October 2010
8 posts
3 tags
What's up with this myth about Anglo-Saxon words... →
You see it in Strunk and White, you see in bibles on good writing, and you even see it in essays on this Web site: the command to use Anglo-Saxon words instead of Latin ones. In response I’ll use a very non-Anglo-Saxon word: hogwash!
[…]
Today 80 percent of our vocabulary comes from “foreign” sources, including these perfectly good if very un-Anglo-Saxon words: ballot (from Italian),...
Lost in Translation: Exploring the Connection... →
Boroditsky’s research suggests, for example, that the mechanics of using a language such as English, which tends to assign an agent to an action regardless of the agent’s intent, also tends to more vividly imprint that agent in the speaker’s memory. She is amassing a body of intriguing and creative evidence that language influences how its speakers focus their attention, remember events and...
The Awl Finds Some Level of Online Success -... →
Rather than hiring writers and building out various verticals that are then federated into a business, The Awl is finding specific writers it likes and then going into partnership with them. Splitsider is partly owned by Adam Frucci, who used to work at Gawker Media’s gadget blog, Gizmodo, and The Hairpin’s partner will be Edith Zimmerman, most recently of New York magazine’s Vulture blog.
The...
“I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds...”
– McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. (via romeojulietsierra)
“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a...”
– Jeanette Winterson (via toynbeeconvector)
2 tags
Word of the Day for October 21, 2010: fantast →
One whose mind is full of fantastic notions; a person of fantastic ideas, manners, or mode of expression.
AL Kennedy: Typing on trains | Books |... →
US trains are roomy, their passengers have no expectations and therefore often eschew UK passengers’ lapses into frenzied disappointment and rage when they are delayed, misled, or ignored. Plus, US trains are still rich in the iconic elements that I, lover of black and white movies that I am, find intoxicating. They are monumental: they still roll majestically into stations with their...
