Nearly three-thousand new words have been included in the latest edition of Collins Official Scrabble Words — the official list for tournament and home Scrabble play around the world — and slang terms like ‘thang’ have made the cut.
English language
How to write an attention-grabbing email
Need to snare that great job or scoop interview? Copyblogger has six simple but smart tips for making your emails stand out from the pack, so they get read and get a response.
Tony Abbott: liar or bullshitter?
Lies are forgivable, but bullshit is sticky and gets into corners where it can’t be reached, explains Crikey’s resident word nerd Piers Kelly. So what particular flavour of dishonesty is Tony Abbott peddling?
ROFL: The most overused media blog cliches. Ever. FTW
Gawker lists the most overused headlines and phrases in the media blogosphere, from “not so much” to “PWND” to “[x] is the new [y]”. Guilty as charged.
Why I love pronouns
Psycholinguist Jessica Love pens a 3500-word tribute to pronouns: she, they, and the new gender-neutral third-person personal pronoun: yo. Surprisingly readable — even for non word nerds.
The seven most overused cliches in journalism
A former journalist has performed a study into the most over-used cliches in the media, compiling a “greatest hits” list, including classics like “at the end of the day”, “unsung heroes” and “outpouring of support”.
Bogan baby names are child abuse
Naming your kids Madicyn and Taylah won’t make them special or unique, says Paul Schmidtberger: it just condemns them to a lifetime of ridicule and spelling mistakes.
Debating the big issues: Ass vs Arse
It’s the big question facing all Australians: “arse” or “ass”? “Confirmed ‘arse’ man” and linguist Piers Kelly looks at the case for and against each.
The life of the Poet Laureate
Former United States Poet Laureate Charles Simic gives a fascinating insight into how he scored the job and what being the country’s official bard actually entails.
Why don’t you speak Orsrayun?
Is it rude when foreigners in Australia who can speak English choose not to? Try not to take it so personally, says Aung Si: they probably have a very good reason.
Twitter’s grammar gestapo
Meet Twitter’s self-appointed word police: sad, sad pedants picking up on every typo and grammatical error in an effort to enforce proper “Twetiquette”. FAIL.
Journos fail the spelling test
Hundreds of UK and US journalists took a spelling test by The Spelling Society — and the results aren’t good. A quarter couldn’t spell “embarrassed”, and many also tripped up on “millennium”, “accidentally” and “liaison”.
Translating Sarah Palin’s speech
Language expert John McWhorter looks at “Palinspeak”: the unique linguistic stylings of Sarah Palin. Why does she speak the way she does? And why hasn’t it handicapped her meteoric rise to fame?
Yahoo writes an internet style guide
Yahoo is publishing a style guide for the internet style guide — in book form. Finally, an end to those heated newsroom pwned/pwn3d debates!
The beauty of the @ symbol
The @ symbol has been added to the New York Museum of Modern Art’s architecture and design collection — the design world’s equivalent of winning an Oscar. So what makes it so much better than, say, a &, % or #?
Wordwatch: gay, or ssam and ssaf?
Apparently young folk don’t use the word “gay” anymore — it’s “same sex attracted males” and “same sex attracted females”. Should we now saw SSAM and SSAF? asks W.H. Chong. And will they have ssaf sex?
What makes a book “bad”?
Academics name their top 40 “bad” books and grapple with the question of what exactly makes a crap piece of fiction. The Da Vinci Code gets a predictable nod, but so does The Great Gatsby.
Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy pens an ode to David Beckham
Britain’s Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, was apparently so saddened by news that footballer David Beckham has snapped his Achilles tendon, she has written an entire poem about it: Achilles (for David Beckham).
Can India learn to speak in a single tongue?
India has 1.7 billion people and 1600 languages and dialects, but many believe it’s time for a single lingua franca. But which language? Hindi? English? And is it even achievable?
Putting online translators to the test
The NYT pits Google’s new and improved translation tool against Yahoo Babel Fish, Microsoft Bing’s translator and a real-life human. Not bad. Not bad at all.
Everyone chillax, SMS isn’t that bad
The world needs to take a deep breath and relax about text speak and the kids with their emoticons, writes Sue Butler. SMS is not destroying the English language.
Semicolons explained (with bears, party gorillas and hairy knuckles)
The Oatmeal explains the dos and don’ts of using the widely misunderstood semicolon in its own unique way: with unicorn burgers and Godzilla.
VIDEO: What English sounds like to foreigners
A song written by an Italian singer in gibberish to sound like English. Apparently this is what the English language sounds like to non-English speakers.
Diary of a Surgeon: Diary of a surgeon: death of overseas-trained doctors
Hospitals and regulators, if they are satisfied with the supervisory structure around overseas trainees, should be able to approve their employment in the system, writes Professor Guy Maddern from St Anywhere.
Green shoots, Octomom and Aporkalypse: the biggest buzzwords of ’09
The NYT wraps all the stupid words and catch-phrases we over-used in 2009 and hope to never hear again in 2010: sexting, birthers, I’mma let you finish, death panels and more.
