|
|
Online English Dictionary Latin English Dictionary Chinese Dictionary Biblical Dictionary Rhyming Dictionary
We're Humans Too Word of the Day : personnel This noun suffered a setback in frequency when human resources became the term of art for departments responsible for employment, but it lives on in military contexts to distinguish it from materiel, and to designate people required or desired for a particular task. How to Make Money Writing for the Web My company, Articulate Marketing, helps big tech companies communicate better about their products and services. A large part of my work is writing editorial-style content for websites. My credentials are my work for HP, Microsoft, eBay and others.
In the past couple of weeks, several people have asked me for advice about becoming a web copywriter, so here it is. For Younger Writers Books to inspire young writers to tell their own stories.
The Young Writer's Companion
Writing Magic
What's Your Story?
Live Writing Dictionaries Roll Out New Words Dictionary publishers don't get too many opportunities for creating PR buzz, but one surefire way of getting some attention is to announce the new words (and new senses of old words) that have been added in the latest update to a particular dictionary. In the past few days there have been new-word announcements for two major dictionaries, one in the US and one in the UK: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (also in its 11th edition, coincidentally enough). Let's take a look at what they're adding. Legal Eagles Lawyers and language don't have to be adversaries. Some blogs to help transcend legalese.
The Party of the First Part
Legalwriting.net
Set in Style
The (New) Legal Writer Vocabulary Instruction: The Non-Amorphous Shape of Word Knowledge The other day, my two teenage sons cajoled me into watching a movie they both find tremendously amusing. The film is not new. It's called Kangaroo Jack, and features Christopher Walken playing a small-time thug named Sal. Although Sal is the head of a bumbling crime family, he feels very insecure about his word knowledge, and throughout the film he is seen making a desperate attempt at self-improvement through the use of a tape-recorded vocabulary tutorial. In my favorite scene, a soothing female voice on Sal's tape player defines the word amorphous — having no shape or form, and then directs Sal to use the word in a sentence. Sal responds with this beauty: "After Joey Clams got whacked, his head was amorphous." Mailbag Friday: "Hot Dog" Welcome to the latest installment of Mailbag Friday, our new feature for answering readers' questions about word origins. For this special Fourth of July edition, we have a very timely query from Jason B. from Wilmington, DE. "I've heard a lot of stories about the origin of 'hot dog.' What's the frank truth? I await your answer with relish." When You Reeeaaallly Want to Say Something How can the Visual Thesaurus help students replace trite words of emphasis with "words strong in themselves"? Capitol Words Want to find out Topic A in the U.S. Congress on any given day? Check out Capitol Words, which computes the most frequently appearing word in the daily record. While Congress is out of session, you can browse through previous hot topics. Web Usability and Copywriting: Making Your Visitors Feel at Home A website is a strange beast — it is your reception area, your office, your shop, your brochure, your catalogue... And all without being able to walk into it, sit down in it, touch it. But just as you wouldn't want your customers to get lost on the way to a sales meeting in your offices, or to leave your shop in frustration because they can't find the goods they're looking for, so it is crucial that the visitors to your website can find their way around your website and get to where they want to go as easily as they can follow a sign, open a door, reach onto a shelf. The science of designing sites that work for visitors is known as usability. Pitching Your Novel How do you get a novel published? Some books to help you perfect your pitch.
The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit
Making the Perfect Pitch
Give 'Em What They Want
How to Publish Your Novel Found in Translation "Circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world." It sounds like an idea that could be expressed today, but it was in fact written almost 75 years ago by a great artist who is our guest this month in the Poetry Corner. Book Review Blogs The book review sections of major newspapers are branching out to the blogosphere.
