↓
 

words and images

🇺🇦✏️✒️📚📔🌜dreamer 🌕 thinker 🌕 aspirant📱📷🚴‍♀️🏕🍄🌻

Menu
  • Home
  • About Diane Schirf
  • Articles
  • Book Reviews
  • Hodge
  • Letters
  • Photography
  • Poems & Stories
  • Site Map

Category Archives: Language

Is this irony?

words and images Posted on December 23, 2010 by dlschirfJuly 17, 2021

From “Paying the Experienced Hand Less” at The Daily Dish:

I am a patent lawyer with a background in biochemistry. Most of the business people at my clients don’t understand what I do, what the technology is that I am working on and generally look at us as being lawyers with “propeller” beanies on our heads and pocket protectors in our shirts. They can’t judge me on what I actually do for them, generally, in the legal sense. No one can really judge the proficiency of my work product at the time it is delivered – it has to “bake” for many years before any actual decisions are reached at the US Patent Office. They can – however – judge how “good” something looks. Do I use correct grammar and punctuation? Do I use words that they can understand? Do I format my letters and applications in a clear manner that screams “organized and authoritative”?

They judge me not on what I obtain for them through my legal skills – they judge me as a copyrighter or a graphic designer. It is the hardest thing for me to teach my younger associates that they should spend as much time on their grammar and punctuation as they do on their legal research and brilliant legal positions. In the end – we get judged by our attention to detail more than our legal acumen.

Shouldn’t a patent attorney who takes pride in correct grammar and spelling and emphasizes their importance know the difference between “copyright” and “copywriter” (and “copywriter”)? It’s a common mistake, but I don’t know why. The difference between “right” and “write” is clear.

Posted in Blog, Language, Writing | Tagged grammar | Leave a reply

In all, not the best place for the comma

words and images Posted on February 27, 2009 by dlschirfFebruary 17, 2023

At 2:15 a.m., I couldn’t understand this sentence from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson:

In all, the internal turmoil particles within the cloud pick up electrical charges.

After a few moments I mentally moved the comma:

In all the internal turmoil, particles within the cloud pick up electrical charges.

Only Bryson and his editor know whose choice it was to (unintentionally) misplace the comma, given the sentence’s meaning. It makes it read like a bad foreign language translation.

And so to bed. Again.

Posted in Blog, Books and literature, Language | Tagged Bill Bryson, grammar | Leave a reply

Elizabeth Gaskell — writing passion

words and images Posted on February 26, 2009 by dlschirfJuly 24, 2019

Most mainstream Victorian authors like Elizabeth Gaskell generally aren’t known for the sensuality of their writing, but the Brontës weren’t the only ones who could write about passion. Here are some evocative quotations from Gaskell’s Mary Barton, a novel about the working class in 1830s Manchester:

. . . triumphant fire . . . sent forth its infernal tongues from every window hole, licking the black walls with amorous fierceness . . .

Jem felt a strange leap of joy in his heart, and knew the power she had of comforting him. He did not speak, as though fearing to destroy by sound or motion the happiness of that moment, when her soft hand’s touch thrilled through his frame, and her silvery voice was whispering tenderness in his ear. Yes! it might be very wrong; he could almost hate himself for it; with death and woe so surrounding him, it yet was happiness, was bliss, to be so spoken to by Mary.

Meanwhile, her words — or, even more, her tones — would maintain their hold on Jem Wilson’s memory. A thrill would yet come over him when he remembered how her hand had rested on his arm. The thought of her mingled with all his grief, and it was profound, for the loss of his brothers.

What were these hollow vanities to her, now she had discovered the passionate secret of her soul?

This quotation from a tale told by old Job Legh is about passion of a sort, and it’s a marvelous image that captures the imagination:

So says she, quite quick, and stealing a look at her husband’s back, as looked all ear, if ever a back did . . .

Posted in Books and literature, Language, Writing | Tagged grammar | Leave a reply

The grammar police, they live inside of my head

words and images Posted on September 2, 2008 by dlschirfFebruary 24, 2023

I have no idea how I came across this on BBC News, but here it is:

In June it emerged that Winehouse had developed the chronic lung disease emphysema after she collapsed.

To develop a chronic disease after collapsing is amazing and alarming. I suspect the writer meant:

After Winehouse collapsed in June, it emerged that she had developed the chronic lung disease emphysema.

That’s why I’m paid the big bucks (depending on what is meant by “bucks”).

