Eleven Interesting Words

 How many words are in your vocabulary? The average high school graduate is said to know about 10,000 words. The average 4-year college graduate is said to know about 20,000 words. Do you have room for any more words in your vocabulary?

Here are some interesting words, which you may not know.

Upon learning an interesting word, if you’re like me, you’ll be tempted to work it into a conversation to improve your vocabulary or just to see the expression on your friends’ faces. Since this is an online conversation, maybe you’re feeling a little motivated now.

If after reviewing this list of eleven, you feel up for a challenge, please read through to the Word Power Exercise.

 

 

Lamprophony  Loudness and clarity of voice

Floccinaucinihilipilification   Estimation that something is valueless.

Rhinotillexomania  Habitual or obsessive nose-picking  

Honorificabilitudinitatibus  In honor

Deipnosophist   One who excels at conversations at the dinner table 

Sesquipedalian   Using long words 

Farctate  Full (as from eating) to the point of bursting; completely satiated

Onychophagist  Person who bites his fingernails 

Bloviate  To Speak or Discourse at Length in a Pompous or Boastful Manner 

Dextrorotatory Turning Clockwise or to the Right 

Eleemosynary Relating to Charity, Alms, or Almsgiving 

 

Word Power Exercise:

See how many of these Eleven Interesting Words (EIW) you can include in a 50 word (or less) comment. The only two rules are: 1. Your comment must make sense, and 2. You may not use any of the EIWs directly beside another one, such as in a list. Have fun, and add your blog address, so visitors can stop by and say Hi.

 

 

The left-handed ceramic tile cutter of writing

In the back of the top shelf of your writing toolbox, sits three writing tools that often get dusty due to neglect. This post is meant to a stepladder to help reach these tools to prepare them for more frequent use. If you’re like most people, alliteration, parallelism, and variety in sentence structure, are not the hammers, nails and wrenches of writing, but rather the left handed ceramic tile cutters of composition.

Tool #1 - Alliteration: There’s something subliminally soothing connected to the repetition of consonant sounds. There’s also something blatantly bothersome with badly built alliteration. Alliteration is the process of repeating the same consonant sound multiple times in one sentence. When done right, readers rarely notice alliteration; they just know they enjoy the writing. When writers stretch the definition of a word just to achieve alliteration, well - fingernails screeching on the blackboard comes to mind. In the example, Michael gave us many memories for munching, alliteration is achieved, but the sentence doesn’t make much sense. It’s better to avoid alliteration altogether, than to include forced construction. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers is a famous example of alliteration, but perhaps there’s too much repetition of the same sound in that sentence to be effective. Remember alliteration works because it is a treat; too many treats aren’t good for anyone. Moderation is the key.    

Tool #2 - Parallelism: The repetition of two or more of the same parts of speech within a sentence is another tool to take your writing from good to great. And like alliteration, when parallelism is done well, it is rarely noticed by the reader. Importantly, faulty parallelism is analogous to hitting a wrong note while singing a beautiful song.. In the example: The boy enjoys singing, playing, and reading, parallelism was achieved by repeating the three gerunds: singing, playing, and reading. An example of faulty parallelism is: The boy enjoys singing, playing, and he likes to eat as well. “To eat” is an infinitive phrase, so it doesn’t match the gerunds. To correct this example for parallelism, simply change “to eat” to “eating” or change “singing and playing” to “to sing and to play.”

Tool #3 - Variety in sentence structure. English prefers subject, verb object sentence construction because it is the way we speak; however combining simple sentences with compound sentences and complex sentences adds interest and rhythm to your writing. When preparing your post, you may choose to write a simple sentence (one subject and one verb):  such as: The girl enjoys reading poetry. You may choose to write a compound sentence (two independent clauses joined by a semicolon or a coordinating conjunction), such as: The girl enjoys reading poetry, and she loves creating her own poems. You may also choose to write a complex sentence (at least one dependent clause and one independent clause) such as: Because the girl enjoys reading poetry, her writing has improved significantly. Including these different sentence structures in your posts makes for more enjoyable reading. Furthermore, consider the length of your sentences. It is beneficial to include short sentences (just a few words) and longer sentences (20 to 25 words).

Many of us already have the right tools, but we forget to use them. Consider searching through your toolbox and taking out that left handed ceramic tile cutter every now and then. With the right tools, you can create a masterpiece.

 

 

An exercise in brevity

Brevity is an important goal in online writing. Longer posts can be intimidating. Many visitors will only scan long posts at best. The theory is that online readers have relatively short attention spans. Of course, there are exceptions, but in general I think it is good advice to think small. Keep it simple and clear. And when it comes to editing: when it doubt, cut it out.