Washington Post: Short Stack
New York Times: Paper Cuts
The Guardian: Books Skedaddle, Scadoodle, Skidoo, Skadoosh! In Sunday's Boston Globe I fill in for Jan Freeman, who writes a regular language column called "The Word." My topic is a silly new word that appears in the movie "Kung Fu Panda": skadoosh. It came from the fertile mind of Jack Black, voice of Po the Panda, who was inspired by an equally silly old slang expression, 23 skidoo. And skidoo probably came from scadoodle, which in turn is a variant of skedaddle. Whew! The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: June Edition There's an extra-fiendish twist to this month's crossword puzzle. Figure it out and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt! Introducing... The VT Spelling Bee! We're very pleased to announce a brand-new feature: the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee! Taking advantage of our high-quality audio pronunciations, we've created a quiz that will sharpen your spelling skills and expand your vocabulary. And as everyone here in the office can attest, the quiz is downright addictive. Acting American Which British television actors are best at pulling off American accents? Readers of BBC's Radio Times give cheers to Hugh Laurie of "House" and jeers to Michelle Ryan of "Bionic Woman." A Contretemps over Newspaper Vocabulary The "Letters to the Editor" section of the Los Angeles Times has featured some heated discussion about what kind of vocabulary is suitable for printing in a newspaper. And no, this doesn't have anything to do with the "seven dirty words" famously satirized by the late lamented George Carlin. Instead, it's about some moderately challenging vocab items that you might expect to find on a Visual Thesaurus word list. Are Newspapers Dying? Journalism experts grapple with how the newspaper industry can survive the digital age.
The Vanishing Newspaper
Digital Journalism
-30-: The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper
Digitizing the News Jane Austen Blogs The cult of Jane is as strong as ever. Take a stroll through these blogs for all things Austenian.
Jane Austen Today
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Austenprose
Jane Austen's World
Austen-tatious Those Who Do Not Know History Are Doomed to Fail English, Part II Okay, y'all, last month's column wore me out. So I turned off the interweb, rested my mouse-clickin' hand, and took a nap with Julie Andrews' wonderful memoir, Home, on my chest. Now, as I promised, I'm back with more resources to help teachers get their students to grasp literature through historical context. Mailbag Friday: "Bamboozle" Welcome to a new feature on Word Routes: Mailbag Friday! This is where we answer your questions about the origins and evolving usage of words and phrases. If you've got a burning question, just click here and we'll do our best to address it in a future installment of Mailbag Friday.
First up is Lisa W. of Smyrna, DE, who writes: "Our youngest son earned the nickname 'The Bamboozler' at an early age, for his uncanny ability to outwit his unsuspecting parents. That got me thinking, where does the word bamboozle come from?" Pop Vs. Soda Forget about red states and blue states... what really divides Americans is whether they call carbonated beverages pop or soda. (Or coke if you're in the South.) Check out the detailed maps on The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy to see where the battle lines are drawn on this contentious question. Roget's Legacy: Thesaurus as Tool, Thesaurus as Crutch In part one of our interview with Joshua Kendall, we explored how his new book The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus illuminates the mental world of Peter Mark Roget, a man who escaped the disorder of his personal life by creating a very orderly thesaurus. In the second and final installment, Josh discusses the publication of the first edition of Roget's Thesaurus in 1852 and the lasting legacy of his monumental reference work, both for good and for ill. How to Self-Edit Successful writers of fiction need to master the fine art of self-editing. Here are a few books to help you clean up your prose.
Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Write Great Fiction: Revision And Self-Editing Thinking about Tim Russert, Red States and Blue States The untimely passing of Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press, has led many to reminisce about his lasting influence on political reporting. Some obituaries mentioned that Russert has been credited with popularizing the terms "red state" and "blue state," to refer to states favoring Republican or Democratic candidates. Though Russert's memorable analysis of the twists and turns of the 2000 presidential election no doubt played a significant role in popularizing the "red/blue state" designations, the history of the color coding is surprisingly complicated.
|
|
This Domain Name (Web site optional) is For Sale. To find out more - Click Here
1afm.com | G3Z.com | GoDuck.net | BRMZ.com | FSFN | MSD4.com | STS7 | KMHweb | CSnet7 | PJhub | 0pops
Below, you'll find extensive information on leading
latin english dictionary articles and products to help you on your way
to success.
