Arlene Miller's Blog, page 37

5 Reasons Why You Should Teach Grammar to Your Children Early

The Grammar Diva is happy to present this guest blog by Annabelle Fee of SmileTutor.

Grammar is an English word that comes from the Greek phrase grammatikē technē. This phrase means “the art of letters.” Therefore, the Greek saw grammar as the artistic composition of letters to create meaning. Today, most scholars refer to grammar as a set of rules governing the use of words, phrases, and clauses in a particular language.

Teaching your children this “art of letters” from an early age is an excellent idea for the following reasons.

1. Grammar Enhances a Child’s Creativity

Grammar is a tool that people use to express their thoughts, emotions, and ideas. Failing to understand it impedes an individual’s ability to express himself articulately and creatively. Teaching your children grammar from an early age removes this hindrance to their creative skills. Remember, the attitudes, abilities, and mannerisms that kids will have in the future start at a young age. Therefore, encouraging creativity at an early age ignites their creative skills while failing to do so will stifle them.

2. Grammar Helps Children Decipher Meaning

Many people fail when it comes to constructing sentences or phrases that are grammatically correct. Consequently, those who cannot decipher these sentences lose their intended meaning. Teaching your children grammar helps them understand poorly constructed sentences and phrases. In other words, they would know what the person in question is trying to tell them because they know what to look for in a sentence.

3. Learning Grammar Helps Children Succeed as Adults

Firms with annual sales of $10 to $60 billion have higher English proficiency scores than firms making less than $10 billion yearly. Grammar is critical in specific business sectors such as aviation and logistics. Other industries such as engineering and consulting require strong language skills as well. These assertions suggest that learning grammar contributes to a child’s success in adulthood. Start honing language skills in your children when they are young so that they can perfect them as adults.

4. Grammar Facilitates the Building of Relationships

Some of the bonds that children will create in their childhood will last into adulthood. The longevity of these bonds depends on how strongly they were formed. Communication is critical to this formation process.

For example, disagreements arise because people misunderstand each other. That means either the sender failed to construct his or her message well or the recipient cannot decipher it correctly. Teaching children grammar helps them form sentences correctly.

Decoding these constructions will be within their realm of possibilities as well. Therefore, the conversations that you will have with them will be fruitful because misunderstandings will be few. The same case will apply to their interactions with other people.

5. Grammar Makes Communication Enjoyable

Presenting information coherently and excitingly helps people understand what you are saying. It also helps them contribute to the conversation because they know what your sentences mean. The same case applies to your children as well. People will marvel at how well they communicate when you teach them grammar. Moreover, they will find that talking to them is an enjoyable experience because the exchange of meaning in a conversation occurs flawlessly.

Teaching your kids grammar is critical for various reasons. They include enhancing their creativity, helping them understand others, and facilitating their success in adulthood. Grammar helps them build relationships and hold stimulating conversations as well. You can teach your children this “art of letters,” or you can hire someone to do it for you. Hiring a professional English tutor is an excellent idea because tutors know what to teach their students and when to do it.

Annabelle Fee is part of the Content and Community team at SmileTutor, sharing valuable content with their own community and beyond. Their passion is to match students and tutors in a wide range of subjects including languages, science, and humanities, as well as providing tutoring around exams and specific subject levels.

Please check out the website.

https://smiletutor.sg

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Grammar Diva News

Next week The Grammar Diva’s post will be about writing lists, both horizontal and vertical: punctuation, capitalization, parallelism 

I am plugging along in my NaNoWriMo memoir (since I am not actually writing a novel, I am referred to as a Nano Rebel, but that’s OK. I have about 19,000 words so far, and I am trying to write 2,000 words a day, which will have me finished in plenty of time if I can keep it up!

 

For Instants . . .

When I taught seven grade English, I used to give my students a Word of the Day. When we finished five or ten words, we would have a vocabulary quiz. The students needed to know the spelling, the part of speech, the definition, how to use the word in a sentence, and any related words we talked about that were different parts of speech taken from that word. I went pretty much alphabetically, and I always assigned the following words for the same quiz:

Instant

Instance

Incident

Incidence

Yes, it was very confusing. First of all, the plural of some of the words sounds the same as the singular of another: instants sounds the same as instance. Incidents sounds the same as incidence. Since instant is usually an adjective, it isn’t often used as a plural, but it can be used as a noun:

These cups of coffee are all made from ground beans, but these others are all instants.

Second of all, instance, incident, and incidence have similar meanings. Instant is a little different and most people know that it means “a moment, or a short span of time.”