 

It should be stated that some bloggers, especially those with loyal return visitors, have been successful with longer (1,000+ word) posts.  But even these bloggers would be well advised to intersperse their longer posts with shorter ones. Varying the length of posts is a useful technique to keep your visitors happy.

If you decide that you’d like to reduce the length of your posts, consider this:

 

• Chunking or grouping items into bulleted listshelps break up long posts into digestible bits.

• Pictures,subheads, and white spaceare also helpful for reducing the grey.

• Links are anotheruseful toolto shorten longer posts.

• Unnecessary words should be deleted (12 midnight should beedited to justmidnight).

• Fifteen words is a good goal for sentence length. More than 25 words is usually too long.

• Keep paragraphs short

• Pull Quotes and infographics are useful to add interest

• Add color for emphasis

• Consider breaking up long posts into a series of posts.

 

Below is a passage written in the Workbook for News Reporting and Writing, by the Missouri Group in 2005. Consider how to shorten this post without losing any necessary information:

 

The party of the first part, hereinafter known as Jack, and the party of the second part, hereinafter known as Jill, ascended or caused to be ascended an elevation of undetermined height and degree of slope, hereinafter refereed to as “hill.” Whose purpose it was to obtain, attain, procure, secure, or otherwise gain acquisition to, by any and-or all means available to them a receptacle or container, hereinafter known as “pail,” suitable for the transport of a liquid whose chemical properties shall be limited to hydrogen and oxygen, the propositions of which shall not be less than or exceed two parts for the first mentioned element and one part for the latter. Such combinations will hereinafter be call “water.”

 

 

CHECK THE ANSWER HERE.

 

The best way to get visitors to return to your blog

The best way to get your visitors to return to your blog is to reward them with your writing.

 

All the available social networks and blog marketing tools will do little to increase return visits to your blogs unless you first polish your posts. Follow these suggestions to improve your posts, and readers will come back for more.

 

Keep in mind that you are competing with thousands of people for your readers’ attention. You’ll need to reward your visitors by giving them well written posts. (The blue italicized terms in this article link to my earlier posts and are not necessary to understand this post; they serve only to provide a greater depth of information on the various topics)

 

Online writing is a unique, hybrid form of communication because it combines the benefits and challenges of mass communication and interpersonal communication (see Communicating Online: Opportunities and Obstacles). Understanding this uniqueness will help you tailor your writing to your target audience.

 

Here are some helpful tools to polish your post successfully.

 

1. Most importantly, make sure you have something to say. All the writing tips in the world can’t help the writer without an interesting or provocative topic. Posting writing without a clear purpose may cause readers not to return. It’s difficult to get new readers, but it’s even more of a challenge getting disappointed readers to return. (If your well of inspiration is running dry check out: Overcoming Writer’s Block).

 

2. In the first sentence or two of your post, tell your readers what’s in it for them – explain how your post will make a difference in their lives. If your readers can’t find anything that impacts them right away, many will leave after the first paragraph. Consider How to use News Values such as impact, timeliness, prominence, and novelty when determining your posts potential value for your readers.

 

For those who stay past the first paragraph, remember: you’ve made your promise; now it’s time to deliver.

 

3. Write to express, not impress. Put the thesaurus away. If you’re writing to inform or to entertain, prefer the simple to the complex. Write like you talk. (say “use”, not “utilize”; write: “I was aware of”, instead of “I was cognizant of”).

 

4. Brevity is an important goal because readers prefer conciseness. The average sentence should be about 15 words. Avoid wordiness (instead of writing members of the group, write group members). Also avoid redundancies (instead of writing the children completely surrounded me, just write the children surrounded me).

 

Unnecessary words can detract from your meaning. If you have difficulty with this, try pretending you had to pay for each word that you included.  

 

5. Avoid terms that can cause confusion. (i.e. “She was young;” young is too vague – it means different things to different people). Remember words have denotations and connotations, so avoid ambiguous terms. Instead of saying that she was young, say: she was nearly 8 years old. There are also many commonly confused words in the English language. Be aware of the meaning of all your words. Further and farther, fewer and less, and accept and except are just a few of the common errors found in careless writing. (See Commonly Misused Words).

 

6. Say what you mean. If your purpose is to convey information, eliminate euphemisms. Euphemisms are meant to soften the blow of a potentially offensive or blunt idea, such as “collateral damage” for unintended civilian deaths. Euphemisms can cause loss of clarity. (Read about editing out euphemisms in Layers of Revision). If your post lacks clarity, it’s doomed. Readers won’t spend time on posts they can’t understand.

