TGIF: Links to Inspire
Back from our travels… Ready to be inspired?!
- How to Take Personal Responsibility
- 5 Playground Rules to Live by
- How to Simplify Your Life… Really…
- How to Avoid Arguing with your Boss
- 10 Ways to Create Unshakeable Confidence
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Best Posts: August 2008
photo credit: *L*u*z*a
Well, to celebrate Lit Guides two month anniversary, here is a list of those posts that received the most views and/or comments… Thanks for reading!!
- Tuesday Tips: Commas
- Reading at any Cost?
- Age Labels: Helpful or Hurtful?
- Tuesday Tips: Commas and Clauses
- What Kids Should Read?
Comma Pairs
photo credit: Lincolnian
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make. — Truman Capote
Before we wrap up our series on comma usage, let’s review what we’ve already covered. First we tackled the role of the comma in lists… then we wrangled with commas and clauses… and last week we covered the loose ends of commas… This week we will close by clarifying commas in pairs.
First, comma pairs are used to indicate (or bracket) additional, but unnecessary information in a sentence. This information can be removed from the sentence without damaging it:
When we drive to the cabin, which is in Wisconsin Rapids, we love to listen to baseball games.
Our dog, Juno, always joins us.
Now, if the additional information is crucial to the meaning of the sentence, then you do not need to bracket it with commas and, to be correct, really shouldn’t. However, most people wouldn’t notice the error:
Our dog, chasing the deer, was very happy.
The cabin, after the windstorm, was not damaged.
Neither of these sentences would retain the same meaning without the bracketed information, so simply remove the commas.
And that’s it for this week! Unless, of course, you have any questions… If so, simply drop me a comment. Next week we will check out my very favorite mark of punctuation — the semicolon!
Wondering what Tuesday Tips you’ve missed?
- Why Punctuation Matters
- Apostrophes: Contractions
- Apostrophes: Possessives
- Apostrophes: Plurals
- Commas: Lists
- Commas: Clauses
Google = Stupid?
After our recent discussions about what kiddos should/not be reading, this recent article on whether or Google is making us stupid (since we now research and read online, spasmodically, rather than using the deliberate, good, ol’ fashioned paper variety…)
From The Atlantic:
I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet…
So, have you noticed a difference in your attention span? Is Google making us stupid? I hope not, because I would be lost without it…
Next Monday we’ll take a peek at the other side of the issue…
TGIF: Links to Inspire
photo credit: Pear Biter
Now we’re off to Colorado… Enjoy!
- Learn to Say No!
- 5 Ways to Escape Work Stress
- 7 Ways to Tackle the Multi-tasking Virus
- 8 Ways to Have a Productive Day
- How to Create Profound and Lasting Change
Wonderful Vocab Resource List
photo credit: autumn_bliss
A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a great resource list of vocabulary sites, courtesy of Dumb Little Man. Here is a sampling of ways to improve your vocabulary:
Visuwords is an awesome visual tool to find new words and improve your vocabulary. When you look up a word in this tool, it shows a neat graph which connects that word to various other words based on different relationships between them. You can hover over each word to get its definition and also zoom-in and zoom-out using your mouse wheel. It’s certainly an excellent dictionary plus thesaurus.
MetaGlossary.com approaches the task of finding meanings of words in a different way. It aggregates various links on the web which provide an explanation to the term and shows the results. Hence it does the job of pulling definitions of the word from the entire web.
Wordsmith is a nice resource for new words, especially its ‘ A Word A Day ‘ newsletter, which is immensely popular and delivers new words everyday to your email inbox.BBC Learning English is another comprehensive resource of not only English grammar and vocabulary but on various aspects of this useful language. It includes stories, pictures, quizzes and various communication tools to improve your English vocabulary.
About.com’s English Quizzes is a good place to find various quizzes related to grammar and vocabulary. It also provides listening quizzes for real time listening practice.
Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus is a free-to-try visual tool which shows related words in an interactive map and helps you to easily find their meanings and listen to their pronunciation.
AskOxford is the online version of the famous dictionary by the Oxford University press. It’s comprehensive without a doubt and includes various other vocabulary resources and a quotations dictionary.Urban Dictionary stands out from the herd. It’s a dictionary of slang words. So use this dictionary and don’t miss out on slang words either.
Alpha Dictionary doesn’t directly show you the meaning of a word. Instead it searches all the available online dictionaries (most of them) and displays the results in the form of links to the meaning of that word in those dictionaries. So choose your favorite dictionary (if at all you have one) and click on the corresponding link to view its meaning.
Check out the full list of ways to supercharge your vocabulary!
Comma Loose Ends…
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. — T. S. Eliot
Two weeks ago we tackled the role of the comma in lists… then we wrangled with commas and clauses… now we move on to the first of two weeks that address the loose ends of commas…
First, the use of commas in dialog. Simply place the comma before the direct quote:
Eric said, “Let’s golf!”
Kim agreed, “Hitting golf balls is fun!”
photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³
The second comma rule this week involves emotion: Interjections! Use commas to offset interjections:
Hey, what’s going on?
Wow, that movie was terrific!
And that’s it for this week! Unless, of course, you have any questions… If so, simply drop me a comment. Next week we will wrap up comma usage with how to use them in pairs!
Wondering what Tuesday Tips you’ve missed?
- Why Punctuation Matters
- Apostrophes: Contractions
- Apostrophes: Possessives
- Apostrophes: Plurals
- Commas: Lists
- Commas: Clauses
What Adults Are (really) reading…
After the past few weeks considering what today’s youth are reading, should be reading, and should not be reading, a couple of articles examining what (adult) bestseller lists indicate about the culture and country of those readers seemed in order. First, the current bestseller lists of the U.S. and the U.K. and More Intelligent Life’s take on both:
AMERICA’s bestsellers–pulp fiction and self-help
1 The Appeal - John Grisham 708,000
2 7th Heaven - James Patterson 329,000
3 Plum Lucky - Janet Eavonich 277,000
4 The Secret - Rhonda Byrne 276,000
5 Duma Key - Stephen King 265,000
6 Rodrick Rules - Jeff Kinney 184,000
7 A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini 173,000
8 You: Staying Young - Mehmet C. Oz 145,000
9 New Moon - Stephanie Meyer 131,000
10 World Without End - Ken Follett 125,000
BRITAIN’s bestsellers–big on celebrities and chefs
1 A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini 281,000
2 Delia’s How to Cheat at Cooking - Delia Smith 229,000
3 Jordan: Pushed to the Limit - Katie Price 135,000
4 Jamie at Home - Jamie Oliver 121,000
5 Remember Me - Sophie Kinsella 65,000
6 My Booky Wook - Russell Brand 57,000
7 Lords of the Bow - Conn Iggulden 53,000
8 7th Heaven - James Patterson 53,000
9 Nigella Express - Nigella Lawson 49,000
10 The Appeal - John Grisham 49,000
And here’s Another View of those Bestseller Lists…
So, what do you think? In what ways are Bestseller Lists a reflection of their culture?
TGIF: Links to Inspire
We are spending one of the last remaining weekends of summer at our cabin… Hope these tidbits make your day a little bit better…
- How to Stay on Track
- 10 Ways to Find Inner Peace
- 5 Common Obstacles to Achieving Your Goals
- How to Achieve Any Goal
- Timeless Tips for Writing Well
What Kids Should Read…?
photo credit: All I Need To Survive
So, after discussing what kiddos should not be reading, here’s a recent post by the Millions on what they should be reading: New York Review’s Children Classics.
Check out a sampling of which works made the cut and let me know if you agree with the NYR’s choices! (I only recognize Thurber’s 13 Clocks…).