Creating An Effective Pay-per-click Campaign By Angela Wu, Sat Dec 10th
Optimizing your website for the 'traditional' search engines canbe a daunting task, and one that many people are either unableor unwilling to attempt. Fortunately, pay-per-click searchengines (PPC SEs) allow us to specify exactly what key phraseswe want to be listed under -- for a price. In brief, you simply "bid" on the key phrases you want. Your bidindicates how much you're willing to pay for a click on yourlink - in other words, every time someone clicks your link, youpay 10 cents or whatever you bid on that particular search term.The highest bidder gets placed at the top of the search results,the second highest bidder gets the next listing, and so on. It'sa quick way to get exactly the search terms you want. Obviously you want to maximize the effectiveness of yourpay-per-click campaign since you're paying for traffic! Here area few tips to get you started:
__1. Know Your Website's Conversion Rate. What percentage of unique visitors to your website actually makea purchase? For instance, a website that makes 1 sale for every100 visitors has a conversion rate of 1%. Although the quality of visitors you get from a pay-per- clicksearch engine may be higher or lower than what you normally getthrough other marketing means, knowing your CR will give you a"baseline" to help determine how high you're willing to bid. For example, let's say your conversion rate is 1%. Based onthis, you need 100 clicks on your link to make 1 sale. That's$10 if your bid is 10 cents/click. Figure out whether or notyour profit margin is sufficiently high enough to justify thecost. If so, are you willing to go spend even more to get yourlink displayed higher in the search results and possiblygenerate more clicks and sales? Will the additional salesjustify the extra cost? __2. Target the RIGHT Key Phrases. The goal is to drive traffic and sales to your website. Choosingthe right key phrases is therefore critical: if you choose asearch term that no one uses, you won't get any traffic. If youchoose the wrong key phrase you may end up with visitors whoaren't really interested in your products and services. UseOverture's Search Term Suggestion Tool to help you research theappropriate key phrases for your business:http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ __3. Qualify the Visitor Before He Clicks On Your Link. You pay every time someone clicks your link, so make sure he's aqualified visitor! Make good use of your title and descriptionto encourage visitors who are specifically looking for a productor service like yours, while discouraging people who are "justcurious". For instance, you may sell professional website templates -- butsome people are only interested in fr^e templates they can usefor personal websites or small projects. These are the peopleyou *don't* want to attract. __4. Spend Time Writing Good Titles and Descriptions. Create titles and descriptions specifically for each of yoursearch terms. They should "speak" directly to the type ofvisitor you're catering
We're Humans Too Word of the Day : personnel This noun suffered a setback in frequency when human resources became the term of art for departments responsible for employment, but it lives on in military contexts to distinguish it from materiel, and to designate people required or desired for a particular task. How to Make Money Writing for the Web My company, Articulate Marketing, helps big tech companies communicate better about their products and services. A large part of my work is writing editorial-style content for websites. My credentials are my work for HP, Microsoft, eBay and others.
In the past couple of weeks, several people have asked me for advice about becoming a web copywriter, so here it is. For Younger Writers Books to inspire young writers to tell their own stories.
The Young Writer's Companion
Writing Magic
What's Your Story?
Live Writing Dictionaries Roll Out New Words Dictionary publishers don't get too many opportunities for creating PR buzz, but one surefire way of getting some attention is to announce the new words (and new senses of old words) that have been added in the latest update to a particular dictionary. In the past few days there have been new-word announcements for two major dictionaries, one in the US and one in the UK: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (also in its 11th edition, coincidentally enough). Let's take a look at what they're adding. Legal Eagles Lawyers and language don't have to be adversaries. Some blogs to help transcend legalese.