 

7. Use examples and anecdotes. When explaining something complicated or something your readers might not have experienced, give an example. For example, explain that learning to use CSS to design a webpage is like learning how to play a sport or a musical instrument; first you must learn the rules, then you must practice to improve. Similarly, an anecdote is a very short story included to elaborate on and emphasize the facts. Instead of saying the girls were mischievous, consider using an anecdote to show us. Limit anecdotes to one (or two at most) per post. (See: Writing is like Baking a Cake)

 

8. Punctuation matters; people do judge a book by its cover (See: If Punctuation Marks were People). If you have spelling and grammar mistakes in your writing, people will lose confidence in you. They will question your facts and assumptions if they catch that you were careless with your pronouns and commas (See: The Problem with Pronouns)

 

9. Use vivid description. Keep in mind the maxim: Show, don’t tell. Don’t tell us that Billy was happy with his new puppy; show us. Readers appreciate it when you use your senses to describe details. They want to hear, see, feel, smell, touch and taste what you’re describing. (See: Think visually).  

10. Proofread: take the time to polish your post. We often find errors when it’s too late. Edit your posts prior to publication. You don’t have to be a walking, talking grammar book, you just need to know when to turn to one. (Check out: English Handbook for the Game of your Life)

 

The best way to get visitors to return to your blog is to make them happy. While social networks and search engines are useful as treasure maps, your posts are the treasures –the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Follow these tips to polish them, and let them shine.

We all know they exist, but we do not speak their names

We all know they exist, but we don’t speak of them. They are used everyday, but we dare not say them aloud. Their very existence requires us to be silent. And we comply without question. Most of them have no reason to be. They serve no useful purpose, but we accept that they are part of our lives. We write their names, but we don’t say them to anyone. If we ever slip up, do the unspeakable, and actually say their names aloud, we will be mocked and surely corrected. We expect everyone to conform; there are no exceptions. Efforts have been made to systematically eradicate them, but to no avail. They are still with us in our schools, work, and even our homes.

 

We could all get along just fine without them, although without them we would have no roads or signs. Buildings with columns would no longer exist. Wednesday would no longer be the middle of our work week. And nobody would be able to walk a straight line.

 

On the other hand, there would be no more pneumonia, no more dumb people. Children would never again stretch the truth.

 

What forces us into this superfluous silence?

 

It is the silent letter. And while some silent letters help us to pronounce a word correctly, most do nothing more than take up space. As far as I can tell, every letter in the English language is used as a silent letter - every letter that is except for the mighty “V”. V stands alone in victory against this unspoken foe.  I compiled the list below of the rest of the letters of the English alphabet along with one corresponding word with a silent letter.

 

a          road

b          dumb

c          scene

d          Wednesday

e          rake

f           staff

g          sign

h          whistle

I           straight

j           marijuana

k          know

l           tall

m         mnemonic

n          column

o          oedipus

p          pneumonia

q          racquetball

r           sarsaparilla

s           pass

t           stretch

u          placque

v         

w         answer

x          faux pas

y          way

z           buzz

 

 

 

Howdy Pop!

I had two hours with very little to do this morning because today I was a (insert dramatic music)  volunteer test proctor. My job was to ensure that standardized testing procedures were effectively carried out.  My slight smile was the only clue to my intense pleasure at being on the disseminating end of this test: you remember:  the fill-in-the-bubble, number 2 pencil, no-penalty-for-guessing test. 

There I sat watching the students; the only sound came from the clock’s ticking second hand which seemed to move increasingly slower as my borborygmy grew increasingly louder. (And yes, I did have to look up the spelling of borborygmy).

My mind drifted back to the morning before when I returned my signed packet of “proctor” instructions to the school office receptionist.  While exiting the office a young wisenheimer, probably a juvenile delinquent called in to see the principal, I later concluded, looked up at me and said “Howdy Pop.”  The overly innocent tone of this boy’s voice together with his choice of greetings set off a chain reaction in my brain which resulted in my conclusion that he was calling me over-the-hill.

So there I sat with nothing to do except to count the number of brand names on the students’ clothes. Then like a sudden itch that needs immediate attention, the unresolved mysterious “Pop” returned to my consciousness. Like a scientist analyzing all the causes of an experiment gone wrong, I pondered the term. I had no idea just how busy those three little letters would make me. I took out a piece of paper, and started scribbling.  The next sound I heard was the teacher’s voice, “Pencils down,” so I put my pencil down. Here’s what I wrote.

 Pop I realized was an important word, for pop is an example of all of the following:

Onomatopoeia for the sound made when a balloon pops.

Palindrome for pop is spelled the same backwards and forwards

Homonym for pop means to burst, and pop means dad

Colloquialism for pop means soda in certain geographic areas.

