary on Palin, Harding was revived as a point of comparison, particularly for his use of two memorable words: normalcy and bloviate. As I said on the show, I'd argue that Harding has gotten a bad rap on both counts.
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