The Party of the First Part
Legalwriting.net
Set in Style
The (New) Legal Writer Vocabulary Instruction: The Non-Amorphous Shape of Word Knowledge The other day, my two teenage sons cajoled me into watching a movie they both find tremendously amusing. The film is not new. It's called Kangaroo Jack, and features Christopher Walken playing a small-time thug named Sal. Although Sal is the head of a bumbling crime family, he feels very insecure about his word knowledge, and throughout the film he is seen making a desperate attempt at self-improvement through the use of a tape-recorded vocabulary tutorial. In my favorite scene, a soothing female voice on Sal's tape player defines the word amorphous — having no shape or form, and then directs Sal to use the word in a sentence. Sal responds with this beauty: "After Joey Clams got whacked, his head was amorphous." Mailbag Friday: "Hot Dog" Welcome to the latest installment of Mailbag Friday, our new feature for answering readers' questions about word origins. For this special Fourth of July edition, we have a very timely query from Jason B. from Wilmington, DE. "I've heard a lot of stories about the origin of 'hot dog.' What's the frank truth? I await your answer with relish." When You Reeeaaallly Want to Say Something How can the Visual Thesaurus help students replace trite words of emphasis with "words strong in themselves"? Capitol Words Want to find out Topic A in the U.S. Congress on any given day? Check out Capitol Words, which computes the most frequently appearing word in the daily record. While Congress is out of session, you can browse through previous hot topics. Web Usability and Copywriting: Making Your Visitors Feel at Home A website is a strange beast — it is your reception area, your office, your shop, your brochure, your catalogue... And all without being able to walk into it, sit down in it, touch it. But just as you wouldn't want your customers to get lost on the way to a sales meeting in your offices, or to leave your shop in frustration because they can't find the goods they're looking for, so it is crucial that the visitors to your website can find their way around your website and get to where they want to go as easily as they can follow a sign, open a door, reach onto a shelf. The science of designing sites that work for visitors is known as usability. Pitching Your Novel How do you get a novel published? Some books to help you perfect your pitch.
The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit
Making the Perfect Pitch
Give 'Em What They Want
How to Publish Your Novel Found in Translation "Circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world." It sounds like an idea that could be expressed today, but it was in fact written almost 75 years ago by a great artist who is our guest this month in the Poetry Corner. Book Review Blogs The book review sections of major newspapers are branching out to the blogosphere.
Washington Post: Short Stack
New York Times: Paper Cuts
The Guardian: Books Skedaddle, Scadoodle, Skidoo, Skadoosh! In Sunday's Boston Globe I fill in for Jan Freeman, who writes a regular language column called "The Word." My topic is a silly new word that appears in the movie "Kung Fu Panda": skadoosh. It came from the fertile mind of Jack Black, voice of Po the Panda, who was inspired by an equally silly old slang expression, 23 skidoo. And skidoo probably came from scadoodle, which in turn is a variant of skedaddle. Whew! The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: June Edition There's an extra-fiendish twist to this month's crossword puzzle. Figure it out and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt! Introducing... The VT Spelling Bee! We're very pleased to announce a brand-new feature: the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee! Taking advantage of our high-quality audio pronunciations, we've created a quiz that will sharpen your spelling skills and expand your vocabulary. And as everyone here in the office can attest, the quiz is downright addictive. Acting American Which British television actors are best at pulling off American accents? Readers of BBC's Radio Times give cheers to Hugh Laurie of "House" and jeers to Michelle Ryan of "Bionic Woman." A Contretemps over Newspaper Vocabulary The "Letters to the Editor" section of the Los Angeles Times has featured some heated discussion about what kind of vocabulary is suitable for printing in a newspaper. And no, this doesn't have anything to do with the "seven dirty words" famously satirized by the late lamented George Carlin. Instead, it's about some moderately challenging vocab items that you might expect to find on a Visual Thesaurus word list. Are Newspapers Dying? Journalism experts grapple with how the newspaper industry can survive the digital age.
The Vanishing Newspaper
Digital Journalism
-30-: The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper
Digitizing the News Jane Austen Blogs The cult of Jane is as strong as ever. Take a stroll through these blogs for all things Austenian.
Jane Austen Today
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Austenprose
Jane Austen's World
Austen-tatious Those Who Do Not Know History Are Doomed to Fail English, Part II Okay, y'all, last month's column wore me out. So I turned off the interweb, rested my mouse-clickin' hand, and took a nap with Julie Andrews' wonderful memoir, Home, on my chest. Now, as I promised, I'm back with more resources to help teachers get their students to grasp literature through historical context. Mailbag Friday: "Bamboozle" Welcome to a new feature on Word Routes: Mailbag Friday! This is where we answer your questions about the origins and evolving usage of words and phrases. If you've got a burning question, just click here and we'll do our best to address it in a future installment of Mailbag Friday.