Instance, which sounds like the plural of instant, doesn’t have much to do with instant. It means “a case or occurrence of anything, or an example put forth as proof”:

He often lies to his parents, but in this instance he was telling the truth.

An incident is simply something that happens, often negative; an individual occurrence or event:

There was an incident outside the restaurant last night, and the police were called.

After several incidents at school, she was suspended.

Instance is close to incident in meaning: 

After the third instance of her being insubordinate at school, she was suspended. 

The plural of incident sounds the same as the singular incidence. Incidence means “the rate or range of occurrence of something, especially of something unwanted”:

Since the new stop sign was placed on my street, the incidence of accidents has decreased. 

The incidence of crimes has increased in that neighborhood since the unemployment rate has risen.

Your vocabulary test will be on Wednesday. (Just kidding!)

Grammar Diva News

I am back from my ten-day Florida vacation and a month of taking it easier. Now, new, original blog posts are back, as are my words of the day on social media (Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest) every weekday. I am doing two-letter Scrabble words for the month of November. 

November is also National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The last time I entered this contest of writing 50,000 words (about 250 pages) in the thirty days of November was in 2011, when I wrote my novel, now called Birds of a Feather, a light and entertaining book about four college girls in Boston during the 1980s. A few years ago, I attempted to write one of the sequels I had planned for that novel during NaNoWriMo. I started, but then lost a couple of days’ work on my computer (Poof! You know how that happens!) and was unable to recreate what I lost. I never have (yet) written those sequels. However, I have been wanting to write a book about my dating adventures for several years or more. Friends have also encouraged me to write it, so I am using this NaNoWriMo to finally do it. Yes, I know, it is supposed to be a novel, but a memoir is close enough in my book. So, it is day number 2 and I am on my way to write at Starbucks. Don’t worry. I am changing all the names and other identifying details in my book to protect the innocent (and guilty). Here is the mockup cover I did and the preliminary title. I do plan to publish the book at some point, but I think it is going to need a lot of work after the November first draft!

And please don’t forget about my grammar books! And reviews are always greatly appreciated, especially of my punctuation book, To Comma or Not to Comma.

 

 

 

Best of the Grammar Diva: Trick or Treat? The Origin of Halloween Words

Originally published 10-26-2017
Happy Halloween! Here are some of the stories behind the words of Halloween!

Trick or Treating

The practice of trick or treating began with the Celtic tradition of celebrating the end of the year by dressing up as evil spirits. The Celts believed that, as we moved from one year to the next, the dead and the living would overlap, and demons would roam the earth again. So dressing up as demons was a defense mechanism. If you encountered a real demon roaming the Earth, they would think you were one of them.

The Catholic Church turned the demon dress-up party into “All Hallows Eve,” “All Soul’s Day,” and “All Saints Day” and had people dress up as saints, angels, and even demons. 

 Beginning in the Middle Ages children (and sometimes poor adults) would dress up in costumes and go around door to door begging for food or money in exchange for songs and prayers. This was called “souling.”

But trick or treating did not migrate along with Europeans to the United States. It didn’t re-emerge until the 1920s and 1930s. Then, it paused for a bit during World War II because of sugar rations.

The term “trick or treat” dates back to 1927.  

The British apparently hate Halloween. In 2006, a survey found that over half of British homeowners turn off their lights and pretend not to be home on Halloween. 

Halloween

Halloween also known as Allhalloween, All Hallows’ Eve, or All Saints’ Eve, begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead.

It is believed that many Halloween traditions originated from ancient Celtic harvest festivals and that such festivals may have had pagan roots. Some believe, however, that Halloween began solely as a Christian holiday, separate from ancient festivals.

 In many parts of the world, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows’ Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, remain popular, although elsewhere it is a more commercial and secular celebration. Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows’ Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this day, including apples and potato pancakes. 

The word “Hallowe’en” means “hallowed evening” or “holy evening.” It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows’ Eve (the evening before All Hallows’ Day).

Jack-O-Lantern

The original jack-o’-lanterns were carved from turnips, potatoes or beets.

People have been making jack-o’-lanterns at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed “Stingy Jack.” According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn’t want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree’s bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.

Soon after, Jack died. As the legend goes, God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the trick Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern,” and then, simply “Jack O’Lantern.”

In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o’lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect jack-o’-lanterns.

 
Pumpkin
 









The large round fruit of the creeping cucurbitaceous plants of the genus Cucurbit. They have a thick orange rind, pulpy flesh, and numerous seeds.  The word is from the Middle French pompon,  Latin peponem (melon), from the Greek pepon (melon), meaning “cooked” (by the sun) or “ripe.” 
 