Posted in Blog, Language, Writing | Tagged grammar | Leave a reply

Guerilla born at zoo!

words and images Posted on July 26, 2005 by dlschirfJanuary 9, 2019

It’s bad enough that terrorism has become an everyday concern everywhere, but now even Lincoln Park Zoo is breeding fighters. From a headline story today:

The baby guerilla’s gender remains unknown, as the mother is holding its offspring close to her body and may continue doing so for months, officials said.

Chicago Tribune
Posted in Blog, Language | Tagged news, wildlife | Leave a reply

Words are all we have

words and images Posted on December 5, 2004 by dlschirfJanuary 4, 2019

Online, kids and computer aficionados are inventing a new language. For example, the now-old term “newbie” has been transformed into “n00b.” Of course, it is an ancient practice for kids to develop their own code to evade their parents’ comprehension, to bond with their peers, and to express their coolness.

The other day at a Web content management conference for business communicators, one of the speakers used the term “prog.” It took a few seconds for my mind to process this as, “You’ll need a program to do this.” Even middle-aged professionals are using the new geek shorthand and jargon, as though it is commonly understood — even if it isn’t.

As Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil noted in The Story of English, language evolves constantly, and every group has contributed to its richness. You cannot imagine American English without its Spanish, French, Italian, German, Native American, Yiddish, and other components. Now the online world has added more. Merriam-Webster, the online dictionary editors rely on, reports that “blog,” short for Web log, has been the most looked-up word in 2004. No one has online journals or diaries; they have blogs.

Recently, I have been thinking about how words have lost their power because they have been disconnected from their original meaning, context, or symbolism. If I say “glade” to you, you’re as likely to think of an air freshener as a clearing in the forest — and you probably haven’t really thought about what the brand name is intended to evoke. If I mention “Ajax,” you’d probably think first of the cleaning product before remembering that Ajax was a Greek hero of the Trojan War. Dawn, tide, joy, crest — all simple words so associated with brands and so little used in everyday conversation that their power to evoke an image or a meaning has been diluted. When was the last time you described the dawn to a friend? Talked about the tides? Shared your joy in so many words? Admired a cardinal’s crest? (Or thought about why the bird is called a cardinal?) Do you know the origin of any of these words?

I’m reading a history textbook, The Mainstream of Civilization to 1715 by Stanley Chodorow, MacGregor Knox, Conrad Schirokauer, Joseph R. Strayer, and Hans W. Gatzke. The authors mention Vandals — and they don’t mean mischievous teenagers drawing graffiti with markers. When you visit a museum, do you contemplate the origin of the word? It’s from the Greek Muses, the goddesses who inspire such arts as poetry and music. Politics comes from the Greek polis, or city-state. Indeed, if you look at the origins of many of our most common words, you’ll discover the richness of their origins and the way that language has evolved during the thousands of years of written history — and even how some words have not changed much in the course of time.

Pick your favourite words and explore their etymology. You’ll not only restore their original meaning and symbolism, but you’ll also learn about history (such as Vandals), natural history, the arts, and more. And you’ll find out that Latin is not such a dead language after all. It lives on in the very word computer.

Posted in Blog, Language | Tagged words | Leave a reply

Recent Posts

  • David Wallach Fountain at Promontory Point
  • Indian Ridge Marsh redux
  • Relics: Mapping Cutler mailing system mail chutes and boxes
  • Relics: Another Cutler mailing system lobby mailbox at National Louis University
  • Summer’s rainy day rainbow

Top Posts & Pages

  • Google Maps most viewed photos
  • Book review: Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
  • Old Hickory, or the F. W. Knox Villa in Coudersport, Pennsylvania
  • Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story
  • Wopsononock Mountain, or Wopsy, in Blair County, Pennsylvania
  • Ghastly photos
  • "I'd rather be slowly consumed by moss"
  • Eternal flame waterfall at Chestnut Ridge
  • Marshall Field family: Baby and Baby
  • Book review: St. Mawr and The Man Who Died

Other realms

  • BookCrossing
  • Facebook
  • Goodreads
  • Instagram
  • LibraryThing
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Good viewing

  • bensozia
  • Bill of the Birds (no longer updated)
  • BrontëBlog
  • Edge
  • Karen Winters Fine Art
  • Mental Floss
  • Musical Assumptions
  • National Geographic News
  • Orange Crate Art
  • Sexy Archaeology
  • The Creative Journey
  • The Introvert's Corner
  • The Pen Addict
  • The Raucous Royals
  • Thrilling Days of Yesteryear
  • Woodclinched
  • World-O-Crap

BOINC Stats

Copyright © 1996–2023 Diane Schirf. Photographs and writing mine unless noted.
↑