Here we go!

10. The apostrophe: Is it April Fool's day or April Fools' day or April Fools day? Get rid of it!

9. French Fries: Those frenchies across the pond take credit for things they had nothing to do with. Off with their heads!

8. Though/Through: End the same but pronounced totally different... fix it please!

7. I read it, I've read it: Should be I reade it, I've read it.

6. gh/ph=f: Do I need to say anything?

5. Eggplants: Do not contain any eggs. It is not an eggplant. Same with faceplants, they do not contain faces.

4. Ewe: Should be pronounced "ew", not "you".

3. Cwm: Is actually a word, in which the w serves as a vowel. Pronounced "kroom", though shouldn't exist at all in my book.

2. Queuing: The only word that has five vowels in a row. I hate it.

~~~

1. Meese: the plural of moose shouldn't be moose. Or mooses. It should be meese.

New Edition Of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" & "Tom Sawyer" Removes Mark Twain's "Offensive" Words
Should we be editing era period books?

What might the long term results be? Our history as a society rests with our authors and storytellers. It would seem to me, if we edit out the history we are not comfortable with, we may be doomed to repeat it. Do we want to go the way of sanitizing our social history?

JMO

Maddad

"A figure of speech is a rhetorical device that achieves a special effect by using words in distinctive ways. Though there are hundreds of figures of speech (many of them included in our Tool Kit for Rhetorical Analysis), here we'll focus on just 20 of the most common figures."

I got in to a big tussle over this issue when I wrote a letter to the editor of the largest local paper here. My basic argument was "All information was and is a form of manipulation"!

Well, open for discussion. The big question series.

Groups need a name, a symbol of who they are, a word of description to sell the messge to one and all.

This thesis will deal with animals as symbols for human groups.

We have done this since the beginning, when we looked to the sky and wished we were an eagle, we wished to join the convocation and soar high and above it all.

my wife and I learned a long time ago the name for a group of crows, a Murder of crows had us hooked into the descriptive nature of animal group names. We were pleased and surprised what we found humans had done in this area.

So, in order to get out of the old pit of name calling new names must be developed to at least find better descriptions to describe oneself,we can no longer be elephants and donkeys, they have lost meaning for us.

Here are some interesting animal group names to help set the mood and spark your brain.

A shrewdness of apes

A pace of asses

an obstinancy of buffalo

A wake of buzzards

A glaring of cats

A peep of chickens

An intrusion of cockroaches

A bask of crocodiles

A memory of Elephants

A business of ferrets

A flamboyance of flamingos

A trip of goats

Now, think long, think hard and come up with your own and add to the game.

Gov. Chris Christie today made it illegal for state laws or rules to identify anyone with a developmental or intellectual disability as "mentally retarded" by signing legislation sought by people who have felt belittled by the term.

Writing is a living thing, a learning and growing experience, symbolic communication that now travels across time and space at incredible speeds. No more type setting, no printing presses, no more book binding is needed to get your thoughts, ideas, interests and notions 'out there'.

So, why is the information age not producing a better caliber of word smiths, where are the "nattering nabobs of negativism" barbs, the Neo Oscar Wildes of politics are no where to be found, or are they lost in the mix of quizillions of boring and repetative words.

So, want to write with a sense of individuality, want to make your words and thoughts interesting?

So, lesson one, get a theasuarus and a good dictionary. learn to use words like a brush. Paint an elegant portrait with words.

Lesson two read, read and read again. Read writers from history, read current writers, read others vine articles, read the words chalked on the sidewalks. All words have a rhythm and assigining them in a structure creates patterns of sounds that can be like poetic music. Create a symphony of words that will be remembered.

lesson four, research, research, research and then do it again. Check twice before you cut.

Lesson five, don't belabor the issue, simple yet strudy words in one sentence say more than twelve sentences trying to say the same thing. Pare down and clarify.

Oh Yeah, Lesson three, get another pair of eyes to read your work. reading your own words over and over play tricks on you, you think there are things that are not there. Thanks to two proof readers here for pointing lesson three out to me, AGAIN!

And then have fun with words, make the readers brain churn and work overtime, make them want to understand the words you choose. Make your work individual in nature so that you are creating your own voice instead of parroting other voices.

A few examples for you to get the idea;

Having watched my homeland and my government turn from a peaceful Pothemkin Village into a Jocobean Balliwick because of the actions of a group of oak seeds and their voter registration legerdermain, I feel gulled.

Jesuitical sinistrals peroate Panshophic epistemophilia all along the Eastern Seaboard as if verdical America does not exist.

my fundament is burning and I am feeling contumacious about the pasquinade of politics today. I want to keelhaul paludal Washington like a Jannisary who has throw down his hat and lost his fealty.