In American English, the word is also colloquial for a person with hair cut short all around., recorded from 1781.

Witch

In mythology and fiction, a woman believed to practice magic or sorcery, especially black magic. From Old English wicca.







 






In a c.1250 translation of “Exodus,” witches is used to describe the Egyptian midwives who save the newborn sons of the Hebrews. 
 
 Witch doctor is from 1718

Goblin

In folklore a small grotesque supernatural creature, regarded as malevolent towards human beings.

From the early 14th century, “a devil, incubus, fairy”; from Old French gobelin. 

 Thank you to the following websites:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-history-of-trick-or-treating-is-weirder-than-you-thought-79408373/

http://www.dictionary.com/

https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com

https://enwikipedia.org

https://history.com

 

Best of the Grammar Diva: Manspreading May Cause Butt Dialing

Manspreading!

Originally published 9-1-2015

 

Manspreading? Butt dialing? These are real words? Well, yes . . . and no.

The Oxford Dictionary has added 1000 new words to its online dictionary in the latest quarterly update.  Many of these words are slang, such as manspreading and butt dialing.  When words become commonly used, the Oxford Dictionary adds them. Although you now may wonder if such words are now considered esoteric and high falutin — after all, we are talking about the Oxford Dictionary —  think again. The Oxford Dictionary adds words that are in common usage in the English language. However, there is also the Oxford English Dictionary, “the definitive record of the English language.” Although that dictionary is also updated with new words, 500 in the latest update, it is the more formal dictionary. However, both dictionaries are published by the Oxford University Press.

The Oxford Dictionary  – Contains informal and slang words that are common enough to be included.

The Oxford English Dictionary  – Contains new words, but not those considered slang.

Here are some of the highlights of new words added to the Oxford Dictionary:

Manspreading – This word was coined by commuters and refers to men on public transportation who sit with their legs wide apart, thus taking up more than one seat so no one can sit in the surrounding seats.

Butt dialing – Accidentally calling someone with your cell phone in a rear pocket (possibly while you are manspreading).

Awesomesauce – Great or wonderful. I have heard this word only on an insurance commercial. I am surprised it is even slang.

Beer o’clock and wine o’clock – No, I didn’t make this up. I think you probably decide what times these really are. 

Cat cafe – I had never heard of this before my daughter happened to tell me about it a few days ago. Imagine a Starbucks combined with a cat shelter. Yes, this is where customers come to play with cats who live at the cafe.

Brain fart – This one had been around a while and is a temporary loss of mental capacity

Bruh – Used to refer to a male friend and often used as a form of address.

Cakeage –  Like corkage for wine, a charge made by a restaurant for serving a cake they have not supplied.

Hangry – Just like it sounds, being irritable and angry because one is hungry.

Fat-shame – To humiliate someone by making fun of their size. (Now, that’s bullying!)

Fur baby – A pet cat, dog, or other furry animal.

Mx – A title used before a person’s name that does not specify gender.

Rage-quit- To become frustrated with some activity, commonly a video game, and quit in anger.

Rando – A person whom one doesn’t know who is likely acting suspicious or weird.

Redditor – A registered user of the website Reddit.

Snackable – Online content that is easily read and digested.

Swatting – Making a hoax call to  emergency services to bring a large number of armed police officers to a particular address.

Weak sauce – Something of poor quality. This must be the opposite of awesome sauce.

I was going to make you wait until next week, but I won’t! Here are some of the 500 new words that have been added to the fancier Oxford English Dictionary in the its recent update:

autotune
Blu-ray
comedogenic
comedy of errors
crowdfunding
declutter
go-for-it (adjective)
half-ass (adjective)
hardwire (adjective)
hot mess
jeggings (jean leggings)
netbook
photobomb
retweet
sexting
staycation
tan line
twerk
-uber (as a prefix)
wuss

 

 

Best of the Grammar Diva: How to Write Possessives

Originally published 8-16-2013

How to Write Possessives

Possessives are one of the three cases in the English language (the other two are nominative and objective, but let’s not worry about those!). Latin has five cases and some languages have seven or eight, so we are doing well here. In any case (pardon the pun), possessives imply ownership.

We all learned in grade school that to make a noun possessive, we add an apostrophe and an s. Not wrong, but not the whole story.

The only words that can be made possessive are nouns and pronouns. People have difficulty with both. Just remember that no possessive pronouns have an apostrophe! Here are the possessive pronouns:

First person singular: my, mine 

Second person singular and plural: your, yours

Third person singular: his, her, hers, its (without the apostrophe)

First person plural: our, ours

Third person plural: their, theirs

Okay. Now on to the nouns.

