Apostrophes and how to use them

I've been teaching writing as part of a communication class for a while, and one of the things I notice is the difficulty students have with apostrophes and possessive pronouns. Now, I realize learning the rules for these things can be tedious, but flawless writing is important. I also know that students learn different ways. So here is a nice visual lesson in correct use of apostrophes. Does that make it easier to understand? I'll let you decide whether it's a good explanation of a concept that is often seen in students' work. (Did I get it right the three times I used an apostrophe in that sentence?)

Can you read the grocery list?

Good handwriting is almost a lost art. I know it's still taught in schools, but it certainly does not have the emphasis it once did. I suppose I'd be dating myself to say I had penmanship class when I was in elementary school. It was my worst subject. But handwriting is important. Bad handwriting allegedly causes 7,000 deaths a year when prescriptions are misfilled. Here's a quick primer from the New York Times with some times about how to write legibly.

Bad judgment or saavy marketing?

So, Microsoft created an ad with an image of three people at a business meeting. The ad shows them sitting at a table, with computers open. One of the computers appears to be a MacBook, and the logo has been [presumably] digitally removed. The ad is published in the US. Then someone in the marketing department decides that if the photo is to be used in Poland, the African American man should be removed, and a white face put on his body. There is a range of opinions about this. I tend to agree with some of the printed opinions that if you wanted a photo with three white people in it, it would have been a lot smarter to start with a different photo. See the original and altered photos here.

How choice of language affects thinking

In French, the word for bridge, pont, is masculine. In German, the word brücke is feminine. In this fascinating Newsweek article, the author describes how German newspaper accounts in 2004 of the newly built Viaduct de Millau mention its elegance and lightness, while French articles describe it as immense and powerful. A Stanford psychologist, Lera Boroditsky, has studied how language can affect thinking. There's an Aboriginal tribe who uses compass directions for spatial cues, and not surprisingly, these people show much better than average skill at dead reckoning. Imagine how your choice of words can affect others opinions. I find, for example, if I describe an assignment as particularly difficult, I am more likely to hear from students about how much trouble they had with it.

Easing the $%*@# pain

Well, who would have guessed? Swearing seems to help people tolerate pain. Read this summary for a description of the research and a few suggested applications. Now, I don't mean to suggest you should swear in print, or in a business setting, but perhaps there are places a good cuss word is appropriate.

Counting Up to the Millionth Word

According to the Global Language Monitor, a new word is created in English on average every 98 minutes. This means that we should reach one million words on about June 10th of this year. What do new words look like? How about Bushism, interpandemic, microblogging, and defriend? These are a few of the words that have appeared recently. How do we know when a word becomes a word? As you might imagine, there are different opinions on this topic. Does it have to appear in the dictionary, or just be understood in conversation? This BBC video addresses that question. There's an absolutely delightful kids book on that topic also, Andrew Clements' Frindle, which I recommend to anyone.

Live Long and Prosper

Here's a great Slate article on the origins of the Klingon language, in honor of the opening of the new Star Trek movie this week. What's interesting is how the language evolved. The first few words came from overdubbing some English lines and having to match the movement of the actors' lips with the created Klingon words. From there, the language was mostly created by a single linguist so that it worked like a real language, but with the militaristic and guttural quality of the Klingons as depicted in the Star Trek world. You can even display Google's home page in Klingon if you wish. (Google>Preferences>Interface Language). But here's a trivia question for you: what other prime time television show featured a speech in Klingon to play a joke on one of the characters? Give up? Here's the answer.