Andominious minions vote for spiritiual emolument tied to amor patriae and never interpellate louche quotations because they are promised the world by emulous homiletic party horns.

And last but not least, "If you are going to write nonsense, and you know you will, do it with artistic flair".

Class is over, enjoy your night at the bar.

I love word play, sentences that slip off your tongue and make the sounds that really becomes a memory to remember forever.

Great books and writers fascinate me, the words pressed onto paper forever with ink, plant material coupled with plant material. A natural object filled with those wonderful things called words. I cannot go into a book store or a library without opening up and reading dozens of these wonderful things, books, filled with marks that amuse and edify.

I like to play word games inside my head as I am painting, keeps me laughing and amused while I push the brush and make the mark. I think of it as my internal art form. Sometimes I show a little of it here.

So I want to share and offer you a part in one of my word games.

I like to link words together into sentences with each word beginning with the same first letter, here are some examples:

A multitude of millionaires master market manipulation, the multitude mindlessly meander.

An ant anticipates avalanches in advance.

Bees become bothersome but bite.

Can cantankerous cats cultivate a cuddle?

So here is my contest and the winner will receive a big write up about the "Master of Words". This will be an International Honorary title but can be worn with pride, heck I will even make you a crown and send it to you.

I want the biggest sentence you can make using using as many words with the same first letter.

As an added bonus to make you crank your brain up further I will let you use one of each of these words; I, me, or, my, it, in, the, and, there. nine words plus the ones you string together using only one letter for the rest of "the biggest dang silly sentence that still makes sense".

Tongue tying will be looked on with great glee.

Tallyho word smiths.

Former US vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin invented a new word on social networking website Twitter, when she was attempting to write about plans to build a mosque near the Ground Zero site in New York, The Daily Telegraph is reporting.

She typed the word "refudiate" - a mix of refute and repudiate - when she asked "peaceful Muslims" to "pls refudiate" the mosque.

"Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style."

Any Scrabble fan will tell you that knowing how to spell Beyonce, Timbuktu, or Quorn would never help you win the game.

But now, to the horror of the purists, the game's makers are throwing out the old rule book and allowing proper nouns.

Worse still, not only will the names of places, trademarks and people be permissible, but even words spelled backwards or placed unconnected to other pieces.

They say everyone likes to hate something. I hate the British accent. Just my personal opinion, I know, but I can't help wondering why it's usually a British chap or chappette who is narrator for documentaries and any type of philosophical or educational film.

"I created a handy guide for some common spelling errors. A panda bear makes an appearance. (Submitted by Oatmeal)".

Very well done!

I was browsing through the stations and since I did not hear anything I liked I left it on one of my presets, then I heard something that made wait for the announcement. It is not important what station it was or which dj's had this conversation, but What a pair of morons. The female told the male that she knew of an artist who not only was a pedophile but was also illiterate he cannot read his own material. First of all I think we all know who this R and B singer is, and I am not even sure if it is true that he cannot read, but the two dj's continued to make jokes about the 13 year old he would pick up would know more words than he would, the joking went on for about 3 minutes.

Is this the kind of place we live in, first he was acquitted, only 12 individuals know why he was let go? Two since when do we make fun about someone not being able to read, should we not help him instead? And they also think sex with a minor is worth a laugh? Seriously, that was crap, I did not stay tuned to hear more morons come on making more jokes! WOW!

They sound the same but they are spelled differently and mean different things. They also confuse the hell out of people and sometimes it's just plain funny.

Homonyms are words that are identical to other words in spelling or pronunciation, or both, while differing from them in meaning and usually in origin. Or something like that.

Mainly, they can befuddle and frustrate. There are some very common ones seen everyday on Newsvine and elsewhere. They are fun to play with in puns and jokes. Here is an idiotic example:

Joe said the little plain landed over their on rode 26. Eye didn't sea it until the toe-truck that picked it up came in too town. I've herd they had engine trouble and landed wear they could, road 26 was the closest thing to a runway. Joe said he saw the hole thing plane as day, he was sure a crash was coming, but their was know place fore them to go. He said that pilot was doing sum quick thinking, people could have been killed or worse.

There, they're and there are commonly misunderstood or misused. One I see a lot is lose and loose. Sometimes a person can be described as a "loose cannon". I would wonder about someone who could lose or misplace a cannon.

This is what I saw on a church marquee yesterday - "Find Piece with Christ"

I think we are all guilty of it at one time or another. Will you admit to it? Do you have a favorite?