Generally, for singular nouns you add an apostrophe and an s to make them possessive:

This is Mary’s book.

My dog’s bowl is empty.

Your essay’s introduction is very good. (Doesn’t need to be a person to be a possessive.)

Plural nouns that don’t end in an s are also made possessive by adding  an apostrophe and an s.

The children’s playground is across the street.

The mice’s home is in that hole in the wall.

Plural nouns that end in s  (which is most of them) are made possessive with the addition of only an apostrophe.

Her two sisters’ bikes are in the driveway. (One sister’s bike; two sisters’ bikes)

The parties’ themes were both tropical. (One party’s theme; two parties’ themes)

Most singular nouns that end in s or ss are made possessive by adding an apostrophe and an s (yes, really!)

The bus’s tire is flat. (Think of how you would pronounce it. It is spelled exactly as you would say it.)

My boss’s desk is really messy. (Once again, that is how you would say it.)

Thomas’s new car is over there. (You wouldn’t pronounce it Thomas new car, would you??)

I had to memorize Frederick Douglass’s speech. (Yup!)

The princess’s slipper fit perfectly.

Now, lets talk about a few of those words made plural.

What if you had two bosses, and they both had messy desks? My bosses’ desks are really messy. (You have used the plural of boss, which is bosses, and you have added just an apostrophe, like in other plurals that end in s. Once again, that is how you pronounce it. You don’t add another syllable. You don’t say bosses’s, so you don’t spell it that way either.  My boss’s desk and my bosses’ desks are pronounced exactly the same way, even though they are spelled differently–because one is singular and one is plural.)

What if there were three princesses whose slippers all fit perfectly? Same as bosses. The three princesses’ slippers all fit perfectly. (You make princess plural by adding -es, and you add an apostrophe like in plurals that end in s. Once again, princess’s and princesses’ are pronounced the same way, although they are spelled differently because one is a singular possessive and the other is a plural possessive.)

All right. Let’s do the other three examples:

All the buses’ tires are flat. (Bus’s is singular possessive; buses’ is plural possessive)

The two Thomases’ last names both begin with L.(Correct, but you might just want to rewrite it!)

Well, there is only one Frederick Douglass, so I guess we can’t do that one!

Exceptions? Well, of course!

If a word ends in -es that sounds like -ez, you just add an apostrophe to make it possessive — no s.

Examples: Socrates’ (possessive), Hippocrates’ (possessive)

Also, the possessive of Jesus is Jesus’, and I would suppose Moses is treated the same way.

 

 

 

Best of the Grammar Diva – Apostrophes: When to Use Them—And When Not To

Some apostrophes are not OK!

Originally posted on August 9, 2013

Apostrophes—those things that look like single quotes, or maybe commas hanging in the air—have a couple of uses in the English language. First, they are used for contractions. Second, they are used to indicate possession. We are going to talk all about possessives in next week’s blog post (can you wait?). That leaves us with contractions.

Contractions are word combinations with letters left out to save space, I guess. Or perhaps to make it easy to say in conversation. They slide off the tongue much more easily than two separate words. The apostrophe is put in place of the missing letter (or letters). The common words to be shortened in a contraction are not, have, and are (am, is)

Some contractions with not: didn’t, isn’t, aren’t, haven’t, wouldn’t, won’t, can’t.

Some contractions with have: could’ve, would’ve, I’ve, you’ve, we’ve

Some contractions with the to be verb (are, am, is): I’m, you’re, we’re, he’s, it’s, they’re

Well, you know I’m not writing this blog post to talk about contractions. You know all about them. Almost.  So here is all I am going to say about contractions, before I move on to when NOT to use apostrophes:

1. In formal writing (as opposed to conversation or a friendly e-mail), I would suggest avoiding some contractions. The contractions with n’t for not are fine, but I would spell out words such as could have, would have, should have, I have, you have, we are, most of the time. In particular I would not use contractions where the shortened word is have. Is it wrong? No. But it does sound more conversational and less professional.

2. Oh, please, remember that the contraction meaning it is is the one with the apostrophe (it’s).

3. Oh, please remember to put the apostrophe in the you’re that means you are (not your)!

Possessives is the topic for next week, so now we have come to the when not to use an apostrophe part.

Turn your attention to the apostrophe man cartoon above. Yup, you have seen the apostrophe used this way. You have seen it on signs, you have seen it in menus,  and you have seen it on Facebook. DO NOT USE an apostrophe for plurals. Plural words, unless they are plural possessives, do not have apostrophes! EVER, almost. That means no apostrophes in plural words, numbers, letters, or symbols.

