Is Writing the same thing as Communicating?

It depends on who you ask, apparently. The Pew Internet and American Life project, which is a non-partisan entity that studies the effects of our connectivity on our culture, has been surveying teens about their writing habits. The written report is available here. It's a pretty interesting read. Eighty five percent of teens engage in some form of electronic communication, such as email, text messages, or comments on social networking sites. However, 60% of them don't consider this to be "writing." Yet about 2/3 of them will admit that the informal style of electronic communication has seeped into their formal writing in the form of emoticons such as ;-) or acronyms such as OMG (Oh My God) or LOL (Laugh Out Loud).

So, then, is it reasonable to think that maybe this informal writing can affect the quality of formal writing? I can only speak from my experience as a community college teacher, and I see the results in class regularly. Maybe it's an education issue, if the students don't see their scribbles on a Facebook wall as "writing." Maybe it just means that the language is evolving - wouldn't be the first time.

One reason why English is hard to learn

The ten most common verbs in the English language are all irregular verbs, which means one cannot conjugate them according to the standard rules. The past tense of "be" isn't be+ed, and in fact isn't any form of "be" at all - it's "was." No wonder English language learners struggle, since many verb forms have to be memorized. This great article talks about why this is so, and where some verbs come from. Did you ever wonder why politicians "grandstanded" but never "grandstood"? It's because that verb comes from the noun grandstand and not from any verb form of stand.

The author also laments that many newer verbs that come from nouns take the boring regular form of conjugation - this would apply to the real verbs that are fairly recent additions (inputted, emailed) and the newly evolving ones (IMed, texted).

What's in a name?

There's a great book review in this week's New York Times of a book about bad baby names. Who would name their kid Cheese? How about Ghoul? I once knew a mother who thought Ampersand was a beautiful word, so she named her daughter Ampersand. I don't think I'd name my child after a punctuation mark no matter how much I liked the sound. After all, I hope that my kids like and respect me, and that my actions demonstrate that I feel the same way towards my progeny. In any event, the authors of this book claim that these unconventional names aren't necessarily bad news for the child. Some people are proud of their offbeat names. Maybe the world's becoming a more forgiving place.

Dilbert this week was about a new hire named Jesus. Read his adventures starting here and then the reactions it produced here in Scott Adams' blog. I was curious to note that the most religious of his correspondents seemed to be the ones who found it amusing.

Following along behind the "Lyin' Tamer"

You can come to your own conclusions about who has or has not taken performance enhancing drugs in sports. However, there is a fascinating analysis of body language in the Senate hearing today in this article. The author doesn't come to any conclusions about the testimony, but it's quite clear he thinks one witness is much more likely to be truthful than the other one.

Smile for the Camera!

Why should appearance matter? Isn't performance more important? Perhaps these two things are more closely related than we had imagined. A pair of psychologists from Tufts University asked some undergraduates to look at black and white photographs of CEOs of major companies, and predict how successful the companies were based on the photographs of the leaders. The students didn't recognize the photos, but still predicted the most successful companies by the perceived leadership, dominance, and maturity of the executives. Interestingly enough, the perceived likability and trustworthiness of the individuals was not a predictor of company profits. The study appears in the February 2008 issue of Psychological Science.

A long day's journey into the common lexicon

Where do words come from? What are some of your favorites? The journeys that bring new words into common usage can be really interesting. This time of year, there are a flurry of stories about new words. Merriam Webster's word of the year is w00t, but other candidates include Facebook, locavore (for someone who eats locally produced or prepared foods), and subprime. Here's a great book review that describes the origin of several words. Did you know the search engine Google derives its name from an unintentional misspelling? That jargon actually originally meant the chattering of birds?

Do you have a career or a job?

My students this week have been discussing challenging job interview questions. One of the questions that flummoxed a few of them was whether they were motivated by salary or by job. I would hope that most people find work that is fulfilling outside of the paycheck. Here's a list of ways to think about finding what you love to do, and making that your career. There's a book by Marsha Sinetar on choosing a career titled "Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow." I'm not necessarily saying you need to read the book, but the idea is sound.