First up is Lisa W. of Smyrna, DE, who writes: "Our youngest son earned the nickname 'The Bamboozler' at an early age, for his uncanny ability to outwit his unsuspecting parents. That got me thinking, where does the word bamboozle come from?" Pop Vs. Soda Forget about red states and blue states... what really divides Americans is whether they call carbonated beverages pop or soda. (Or coke if you're in the South.) Check out the detailed maps on The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy to see where the battle lines are drawn on this contentious question. Roget's Legacy: Thesaurus as Tool, Thesaurus as Crutch In part one of our interview with Joshua Kendall, we explored how his new book The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus illuminates the mental world of Peter Mark Roget, a man who escaped the disorder of his personal life by creating a very orderly thesaurus. In the second and final installment, Josh discusses the publication of the first edition of Roget's Thesaurus in 1852 and the lasting legacy of his monumental reference work, both for good and for ill. How to Self-Edit Successful writers of fiction need to master the fine art of self-editing. Here are a few books to help you clean up your prose.
Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Write Great Fiction: Revision And Self-Editing Thinking about Tim Russert, Red States and Blue States The untimely passing of Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press, has led many to reminisce about his lasting influence on political reporting. Some obituaries mentioned that Russert has been credited with popularizing the terms "red state" and "blue state," to refer to states favoring Republican or Democratic candidates. Though Russert's memorable analysis of the twists and turns of the 2000 presidential election no doubt played a significant role in popularizing the "red/blue state" designations, the history of the color coding is surprisingly complicated.
to. For instance, if you sell a varietyof golf clubs, you might bid on "used golf club", "discount golfclub", and "ladies golf club". Use each of these terms in thetitle and description to help catch the prospect's attention. __5. Send the Visitor Directly to a "Sales" Page. Instead of linking to your home page where the visitor may bepresented with a variety of choices, link to a page which asksthe visitor to complete just one action. That doesn'tnecessarily mean you have to send them to a page where they'reasked to make a purchase; you can also direct visitors to yournewsletter subscription page, or a page where they're asked toanswer a survey. __6. Consider Using the Smaller PPC SEs. Overture is the best-known and most popular of the pay-per-clicksearch engines. However, you can still benefit from the smallerones as well, such as 7Search or FindWhat. Even though you maynot get the same amount of traffic as you would from Overture,your money isn't "wasted" since you still only pay for actualclicks on your link. In fact, the bids are usually far lower onthe smaller PPC SEs. Take advantage of the cheaper traffic. __7. Find the Bid Position that Offers the Best Value. Many people try to get the #1 listing for their search phrase.While the links in the top three positions may get the mosttraffic, you can still get good traffic from links on the firstfew pages. Some people even argue that these visitors are morequalified -- they took the time to read your link and areinterested in what you have to offer. They didn't just clickyour link because it happened to be the first one. Another thing to watch for are "bid gaps". As an example, at thetime of writing, Overture shows the following bids for thesearch phrase "golf clubs": Position #1 - 54 cents/click Position #2 - 50 cents/clickPosition #3 - 41 cents/click Positions #4 and #5 - 40cents/click Position #6 - 33 cents/click Most of the above bids are separated by several cents perclick... if you wanted position #3, you could bid 42 cents (besure to read the bids above AND below the position you want...otherwise, in this example you could end up paying 49cents/click for position #3!). However, position #6 is availablefor a mere 34 cents. That may not seem like much when you'rejust looking at a single click, but that's a difference of $8for every 100 clicks! Your savings can add up quickly. You haveto decide whether the extra cost is worth being higher up in thesearch results. Pay-per-click search engines may not be the cheapest way topromote your online business, but they can be a very effectivepart of your overall marketing plan. Remember that it's not howmuch you spend that's so important, but rather how much returnyou get on your investment!
