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Language Lounge
(Sub)tweeting for Success
Tue Nov 08 11:00:00 EST 2016
While millions of people are tweeting and retweeting every day, a small fraction of them are also subtweeting, and if news stories are to be believed, they are not doing so very successfully. Recent news stories alerted me to the idea of subtweeting and got me thinking about the conversational aspects of Tweets and their sub-cousins.
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Word Count
80th Column: Verbal Oddities
Mon Oct 31 00:00:00 EDT 2016
Ta-da! You're about to read my eightieth column for Visual Thesaurus—Happy Column! Penning (on computer of course) twelve hundred words on aspects of writing every few weeks has been a pleasurable discipline that's taught me, I hope, to say a lot in a little.
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Word Count
Harry Potter and the Discombobulated Description
Mon Oct 24 21:15:00 EDT 2016
The spells are quite witty, but they aren't the only examples of wordplay in the Harry Potter universe. In the Potter novels J. K. Rowling uses vocabulary that has made her characters living creatures to generations of readers. This tradition continues in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
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Behind the Dictionary
Order Your Adjectives: Failed and Nuclear
Mon Oct 17 17:00:00 EDT 2016
When I recently heard a news reporter say that "China doesn't want a failed nuclear state on their doorstep," I was taken by surprise. Did China seriously want North Korea to succeed in their nuclear ambitions?
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Candlepower
A Column about Nothing
Fri Oct 14 09:00:00 EDT 2016
In a couple of months, the word authorities – the major dictionaries, the American Dialect Society, and language bloggers – will select their words of the year for 2016. I have no inside line on what those words will be; indeed, in past years, the winners have surprised me. (Singular "they," anyone?)
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Evasive Maneuvers
Tricky, Capable Apple-squires and Alligator Dung
Wed Oct 12 00:00:00 EDT 2016
I understand why a euphemism is useful. There's a huge stigma, unfortunately, surrounding mental health, and that stigma probably prevents people from seeking the help they need. However, I wonder if this euphemism is too effective a cloaking device.
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Language Lounge
Information Gaps in the Information Age
Mon Oct 03 00:00:00 EDT 2016
A couple of years ago I wrote about irritating the habit of clickbait purveyors to withhold critical information in the text of their clickable link in order to tantalize readers. The promise is that the thirst for missing but suggested information will be slaked with a simple click. Since then, the tendency has gotten worse.
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Dog Eared
John McWhorter is the Perfect Parade Marshal for Our On-the-go Language
Mon Sep 26 00:00:00 EDT 2016
It's mind-boggling that many people who profess to love language have bizarre, backwards ideas about it based on superstition and hokum. Educated folks who mock evolution-deniers have no problem believing equally unsupported ideas about language—such as "English is worse than ever!" and "Words shouldn't change!"
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Word Count
Why You Should Abandon the Edit-As-You-Go Method
Mon Sep 19 00:00:00 EDT 2016
Whenever I talk about the benefits of the crappy first draft some people always object. Why? For some, it's a habit and — as anyone who's tried to quit smoking can tell you — habits are hard to break. But for others the problem is fear.
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Evasive Maneuvers
Sustained, Mislived Difficulties and Other Drivel-ish Dreams
Wed Sep 07 08:35:00 EDT 2016
Are you a dreamer? I've had a few myself. That one where my pet lizard Ronnie convinced me to betray humanity to the alien lizards who control all governments was a doozy. Betraying Earth is one thing, but I would never have a pet lizard! But that's not the kind of dreamer that made a few recent headlines. Rather, a dreamer is an undocumented immigrant, usually a young person, who may have been brought to the U.S. as a child.
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