The only time you need an apostrophe in a plural is when the word, number, letter or symbol would be confused with another word if there were no apostrophe. Let’s see…how many things does that include?

If you are talking about the letter A, use an apostrophe to make it plural.  Otherwise, it will look like as.

I got all A’s on my report card.

If you are talking about the letter I, use an apostrophe to make it plural. Otherwise, it will look like is.

Make sure you capitalize all your pronoun I‘s.

If you are talking about the letter U, use an apostrophe to make it plural. Otherwise, it will look like us.

There are two u‘s in the word uncut.

It doesn’t matter whether you use the letter in uppercase or lowercase.

Also, note that when you use a letter, number, word, or symbol as itself, it is italicized. However, the apostrophe/s is not in italics. This goes for words, numbers, letters, and symbols without apostrophes as well. The s is not italicized.

There are too many ands in your sentence. (The s at the end of and is not in italics.)

Yes, this rule applies to numbers too.

Do you remember the 1960s? (not 1960’s)
Do you remember the ’60s? (Here, the apostrophe is standing in for the 19, making it a contraction of sorts. But there is no apostrophe after 60.

The letters a, i, and u need apostrophes in their plurals to avoid confusion. That is just about it. 

Next week, apostrophes return as we talk about possessives.

Tainted Words

Polysemia – An abnormal awareness of possible ambiguity; the uncontrollable tendency to bring to mind an inappropriate or unintended sense of a word in any context.

So polysemic words can have more than one meaning. But they can also simply have a connotation that is brought to mind when one hears the word. Words with a negative connotation are said to have “semantic taint.”

 You know if you have ever been a teacher in junior high or high school that you cannot tell your students to turn to page 69. You can’t use the word balls even if you are talking about sports. There are lots of words and names like that.

gay – Now has actual two different meanings: 1) happy and joyful, 2) homosexual

queer – 1) Odd, 2) Slang for homosexual

homo as a prefix – see above

diaphragm – 1) part of the body used to breathe and sing, 2) birth control device

fairy – 1) little character with wings in fairy tales, 2) slang for homosexual man

period – 1) punctuation mark, 2) menstruation

prick – 1) to stab as with a needle, 2) slang for male body part

screw – 1) little tool for putting things together, 2) slang for sex

 

There are people’s names who either mean something (generally in slang) and some that simply have a negative connotation:

Jack – May bring to mind the slang jack off.

John – Also name for a bathroom or for a pimp

Jezebel – Brings to mind a loose woman, although doesn’t actually mean it

Adolph – Perfectly fine name, but may bring up negatives, as one might first think of Hitler owning that name

Dick – Also slang for male body part

Peter – Ditto

Mr. Pecker, from the National Inquirer – Ditto!

Prudence – Might being to mind the thought that the owner of this name is a prude.

 

There is another category of words that have perfectly fine meanings, but sound “dirty” even though they are not. If you are talking to children, you might get titters (there’s one right there) when you say these words:

hoary (not whore-y)

penal

asinine

feckless

titillate

Uranus

tit for tat

seaman (person in the Navy)

 

Some of this information comes from a book, Verbatim, which I recommend to word lovers. The book was taken from a journal, Verbatim, The Language Quarterly. Founded in 1974, the journal was supposed to have 4 pages per issue. It soon grew to 6 pages and then to as many as 64 pages per issue. The first 24 issues take up 991 pages of text. 

Verbatim was founded by Laurence Urdang, one of the most prolific lexicographers of the English language. He was also a dictionary editor. The final editor of the now defunct journal was Erin McKean, an American lexicographer and the founder of Wordnik.com, the world’s largest online dictionary. She is also the editor of the book Verbatim.

Lexicographer: A person who compiles dictionaries.

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The Grammar Diva will be running The Best of the Grammar Diva posts during the month of October, but I promise they will be worth the read – even if you are reading them again!
By the way, To Comma or Not to Comma has won Joel Friedlander’s book cover contest for nonfiction books, August 2018. Thanks to my great cover designer, Matt Hinrichs!

New Ways with Old Words (and Punctuation) – Part 2

Last week’s post was the first part of this two-part article. Among other things, we talked about repurposing words with new “tech” meanings and new parts of speech.

With a new word added to the language every two hours (want a new word? wait 120 minutes!), there is always something new for word lovers to learn. Now there is actually a new word that means “word lover”: wordie, which is of course patterned after such words as foodie (food lover) and groupie (lovers of some musical group). 