Acronym  for pop means  point of presence, an access point to the internet

Abbreviation for pop is short for popular

Jargon  for in baseball a hit which is easily caught is called a  pop fly

Noun for pop means Father

Verb  for pop means to ask as in pop the question

Adjective for pop describes some music

Adverb  for pop describes some verbs as in I’ll pop by

I just realized I figured out everything I ever wanted to know about the word pop . . . except maybe what that kid meant by “Howdy Pop.” 

How to use news values

When considering your next newsworthy post or freelance article, it is important to consider the following news values: prominence, proximity, impact, conflict, timeliness, novelty/bizarre.

Prominence deals with the characters you include in your piece. If it is relevant, include the most well known people. Some folks shy away from picking up the phone and speaking to a prominent figure, be it a celebrity, politician, or CEO, but that wall is an obstacle you can overcome. Think how you would feel reading: “The response of many Catholics to Bill Maher’s ‘apology’ is disappointment,” according to Bill Jones a Catholic friend of mine.” or “according to President of the Catholic League Bill Donahue.” Prominence simply adds credibility. Not including a prominent figure when appropriate often reflects to the reader, laziness or lack of resourcefulness. If the prominent figure refuses to talk, you can always report he/she had no comment.

Proximity deals with the location of the event. In terms of physical location, the closer an event occurs to where it is reported increases its newsworthiness. If you were planning to submit an article to your local media about out-of-town visitors ignoring local traffic signals, using examples or anecdotes from a geographic area within the newspaper’s circulation area or television station’s footprint, would be better than finding statistics from further away. Timeliness reflects the length of time between when an activity occurred and when it is reported. The longer the time between the event occurring and when it is reported — the less newsworthy it is.

Impact considers how what you are saying is going to affect those who read it. If there is little impact, there is little newsworthiness. In journalism, articles without impact are often called so-what articles. It is better to be blatant than subtle when pointing out the impact. Readers want to know why your article makes a difference to them. Conflict deals with at least two parties at odds with one another. Readership surveys have shown that stories with conflict are valued by readers. Conflict includes crime, wars, fights, and protests.

A final news value to consider when gathering material for your article is the category novelty/bizarre. Novelty includes firsts, for example, the first person to swim the English Channel backstroke, or the first person to live to 150. Bizarre includes items like a two-headed calf or the woman with the most body piercings.

One news value is not necessarily more important than another. They simply serve as guides for you to consider when compiling your story. When dealing with news values, let your motto be: include it if it is relevant.

Overcoming writer’s block

Many of us have experienced it: the urge to write, but nothing - no words, no ideas - bubble up like a shaken soda ready to burst forth. Writer’s block can be compared to a slump, or a rut, or the doldrums. It can be debilitating for a writer. When strickened with writer’s block, many of us turn to other outlets to release our pent-up creative energy. Much cleaning, exercising, and reading is accomplished in an effort to avoid facing the block monster. This procrastination often just makes the block monster more threatening.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Writer’s block will happen. It’s just a fact of life. Rather than turning and running from writer’s block, meet it head on. As the Nike slogan goes: Just do it. One way to combat the lack of fizz in your writing juices is to just sit down at the computer. This first step goes along way to overcoming writer’s block. It’s much easier to write with the proper mind set than when you’re distracted by outside “noise”. Obtaining the proper writer’s mindset is often easier to accomplished at your computer or with pencil and paper. If you intend to write, the odds are better that you will write. Raking the leaves holds little promise for penning your prose.

Brainstorming is a useful tool. Just jot down all the ideas that come to your mind. Some find it helpful to set the timer for five minutes. The trick is to keep writing - don’t stop - until your time is up. Even if you have to rewrite the last word multiple times while waiting for your next thought. This tactic often forces or cajoles your memory and your imagination to spring forth with forgotten memories and new ideas.

Some find it helpful to categories all your words after brainstorming. This is called focused writing. The act of sorting terms into categories is creatively stimulating and may be motivational. You may be inspired to write your next post.

Hey, I just did.

 

Write Good 4: Don’t wright like this.

1.   Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.

2.   Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.

3.   Don’t be redundant.

4.   Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.

5.   Don’t never use no double negatives.

6.   Poofread carefully to see if you any words out.

7.   Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.

8.   Eschew obfuscation.

9.   No sentence fragments.

10.   Don’t indulge in sesquipedalian lexicological constructions.

Write good 2

• One should never generalize.
• Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
• Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
• Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
• It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.
• Avoid archaeic spellings too.
• Understatement is always best.
• Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
• One-word sentences? Eliminate. Always!
• Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.