Toujours Tingo, a book by Adam Jacot de Boinod, lists weird words and bizarre phrases from around the world. The "tingo" of its title is an Easter Island word, meaning to borrow objects from a friend's house one by one until there are none left.

Swing When You're Winning

A Dutch dictionary has discovered the downside of letting online users vote for their 'word of the year', after they overwhelmingly opted for a word that means 'to swing your penis'.

'Swaffelen' – which, specifically, means to swing the penis so that it bumps into another object or person – got 57% of the vote in the poll conducted by Van Dale publishers, after a popular blog suggested readers vote for it (Google translation).

1. Define the Object: If you're talking about SEO optimised writing take the extra words to say so each time. Your primary search term needs to be repeated and restated in many ways. so don't refer to the object of the article at hand as "it", or "this" or other imageless identifier. It's bad Engrish anyways.

There is nothing meh about the journey of the latest entry in the Collins English Dictionary. Rather, it illustrates how e-mail and the internet are creating language.

"Meh" started out in the US and Canada as an interjection signifying mediocrity or indifference and has evolved, via the internet and an episode of The Simpsons, into a common adjective meaning boring, apathetic or unimpressive in British English.

The expression of indifference or boredom has gained a place in the Collins English Dictionary after generating a surprising amount of enthusiasm among lexicographers.

Lots of sesquipedalians out there, judging by the response to our feature on the man who reads dictionaries for fun, Ammon Shea. We asked for your favourite words and were overwhelmed with nominations. Here we list 50 of the best.

Ammon Shea spent a year reading the Oxford English Dictionary - 20 volumes, 21,730 pages and 59 million words - and he rates poring over a dictionary as enriching as reading a novel. Why?

The very best entries in this tightly packed A-to-Z of highbrow ribaldry examine the kind of vulgarities that absolutely, positively do not belong on NPR's Web site. But that doesn't mean they're not worthy of, er, rigorous intellectual study.

Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex is a lewd but undeniably stimulating collection of essays, stories and poems from such pedigreed writers as Jonathan Ames and Martha McPhee. Each entry probes a different indecent delight — from Affair to Virginity, with stops at every C-, F- and T-word in between.

Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?

A science fiction author I am embarrassed to admit I like to read⁽¹⁾ has a series of books in which the main character (and an after word in the books) espouses the virtues of Esperanto, the seemingly good idea for an international language made of an amalgam of other languages' words and structures that has been around for over a hundred years but that just didn't quite catch on outside of being admired by totalitarian despots like Hitler, Sun Yat-sen, and Stalin.

While it may contain some dumbed down linguistic elements that might come in handy some day if one decided to move onto learning Afrikaans, learning Esperanto is akin to learning semaphore in terms of practicality and usefulness. If the world ever adopts it, folks who have already learned it will be ahead of the curve, I suppose. But like semaphore is useful only for communicating from afar when pretty much every other of about twenty five methods of communicating that come to mind have failed and the message really does need to get through, Esperanto falls flat for me.

bortaS blr jablu'Dl'reH QaQqu'nay'⁽²⁾

At the same time, an article on the recent New York Comic-Con made me think of the legions of Trekkies, and more specifically the subset that have embraced the idea of the Klingon race. To get into the Klingon scene is, to me, probably the most "hardcore Trek" one can be. Taking it a step beyond the silly costuming and fascination with large bladed weapons are the folks who have (bless their little Asperger-like hearts) actually learned the Klingon language.

I have heard folks speaking in Klingon at least twice in the real world: once at a comic convention when I was about 20 and the other time at a renaissance faire [sic] where some Trekkies decided to pretend they were on an away mission on a planet that was eerily similar to 15^th Century Earth⁽³⁾. Both times were creepyand uncomfortable to witness... creepy and uncomfortable in the same way as watching someone reenact their abusive childhoods... in public... using interpretive dance as their medium...

Both Klingon and Esperanto are considered worthy of scholarly linguistic study. Go figure...

While Klingon appears to be essentially a way for mainly socially retarded fanboys to feel some sense of physical prowess, it at least has a culture — albeit fictional — upon which the language is based. The same can't be said for Esperanto, which is nothing more than a mishmash of mainly Eurocentric language rules and words. As far as language being rooted in culture is concerned, Klingon is one up on Esperanto.

I know I am @!$%#ting on someone's passion, but the point in favor of Klingon language being tied to a culture is overshadowed by Klingon "culture" being the Superbowl of Sad: a legion of out of shape, latex-foreheaded geeks dressed in S&M; gear acting out a space fantasy distilled from Spartan legends. Despite being comprised mainly of people who tried hard to pass Spanish 101 for three semesters but couldn't so they turned to Esperanto to fulfill their language requirements, at least the Esperanto folks' motivations are buttressed by the utopian idealism of universal communication.

