The point being that you probably shouldn't overuse them.

Well, I could've told you that. Any small child will end every last sentence with an exclamation point. They write notes around the house that run: I love you! And I love Mommy! And I love food! and include no irony whatsoever.

It's very tiring to read, though adorable, and this is small children. You are probably not a small child, and shouldn't write like one. Write like a grown-up. Exclamation points, used sparingly, add spice to your work. Used all the time, they just look childish.

Of course, when you're writing informally, see if I care.

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Tags: articles, language, writing
I'm feeling: apathetic

I was linked to another article on the much-commented-upon Death of Cursive Instruction at the NYTimes. Not much new there, but I may run through the comments and laugh at them all soon. (Or maybe not. There's a shocking number of "Eh, who needs it?" there and surprisingly few "OMG! DEATH OF ENGLISH!!!")

But what a coincidence, here's what I saw on Not Always Right today:

Me: “Thank you, sir. Now, if you could just sign your name on the line, and then write it regular on the line below…”

Printing = regular writing. I admit, even I am a bit surprised at this phrasing.

Tags: links, writing
I'm feeling: cheerful

And every time I fully fund a project I get a gift card in the mail, so basically at this point I'm donating to projects with gift cards from projects I donated to with a gift card I got from donating to a project (with a gift card). Sheesh.

I got three of those gift cards in the mail today. One of them is from an 8th grade class. And they say they're not teaching cursive anymore! I've got this note written in teeny tiny cursive such that I have to squint and guess at various squiggles from context. Which is probably the only way this student got away with calling his/her (the names were censored) teacher "possibly senile".

Actually, that's one thing I've noticed from getting various groups of thank you cards in the mail is that handwriting is clearly regional. In one batch I'll get letters where the kids all write their lowercase a's like it appears in times new roman, with that arch over. In this batch apparently the fashion is for kids to write such that no letter takes up more than half the line... and that lower case letters take up even less space. Neat or messy, cursive or print, none of them takes up as much space as was standard with the kids when and where *I* was in the 8th grade (where everybody seemed to have the same large, very ROUND handwriting.

Of course, I don't know if this is the style of a particular school or teacher they picked up, or if it's spread from one kid to another, or what.

*looks through next set*

Like this set! I should scan it in, because every time I see the word "books" in any of this next set of letters the k is written disconnected, in two parts.

I knew in general that there were different handwriting styles taught in different schools, of course, and that one might be more prevalent in one area than another, and of course I know different people have different handwriting (and I wouldn't confuse one of these for another's, of course), but I don't think I ever realized before how handwriting can have an accent... even, I think, if an effort is made to teach it to one standard.

Tags: language, thoughts, writing
I'm feeling: surprised

First off, the other day I asked Ana to write various cursive letters. All lowercase - frankly, I'm not worried about capitals. In a pinch, she can really use the print capitals, I swear, nobody will care. But we'll work on 'em next year, anyway.

I wanted to see which ones she knows without seeing them. She was frustrated at the results, but I was pretty happy - she knows 12 without even trying, and there's eight that just need a little work (that is, she knows what they look like, but she can't do it very neatly or she forgets HOW to form them). And two of the other group are z and x, and that's another set of "Yeah, I don't really care"!

( Ana's cursiveCollapse )

So, lately they've been doing two active things. One, they've been "ice skating" (and no, whatever they say, I am *not* buying them ice skates!), and two they've been "playing soccer".

Ice skating involves sliding on the floor in socks, and occasionally jumping, spinning, and falling on your butt. I assume the falling is optional :)

Soccer involves kicking the ball back in forth in the back alley while shouting "I'm open!", and if they decide they want to make a goal they confer and then one of them kicks the ball at the nearest fence while the other one stays a discreet distance behind and then alternates between throwing up her arms in defeat and applauding.

This is, naturally, the cutest thing EVAH.

Tags: daily stuff, education, family, writing
I'm feeling: cheerful

A report by Amnesty International on the shocking (!) rate of death in childbirth in the US.

Apparently more than two woman a day die of pregnancy related causes... if this information is even accurate, which it might not be.

And those two woman? Are probably black. Black woman are four times as likely to die from pregnancy related complications than white woman, even though they aren't any more likely to suffer from complications such as hemorrhage.

I'm not actually shocked or surprised by this, of course.

Here's an article about the fight in Ethiopia to eliminate bride abduction. It's fascinating. (Also, it gave me nightmares. This article gets its very own trigger warning for its descriptions of rape.

Oh, and I have two quick posts on Jewish literature, particularly fantasy:

Click
Click

Tags: africa, articles, books, feminism, health care, links, reading, united states, writing
I'm feeling: calm

Too cool. BEYOND that, even.

Tags: language, writing
I'm feeling: cheerful

Seriously. I just spammed this person 4 times to say "repetition ain't always bad", and I almost feel like I should comment again to say sorry.

But I'm right. We all know high school English teachers who swear up and down that we should swallow a thesaurus every day before breakfast. And they have a point - overusing a word makes you sound like you have a small vocabulary. But if you do it right, using the same word over and over again packs a punch.

And even if you're not doing it to be forceful, spinning all around to find a new word for a common one just makes you sound like you tried too hard (and dialog in a novel should definitely not sound like that, I think).

I know somebody who is busily writing essays to win scholarships for college. She called me up the other day, needed to know a new word for "therefore". Thought she was using it too much. Thing is, there's only so many ways you can say therefore, and if you use them all in one essay, everybody will think you're a poor writer who scoured the dictionary so as to not repeat yourself because of the "rule". If you really think you use it too much, the only solution is to completely rewrite the sentence so the therefore is unnecessary, which is what I told her, though I couldn't think of a way to do so over the phone. I hate the phone.

Tags: daily stuff, links, writing
I'm feeling: sleepy

First, a really scary optical illusion

Somebody's post about the body language she uses when writing

Another post of griffen's on a variety of subjects.

I had more, but I lost them. Sorry.

Tags: griffen, links, science, writing
I'm feeling: cheerful