We all remember the coining of the term Amber Alert some years ago, an alert given out when a child is missing. Now there is the Silver Alert, which informs the public when an elderly person is missing.

It seems very current to combine two words to make a new word. We have mansplaining and hangry, but there are others:

Antifa is a combination of anti and Fascist. 
If going to the Holiday Inn is your idea of camping, you are glamping, a combination of camping and glamorous. Actually, the term probably refers more to a fancy RV than to a motel!
Then, of course, there are the myriad hybrid dog breeds: schnoodle, Yorkie poo, chiweenie, labradoodle—you name it— they used to be called “mutts,” but now fetch (excuse the pun) high prices with their new, fancy names.

Remember when apple was lowercase and was just a fruit? When you type apple into your phone now, you may be autocorrected to use an uppercase A. 

Punctuation is not immune to changing connotations. In 2016 grammarian David Crystal noticed a change in the period, or full stop. At a British writer’s festival, he announced that no longer was the period a simple sentence ender. Particularly in text messages, the period has become rather passive-aggressive:

Your friend texts: Let’s meet at the cafe at 3

You text back: Fine.

Would you be friendlier if you texted back simply Fine

?????

Don’t miss next week’s post: “Tainted Words”. . .

This Blog Post Is “Epic”! New Ways with Old Words

The English language is alive and well—and changing. And that is probably a good thing, as much as grammarians like me resist some of these changes. However, this post isn’t about grammar and punctuation “rules” changing (they really don’t change that often); it is about words themselves adapting to societal changes. Think about George Orwell’s 1984: Big Brother was trying to make the language smaller because the fewer ways we have to express ourselves, the fewer feelings, thoughts, and opinions we can express. And that is a bad thing.

Words and their uses change in many ways. Here are just a few of those ways:

Some words retain their original meanings but take on new slang meanings. 
Some words take on an additional part of speech.
Some words take on new technological meanings while retaining their old meanings as well.
Some words just find new, weird ways of being used. 

Words with Slang Meanings

These examples are not actually new, but  are slang definitions of common words:

epic: The usual meaning is “heroic or unusually majestic,” but you might come home from a party and describe it as being “epic.”

crib: It is where a baby sleeps, but it also means “where I live,” as in “Come see my new crib; it’s epic!”

ride: It still means what you think it does, but it also refers to “my car,” and usually a nice one. “Check out my new ride.”

blast: While it still means an explosion, it also means a severely fun time. “That epic party was a blast!”

Words with New Parts of Speech

Some adjectives have been turned into nouns (mostly in advertising), and some nouns have been turned into verbs.

Use Nutella and you are “spreading the happy.” (Well, who wouldn’t agree with that one!) But what is “the happy”?

Buy makeup at Sephora and you are “celebrating your extraordinary.” Notice on this one that if you mistakenly use you’re instead of your, it all makes sense, and extraordinary is back to being a adjective!

Connect to the internet with AT&T and you are “rethinking possible.”

We used to have friends. Now we friend people, usually on social media. Many times we don’t even know these people.

A network used to be something we watched on television. Then it was something we belonged to. Now we actually have to get up and do it!

New Tech/Social Media Meanings

Many words have taken on additional meanings because of social media and technology.

Whenever someone talks about their data being stored in the cloud, I still look up at the sky and imagine a big cumulus cloud filled with “stuff.” But the cloud is just a big room filled with computers.

Bandwidth has always been a technical term, but now it applies to humans too, as “I don’t have enough bandwidth to remember all this information.”

Catfish isn’t just dinner anymore.  It is making up a fake profile and pretending you are who you aren’t on social media. 

I might take a swipe at you. Or I might just swipe my credit card through a machine, that is, if it doesn’t have a chip. And I don’t mean potato chip.

Remember when a troll was a little funny-looking doll with wild orange hair? Well, now you can be trolled by a troll who is posting things to you on social media to cause a reaction.

A tag gives you the price and washing instructions for your new purchase. It’s also a kids’ game. But now it is also a verb meaning to identify someone on social media.

Your car was blocking my driveway. But now I am blocking you on Facebook because I don’t like your opinions.

Footprints used to be simple, although they could be used as evidence in crimes. Now they are ecologically significant as well. 

Your prominent nose used to play a big part in your profile. Now your profile tells more about you than your nose and chin.

We never used to want to catch anything viral. Now we all want to go viral.

If you get tired of all this newfangled language, all you have to do is unplug for a while. And I don’t mean the toaster.

