How to deal with grammar Nazis: http://bit.ly/7phCGp
If your tweet today mentions AIDS, the color of your text will be red, Kudos, Twitter, for marketing a campaign of awareness through colored fonts.
words to ponder
The writing community is full of lame-o people who want to be published in journals even though they don’t read the magazines that they want to be published in. These people deserve the rejections that they will undoubtedly receive, and no one should feel sorry for them when they cry about how they can’t get anyone to accept their stories.
The rest is here.
As the former editor of a bunch of magazines, I can attest. We'd get a lot of submissions, and about nine times out of 10 the reason we rejected them was because it was flagrantly clear that the authors had never read the magazine they were submitting to.
That's not to say we rejected them because they weren't customers (though being one helped), ... See Morerather they had no feel for the magazine or its type of content. Didn't matter how well it was written--some of the stuff we got from our regulars was only a few steps away from cocktail-napkin scrawl--it's just that they wanted to get published in Elle but wrote something for Maxim.
If you're still too lazy to read the magazine, at least do us editors a favor and check out the magazine's website--the writers' guidelines will give you an idea of what gets published.
My own tips for writing for submission are here.
the most delightful sentence I read today.
"If there's one thing that can be said, it is that yesterday's cultural pessimists were more interesting than the pessimists of today."
HT: Marginal Revolution
risky vs risque
"risky" is an adjective meaning, "attended with or involving risk; hazardous: a risky undertaking."
"risque" is also an adjective, but means, "daringly close to indelicacy or impropriety; off-color: a risqué story."
I notice a lot of people use "risque" when they mean "risky." Why, I have no idea, but based on their drawn-out enunciation of it, I figure it's because it sounds foreign and, hence, sophisticated. But to paraphrase George Orwell, never use a foreign term when there's an English equivalent--especially when said foreign term is neither foreign nor appropriate.
what's the shortest sentence in the english language?
"Go" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
HT to our friend, Melissa.
cease and decease
Here's one for you: If "cease" means, "to stop; discontinue," and the prefix "de" means, "removal, separation, negation, etc." then shouldn't "decease" mean the negation of cessation?
he's not right on the money
I take on corporate giant Michael Moore in my review of Capitalism: A Love Story, read it here.
How to get your comment noticed on Roger Ebert's blog.
In case you haven't read it, you can read Ebert's blog here.
The comments generally run in the few-hundreds, but, if you're like me (in that you want to read the blogger's responses to some of the comments) you look for the bold-faced end-notes that say Ebert: and then follow with his response..
With all the invective that goes on in the comments section, I'm surprised no-one's put words in his mouth. I don't think I'd do it--or if I would, not maliciously, but I figure that others would similarly be on the lookout for bold text, so were I to post a comment, I would include a bolded citation just to give other readers pause.
Some other bloggers, such as Tyler Cowen over at Marginal Revolution, usually refrain from commenting in the comments section, and when he does, it's only to correct an improper citation or clarify a statement in the original post that his readers have misread--never to argue. And he does it without adding in bold his own thoughts to the comment. That may be the wisest way to do so.
I read a lot of blogs, and Ebert's is the first I've read that comments on comments in such a way. I hope it's not exploited, but it likely will be.
Anyway, here's my comment on his latest.
In the Words Part I
Sorry for the dearth of posts lately. I'm writing an autobiography of writing. You can read Part I here: http://frothygirlz.com/2009/09/14/in-the-words/
oh yeah
Already I have heard from a few people who don’t want to see it “because it’s Japanese.” This is solid-gold ignorance. “Is it only dubbed?” I was asked. You dummy! All animated films are dubbed! Little Nemo can’t really speak!
That's your head-smack moment of the day, brought to you by Roger Ebert's review of Ponyo
notes on goats
From Wikipedia:
Female goats are referred to as does or nannies, intact males as bucks or billies; their offspring are kids. Castrated males are wethers. Goat meat from younger animals is called kid or cabrito, and from older animals is sometimes called chevon, or in some areas “mutton.”
what's a kubrick
"Kubrick" was chosen in honor of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. In further homage to the filmmaker, the Kubrick logo is designed in the style of the logo created for his movie A Clockwork Orange. By linguistic coincidence, the name Kubrick may also be seen as a hybrid word of the Japanese word kyu, meaning the number nine, and the English word brick.
More here.
evident vs apparent
evident means "based on the available evidence"; apparent means "based on evidence that may or may not be factually valid."
Huh?
Think of it this way: When you say something is evident, like, It's evident that gravity's responsible for the trailer backing over the cat, you suggest there's little to no doubt that that's what happened. However, when you say, It's apparent that gravity's responsible for the trailer backing over the cat you leave some room for doubt.