About the author:_________ ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Angela is the editor of Online BusinessBasics, a practical guide to marketing a business on abeginner's budget. This guide offers loads of instantly useabletips and links, in a down-to-earth style that even marketing"newbies" can understand! A helpful Online Business Dictionaryis included too... visit:http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/article.html
|
We strive to provide only quality articles, so if there is a
specific topic related to dictionary that you would like
us to cover, please contact us at any time.
And again, thank you to those contributing daily to our latin english dictionary
website.
We're Humans Too Word of the Day : personnel This noun suffered a setback in frequency when human resources became the term of art for departments responsible for employment, but it lives on in military contexts to distinguish it from materiel, and to designate people required or desired for a particular task. How to Make Money Writing for the Web My company, Articulate Marketing, helps big tech companies communicate better about their products and services. A large part of my work is writing editorial-style content for websites. My credentials are my work for HP, Microsoft, eBay and others.
In the past couple of weeks, several people have asked me for advice about becoming a web copywriter, so here it is. For Younger Writers Books to inspire young writers to tell their own stories.
The Young Writer's Companion
Writing Magic
What's Your Story?
Live Writing Dictionaries Roll Out New Words Dictionary publishers don't get too many opportunities for creating PR buzz, but one surefire way of getting some attention is to announce the new words (and new senses of old words) that have been added in the latest update to a particular dictionary. In the past few days there have been new-word announcements for two major dictionaries, one in the US and one in the UK: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition) and the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (also in its 11th edition, coincidentally enough). Let's take a look at what they're adding. Legal Eagles Lawyers and language don't have to be adversaries. Some blogs to help transcend legalese.
The Party of the First Part
Legalwriting.net
Set in Style
The (New) Legal Writer Vocabulary Instruction: The Non-Amorphous Shape of Word Knowledge The other day, my two teenage sons cajoled me into watching a movie they both find tremendously amusing. The film is not new. It's called Kangaroo Jack, and features Christopher Walken playing a small-time thug named Sal. Although Sal is the head of a bumbling crime family, he feels very insecure about his word knowledge, and throughout the film he is seen making a desperate attempt at self-improvement through the use of a tape-recorded vocabulary tutorial. In my favorite scene, a soothing female voice on Sal's tape player defines the word amorphous — having no shape or form, and then directs Sal to use the word in a sentence. Sal responds with this beauty: "After Joey Clams got whacked, his head was amorphous." Mailbag Friday: "Hot Dog" Welcome to the latest installment of Mailbag Friday, our new feature for answering readers' questions about word origins. For this special Fourth of July edition, we have a very timely query from Jason B. from Wilmington, DE. "I've heard a lot of stories about the origin of 'hot dog.' What's the frank truth? I await your answer with relish." When You Reeeaaallly Want to Say Something How can the Visual Thesaurus help students replace trite words of emphasis with "words strong in themselves"? Capitol Words Want to find out Topic A in the U.S. Congress on any given day? Check out Capitol Words, which computes the most frequently appearing word in the daily record. While Congress is out of session, you can browse through previous hot topics. Web Usability and Copywriting: Making Your Visitors Feel at Home A website is a strange beast — it is your reception area, your office, your shop, your brochure, your catalogue... And all without being able to walk into it, sit down in it, touch it. But just as you wouldn't want your customers to get lost on the way to a sales meeting in your offices, or to leave your shop in frustration because they can't find the goods they're looking for, so it is crucial that the visitors to your website can find their way around your website and get to where they want to go as easily as they can follow a sign, open a door, reach onto a shelf. The science of designing sites that work for visitors is known as usability. Pitching Your Novel How do you get a novel published? Some books to help you perfect your pitch.
The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit
Making the Perfect Pitch
Give 'Em What They Want
How to Publish Your Novel Found in Translation "Circumstances almost compel us to learn English, and this lucky accident has given us the opportunity of access into the richest of all poetical literatures of the world." It sounds like an idea that could be expressed today, but it was in fact written almost 75 years ago by a great artist who is our guest this month in the Poetry Corner. Book Review Blogs The book review sections of major newspapers are branching out to the blogosphere.