And a Couple of Weird Things

We may have learned in elementary school not to begin a sentence with because. Of course, that isn’t even true. The teacher was just trying to prevent us from writing a sentence fragment (Because I said so.). Now, because has taken on a whole new weirdness: I am tired because homework. What????  Aren’t there some words left out there?

“It’s a thing” is now a thing. (I hear this particular “thing” comes from the television show The West Wing, which I never watched, so I don’t know.)  Yup! Avocado toast is “a thing” now. 

(P.S. The Oxford English Dictionary is updated quarterly, with over 1,000 words added each quarter. So if you don’t like the words, wait three months!)

Next week’s blog post will be the second part of this two-part series of weird ways with words. Check out some other posts about weird words:  Wait on This     I Could Care Less and Other Such Things    and the Weird and Wonderful Words Series.

 Grammar Diva News

Last weekend I attended and spoke at Writer’s World, a one-day conference for writers, self-publishers, editors, and everyone else who is involved in producing books. It was sponsored by BAIPA, the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association. I had to leave early to rush back to my hometown (Petaluma, CA) to attend the Local Writers Gala, a celebration of Petaluma writers. I was very impressed. Who knew there were so many successful, talented writers here? Unfortunately, the nearby fairground was hosting the Lagunitas Beer Circus. Beer or books? Which would you choose? Well, it appears that enough people chose beer to make parking impossible for the library event! Go figure!

Later this month I will again be speaking to a group of would-be entrepreneurs at the Small Business Development Center’s Next Level Class. I regularly speak at these classes at the invitation of my friend and business advisor, who teaches them. It is always fun to talk to people who are interested in starting all types of businesses — and doing my job of telling them how important writing skills are to any entrepreneur.

By the way, I plan to put out my next book some time around next June (2019). It will be a writing book, and I will be researching it and marketing my other books until then. For now, please check out the rest of my books on my book page.

 

My Week with Amazon

Amazon has mixed reviews. Some people just love it and have an Amazon Prime package waiting for them nearly every day. Some hate Amazon. They don’t like its politics or its treatment of its employees. I would think most authors have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. I do order many things from Amazon; it’s just so easy—and they have almost everything! And frankly speaking, I couldn’t live without Amazon. They certainly sell more books than anyone, like it or not. While I couldn’t live on what I make from my book sales on Amazon (at least right now!), I probably couldn’t live without it either.  But sometimes, like in any other job, being an author/publisher is frustrating! I had a doozie last week.

I assume many of my blog readers are writers and might know the procedure of getting books into the hands of the readers. Those of you will understand my tribulations of last week. For those of you unfamiliar with the process we author/publishers go through, you will get some insight.

By author/publisher, I mean an author who publishes his or her own books. Many of use the POD (print on demand) process. In other words, we don’t print 5000 books and store them in our garages. We upload our cover and inside files to whomever is going to print the books, and when someone orders a book, a copy is printed. For those of us who sell enough books, I think the printers will keep some on hand, however. 

By printers I am referring to Amazon and Ingram.They are not, of course, just printers. Amazon prints and sells the books. Ingram is a very large book distributor; they take care of printing and distributing to everyone except Amazon (and sometimes Amazon too). Many authors do what I do: we take our book files, and we upload them to Amazon and to Ingram. They then magically appear on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, and all other online retailers—and they are also available to order from any bookstore, even if they don’t physically carry the book. Now, I am talking about print books. E-books have their own process.

The arm of Amazon that takes care of print books is called CreateSpace. And of course, the arm that takes care of ebooks is Kindle. Well, recently we found out that CreateSpace was going bye-bye, and Kindle was taking over print book production as well as e-book. My saga begins.

I was hoping to get my new book, To Comma or Not to Comma by September 8, when I had two events on the same day at which I could sell books. That NEVER happens. Two events on the same day??? The book did get finished in time, so I thought I could get print copies by that date if I hurried and paid extra for fast shipping. (Authors can buy copies of their own books at print cost plus shipping cost once the proofs are approved—either digital proofs or print proofs.

So a couple of weeks ago, I uploaded my files to CreateSpace and ordered five print proofs, paying for expedited shipping. You can order up to five print proofs, and I figured if something happened and I couldn’t get any more books in time, I could at least sell the proofs, which look exactly like final books except the last page says “Proof.” Now, I already had the e-book done and available on Kindle and all the other e-readers. This was the first time I ever did the e-book first.