I can't decide which is more pointless: learning Klingon or Esperanto.

^{(1) That would be Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series, which is only slightly less embarrassing to admit reading than, say, admitting liking goat porn.
(2) A really 1997-looking web page informs me this phrase means "Revenge is a dish best served cold."
(3) Update from a friend who knows too much about Ren Fests — I am told this is common.}

Many articles have been written about the differences between face-to-face communication and the variety of text-based communication found on the Internet. While many people treat IRC or Instant Message-type programs as being wholly equal to face-to-face, there are occasional misunderstandings due to not having the added information of facial expressions or gestures. For example, something intended to be taken humorously could be perceived as an opinion actually held, leading to a potential falling out. Or, quite often, there will be a conversation, where one person is reading what the other person has to say, but has nothing to add themselves.

...Its only definition would be "I do not have anything to add, but am interested in what you are saying. Please continue." My proposed word: jjjjjj.

Freedom of speech, to speak as we will without fear of consequences or repercussions, the strange thing I suppose is that this is considered revolutionary, it seems to be a natural thing, but when you really look at it how free is free when it comes to words? Obviously there has to be some sort of limits, like how should you greet your friend Jack that you meet unexpectedly on a plane? Do you say "Hi Jack" or might that cause more trouble than its worth for a simple greeting? George Carlin once noted it was unwise to yell movie in a crowded fire house, but I suspect he was being facetious.

Words and meanings and implied meanings and inferred meanings and did that mean what I think it did or am I being too sensitive? Can a politician do something immoral if what they did was only immoral from say a religious point of view? After all, there is separation of church and state, so is there a secular view of morality or perhaps there is a better word. One person's tax is another's thievery, one intoxicant is legal but another isn't. Then again there is the argument that "man created alcohol and God created pot, who do you trust?" But I don't see adherents of this philosophy smoking a bowl of poison ivy during their coffee break.

I may disagree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it, but just about the time someone says that they jump on somebody else for saying something they disagree with, which really seems to dash the whole sentiment aside because you have to wonder if that's what they meant in the first place. Did I really say all of that in one sentence? Irrelevant! Or is it, because is what each individual person considers relevant the metric that we gauge relevancy by? Or does relevancy vary by the setting we find ourselves in?

Truth is a funny word, we can tell the truth, swear to tell the truth, but is truth a word with a fixed meaning, or is it in the realm of the philosophers? What is accepted as truth today might be found false tomorrow, so does that place truth and moral on a special plane of meaning? If you ask two people what color the car was than ran over old man Smithers and one says green and the other says blue does that mean one of them is lying? How can two people under oath give two completely different colors and neither of them be lying? So then we have qualifiers, lawyer words, "to the best of my recollection," and "as near as I can recall."

You can give your word, speak your piece and still have somebody tell you to take it back, not how is that supposed to work? Probably the same way that two people can look at the same event and take exactly opposite meanings from it. A law is passed and one says good and another says bad, because now we're right back to the whole moral, truth, good and bad thing again that really seems to trip everyone up at some time or another. Look at the way someone can put a little jiggle on something that somebody has said and give it a whole new meaning. "I needed my tired rotated," she said. "I'd like to rotate her tires," he winked knowingly. The poor lady was worried about tire wear and suddenly its been hijacked by a double entendre.

If there is a single entendre I think that would only confuse things irreparably at this point. Its like one event can have completely different meanings, a house burning down is a sad thing, unless its your house then its tragic. There is no problem with unemployment if you are employed, and a difficult pregnancy is no trouble at all if you aren't pregnant, because even a embryo is one of two things, if its wanted it's a baby and if it isn't then its an embryo, in much the same way that a strident person becomes a jerk when they're not on your side.

One man's trash is another man's treasure, and behind every successful man is… well that sort of depends on where they are at the time. A Corvette in the driveway of a neighbor is male menopause, but a Corvette in your driveway is a reward for living a good life, but if beauty is only skin deep but ugly goes to the bone its no sweat because beauty is in the eye of the beer hold after all. Some men will tell you that women get old and men get distinguished, apparently these men know of a tribe that venerates ear hair, if you find out where it is let me know I might qualify to be a bishop among them.

"Lets do it on the beach," is a proposition and a preposition.