Washington Post: Short Stack
New York Times: Paper Cuts
The Guardian: Books Skedaddle, Scadoodle, Skidoo, Skadoosh! In Sunday's Boston Globe I fill in for Jan Freeman, who writes a regular language column called "The Word." My topic is a silly new word that appears in the movie "Kung Fu Panda": skadoosh. It came from the fertile mind of Jack Black, voice of Po the Panda, who was inspired by an equally silly old slang expression, 23 skidoo. And skidoo probably came from scadoodle, which in turn is a variant of skedaddle. Whew! The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: June Edition There's an extra-fiendish twist to this month's crossword puzzle. Figure it out and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt! Introducing... The VT Spelling Bee! We're very pleased to announce a brand-new feature: the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee! Taking advantage of our high-quality audio pronunciations, we've created a quiz that will sharpen your spelling skills and expand your vocabulary. And as everyone here in the office can attest, the quiz is downright addictive. Acting American Which British television actors are best at pulling off American accents? Readers of BBC's Radio Times give cheers to Hugh Laurie of "House" and jeers to Michelle Ryan of "Bionic Woman." A Contretemps over Newspaper Vocabulary The "Letters to the Editor" section of the Los Angeles Times has featured some heated discussion about what kind of vocabulary is suitable for printing in a newspaper. And no, this doesn't have anything to do with the "seven dirty words" famously satirized by the late lamented George Carlin. Instead, it's about some moderately challenging vocab items that you might expect to find on a Visual Thesaurus word list. Are Newspapers Dying? Journalism experts grapple with how the newspaper industry can survive the digital age.
The Vanishing Newspaper
Digital Journalism
-30-: The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper
Digitizing the News Jane Austen Blogs The cult of Jane is as strong as ever. Take a stroll through these blogs for all things Austenian.
Jane Austen Today
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Austenprose
Jane Austen's World
Austen-tatious Those Who Do Not Know History Are Doomed to Fail English, Part II Okay, y'all, last month's column wore me out. So I turned off the interweb, rested my mouse-clickin' hand, and took a nap with Julie Andrews' wonderful memoir, Home, on my chest. Now, as I promised, I'm back with more resources to help teachers get their students to grasp literature through historical context. Mailbag Friday: "Bamboozle" Welcome to a new feature on Word Routes: Mailbag Friday! This is where we answer your questions about the origins and evolving usage of words and phrases. If you've got a burning question, just click here and we'll do our best to address it in a future installment of Mailbag Friday.
First up is Lisa W. of Smyrna, DE, who writes: "Our youngest son earned the nickname 'The Bamboozler' at an early age, for his uncanny ability to outwit his unsuspecting parents. That got me thinking, where does the word bamboozle come from?" Pop Vs. Soda Forget about red states and blue states... what really divides Americans is whether they call carbonated beverages pop or soda. (Or coke if you're in the South.) Check out the detailed maps on The Great Pop vs. Soda Controversy to see where the battle lines are drawn on this contentious question. Roget's Legacy: Thesaurus as Tool, Thesaurus as Crutch In part one of our interview with Joshua Kendall, we explored how his new book The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus illuminates the mental world of Peter Mark Roget, a man who escaped the disorder of his personal life by creating a very orderly thesaurus. In the second and final installment, Josh discusses the publication of the first edition of Roget's Thesaurus in 1852 and the lasting legacy of his monumental reference work, both for good and for ill. How to Self-Edit Successful writers of fiction need to master the fine art of self-editing. Here are a few books to help you clean up your prose.
Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing
Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
Write Great Fiction: Revision And Self-Editing Thinking about Tim Russert, Red States and Blue States The untimely passing of Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press, has led many to reminisce about his lasting influence on political reporting. Some obituaries mentioned that Russert has been credited with popularizing the terms "red state" and "blue state," to refer to states favoring Republican or Democratic candidates. Though Russert's memorable analysis of the twists and turns of the 2000 presidential election no doubt played a significant role in popularizing the "red/blue state" designations, the history of the color coding is surprisingly complicated.
|