I was waiting for my print proofs to arrive and called Create Space (which has excellent 24/7 customer service. Fill in your phone number and the phone rings with their call) to see if they were arriving on time. They gave me the tracking number, and I checked. They were on their way to my house. So while I am sitting at my computer waiting for them to arrive—so I can quickly approve the proofs on CreateSpace (just click the box) and order some books for my events—I see easy instructions on “migrating” from CreateSpace—because everyone needs to move their books from CreateSpace over to Kindle. I didn’t read the fine print that followed the large, easy steps. I pressed three buttons and I was migrated. 

No sooner had I migrated when the proofs appeared at my doorstep. They were perfect. I went over to Kindle to see that all my titles had migrated just fine. But . . . where was the box to check my print proof approval? Oh, the fine print said don’t migrate your books if you have a book in the approval process. Oops! So I went back to CreateSpace with its 24/7 customer service to see what I should do. The screen said I had migrated and had no CreateSpace account. I couldn’t click on the Call Me button. It was after 5 p.m. by now, and Kindle customer serve was closed until 6 a.m. My books would now be held up. I was desperate and impatient. First I tried to just create the print book all over again with the same files on Kindle. No can do. Kindle wouldn’t accept the ISBN (the unique number that identifies every book) because it had been used—yes, on the print book from CreateSpace that was now in a black hole somewhere. 

 So being resourceful,  I actually created a fake CreateSpace account with another of my e-mail addresses and my old pseudonym so that I could maybe get the customer service back. It worked! They called—and told me they couldn’t do anything and I would have to talk to Kindle.

I was on the phone with Kindle at 6 a.m. promptly the next morning, after having written probably more than one e-mail already (patience is not my virtue). They suggested I upload the files again, starting anew. I told them I had tried and they wouldn’t let me use the ISBN. Kindle customer service is very polite, but all they do is refer the issue to the technical team and tell you to wait 24 to 48 hours and they will contact you. But I was in a hurry! They told me there was no way to approve the CreateSpace book, and that there were multiple technical glitches because of the migration.  What could I do?

Well, you might ask, why didn’t I just take the files and upload them to Ingram? Ingram does get them on Amazon, and I could order books from Ingram for my events. They do tend to be a little slower. And my cover designer had been on vacation and hadn’t yet gotten me the cover file for Ingram, which is slightly different from the cover file for Createspace/Kindle. I e-mailed him in a semi-panic and asked for the file ASAP. Meanwhile I talked to Kindle again and tried to upload the files. This time they had straightened out the ISBN problem, and the files were accepted. But then, they were processing for over an hour (it should take about three minutes at most), and then I got an error message that something was wrong with the interior file—which I knew wasn’t the case.

I received the cover file and went over to Ingram to upload the files. Ingram costs, whereas Kindle doesn’t. I have a perk from my publisher’s group that apparently lets you save that $75 upload fee on Ingram. I had never taken advantage of it for some reason and decided this time I would. Well, they wouldn’t accept it, so I paid. I figured I had no time for a physical proof, and I would have to approve just a digital proof and order the damn books. I uploaded and the next day got the news that the files were accepted, but there was a color issue with the cover. I could relieve them of responsibility and go ahead with the printing—or spend yet more time to get the colors fixed. I knew it was probably not going to matter, since Ingram is fussier than Amazon with print files. I told them to go ahead and print. I approved a digital proof and ordered books, paying extra for fast printing and shipping. Yay! I spent a lot of money, but I would have books in time!

Meanwhile, things got straightened out at Kindle, and I was able to upload the files, which were accepted. I approved the digital proofs, but figured I would order a print proof just in case anything was different from the perfect CreateSpace proofs I had gotten. The book went up live on Amazon. Yes!

Yesterday, a few days before the events, I received the box of books from Ingram; they are perfect, with no color issues, even though my wonderful cover designer did send new files with what they wanted (don’t need them after all). And I received the Kindle proof I ordered, which was also perfect.

Now, only one thing remains: Wouldn’t it be sad if I went through all that and I don’t sell those books!

Update: New glitch with Ingram! And I found out by mistake. Good thing. I went into my local bookstore with the book, telling them they could now order copies. They order from Ingram. The manager looked it up and saw that it was “nonreturnable.” If you want a bookstore to order your books, they must be listed as “returnable.” I KNOW I entered “returnable” on the screen as I did with every other book I have done. So after an hour with customer service (or no-service), I think I got that fixed—except they update that information only once a month, so they don’t be returnable until October 1. So basically, Ingram has cost me a month’s worth of sales because schools, bookstores, etc. won’t buy without being able to return the books. The life of an author/publisher.

 

NEXT WEEK: I think you will really enjoy next week’s (or in might be in two parts) blog post: New Ways with Old Words.