Even time can play against us, you can be so tired that you sleep till noon, or you can be so lazy that you don't wake up till noon. It's the same time, the same bed, but a whole new spin. And speaking of spin did you know the special relationship between fertilizer and filibuster? One is bull@!$%# in congress, the other is bull@!$%# in the garden, and speaking of consistency, how exactly does one react when in the heat of passion an Atheist calls out to God? I can tell you that asking about it right then is a bad idea.

They say that there is no such thing as an Atheist in a fox hole, but to be honest I never thought to ask on those occasions I found myself in a fox hole. I have run into a preacher in a barber shop though, which made me wonder just how seriously to take that Samson story. So if you part your hair, and a fool and his money are soon parted, does that mean that the barber groomed the person and their wallet, or just took a little off the top of both?

And we have enough trouble with language without using confusing expressions. I've used a brick outhouse, and didn't find anything about the structure that I'd consider beneficial to the female form, although after losing a flashlight down one I know what they mean by its getting deep.

Its like the story of the two hobos, they are wandering the tracks and its cold, but they see an outhouse and rush to avail themselves of the facilities. A shout of dismay brought one to help the other. "What's wrong?" the first said. "I dropped my money down the hole, have you got any money?" the second replied. "I have a five dollar bill is all," the first said sadly, showing it to him. The second snatched the bill and tossed it down the hold and started undressing. "Why did you do that?" moaned the first. "Because I ain't climbing down there for just a dollar."

There is no truly profound point to all of this, its an exercise in free speech you might say, and you'd be free to say it. Not every word we utter is fit to be passed along to the ages, some I utter aren't fit to be spoken within a country mile of a human being. Say what you will and let the world think what it may, but no yelling fire in theaters unless there is one, and don't shout a greeting to Jack at the airport. Oxymoron is one of my favorite words, it fits many expressions quite well, but the best just might be common sense.

Last night I reunited with a friend long neglected. As I walked between the aisles, I was filled with a profound sense that at last, I had come home to my childhood oasis. I breathed a sigh born of relief, happiness, and nostalgia-- my senses overwhelmed by the mingling of fresh pulp with musty tomes, the sounds of rustling pages, plastic covers, and the squeaking of an itinerant cart.

I find shelter in an obscure corner. I close my eyes and draw my knees up to my chest, and slide myself between a shelf and a window; a book cradled in my arms. Each book is a reincarnated tree given new life. No concerns for wasted paper here. Some people would call this a library. For me, it's paradise.

Over the past few years I have had few opportunities to indulge my passion for the written word. First came college, a time when 400 page a week reading assignments dampened one's enthusiasm for literature, then career, then family. All with pressing issues and agendas, distractions that made me give little thought to the wondrous shelves of public libraries, and little independent bookshops brimming with clutter, complete with starry-eyed, crooked-glassed caretakers who could find an obscure tome in the dark as easily as one could find their child playing hide-and-seek.

On occasion I would find myself wandering the aisles of corporate booksellers, but such places yield little of the same wonder and magic found in the halls of well worn, well loved pages.

Upon my return, I find myself scrutinizing my surroundings. This was a "new" library, one that I had only visited a handful of time in the past year I have lived in Reisterstown. Would it measure up to those of my past? I sneer at the self-help section and meticulously categorical subdivisions. Where was the natural flow and unity of a million categories following one after another, the deep rows of books extending ad-infinitum? This library was small, and the sections shallow and orderly. There is no card-catalog in sight, and in it's place was a computer. Sure, my old library had a computer, but it was an old IBM, bare boned model with a blue screen and a strong sense of purpose. And they had a card catalog to boot!

New library had a new computer with a high-speed connection and "relevant search" operators that suggested alternate spellings for search entries. No simple "title," "author," "subject" search for this Life Tourist. I glower in annoyance wondering if they even abide by the sacred Dewey Decimal system. A librarian assures me it is still in place, the collapse of Western Civilization abated.

Nevertheless I am overwhelmed with irrational happiness at the prospect of sandwiching myself between a window and a bookshelf and wasting a lazy Monday evening lost in a mountain of books. In a library, books become hitchhikers, jumping of their own accord into the reader's eager arms and I am soon ingrossed in my selections. With a smile I begin to sweep choice novels off the shelves and into my arms, a few key selections from the children's section find their way on top of the pile. I know my daughter will love them.

When at last the stack is of the proper height and I can no longer see over it, I take my quarry to the checkout with a peaceful smile on my face. I've come home, and the horizon of imagined possibility stretches far into the distance.