A teller of stories

raconteur /ra-kahn-TER / noun

a person who excels in telling anecdotes

Merriam-Webster: The story of "raconteur" is a tale of telling and counting. English speakers borrowed the word from French, where it traces back to the Old French verb "raconter," meaning "to tell." "Raconter" in turn was formed from another Old French verb, "aconter"or "acompter,"meaning "to tell" or "to count," which is ultimately from Latin "computare," meaning "to count." "Computare" is also the source of our words "count" and "account." "Raconteur" has been part of the English vocabulary since at least 1828.

Quick Quiz. What 8-letter relative of "raconteur" can mean "to disregard"? The answer is ...

Did you know these words are Yiddish?

Michael at DailyWritingTips has a list:

chutzpah
Or khutspe. Nerve, extreme arrogance, brazen presumption. In English, chutzpah often connotes courage or confidence, but among Yiddish speakers, it is not a compliment.

feh!
An expression of disgust or disapproval, representative of the sound of spitting.

glitch
Or glitsh. Literally “slip,” “skate,” or “nosedive,” which was the origin of the common American usage as “a minor problem or error.”

kibbitz
In Yiddish, it’s spelled kibets, and it’s related to the Hebrew “kibbutz” or “collective.” But it can also mean verbal joking, which after all is a collective activity. It didn’t originally mean giving unwanted advice about someone else’s game – that’s an American innovation.

klutz
Or better yet, klots. Literally means “a block of wood,” so it’s often used for a dense, clumsy or awkward person. See schlemiel.

kvetsh
In popular English, kvetch means “complain, whine or fret,” but in Yiddish, kvetsh literally means “to press or squeeze,” like a wrong-sized shoe. Reminds you of certain chronic complainers, doesn’t it? But it’s also used on Yiddish web pages for “click.”

maven
Pronounced meyven. An expert, often used sarcastically.

mentsh
An honorable, decent person, an authentic person, a person who helps you when you need help. Can be a man, woman or child.

mishegas
Insanity or craziness. A meshugener is a crazy man. If you want to insult someone, you can ask them, ”Does it hurt to be crazy?”

nosh
Or nash. To nibble; a light snack, but you won’t be light if you don’t stop noshing. Can also describe plagarism, though not always in a bad sense; you know, picking up little pieces for yourself.

shlep
To drag, traditionally something you don’t really need; to carry unwillingly. When people “shlep around,” they are dragging themselves, perhaps slouchingly. On vacation, when I’m the one who ends up carrying the heavy suitcase I begged my wife to leave at home, I shlep it.

shlemiel
A clumsy, inept person, similar to a klutz (also a Yiddish word). The kind of person who always spills his soup.

schlock
Cheap, shoddy, or inferior, as in, “I don’t know why I bought this schlocky souvenir.”

shmaltzy
Excessively sentimental, gushing, flattering, over-the-top, corny. This word describes some of Hollywood’s most famous films. From shmaltz, which means chicken fat or grease.

shmooze
Chat, make small talk, converse about nothing in particular. But at Hollywood parties, guests often schmooze with people they want to impress.

schmuck
Often used as an insulting word for a self-made fool, but you shouldn’t use it in polite company at all, since it refers to male anatomy.

spiel
A long, involved sales pitch, as in, “I had to listen to his whole spiel before I found out what he really wanted.” From the German word for play.

shtick
Something you’re known for doing, an entertainer’s routine, an actor’s bit, stage business; a gimmick often done to draw attention to yourself.

tchatchke
Or tshatshke. Knick-knack, little toy, collectible or giftware. It also appears in sentences such as, “My brother divorced his wife for some little tchatchke.” You can figure that one out.

Elmore Leonard's rules for writing

How are you? he asked phatically

Know this little words and phrases we use when not trying to actually say anything? How are you? Great!

There's a word for that.

phatic / FATT-ik / adjective

of, relating to, or being speech used for social or emotive purposes rather than for communicating information

To wit:

Joe has a tendency to take even phatic inquiries seriously, so when Kristen asked him how he was feeling, I knew the answer would be much longer than "better, thanks."

"Conversation is also more than the explicit back and forth between individuals asking questions and directly referencing one another. It's about the more subtle back and forth that allow us to keep our connections going. It's about the phatic communication and the gestures, the little updates and the awareness of what's happening in space."

Merriam-Webster:

Phatic was coined in the early 20th century by people who apparently wanted to label a particular quirk of human communication—the tendency to use certain rote phrases (such as the standard greeting "how are you?") merely to establish a social connection without sharing any actual information. It probably won't surprise you, then, to learn that "phatic" derives from the Greek "phatos," a form of the verb "phanai," meaning "to speak." 

Other descendants of "phanai" in English include "apophasis" ("the raising of an issue by claiming not to mention it"), "euphemism," "prophet," and the combining suffix "-phasia" (used to denote a speech disorder). You may also have spotted a similarity to "emphatic," but that turns out to be purely coincidence; "emphatic" traces back to a different Greek verb which means "to show."

It's okay to be flippant

Depending on what the meaning of flippant is.

Merriam-Webster tells the story of this word:

"Flippant" did something of a flip-flop shortly after it appeared in English in the late 16th  century. The word was probably created from the verb "flip," which in turn may have originated as an imitation of the sound of something flipping. The earliest senses of the adjective were "nimble" and "limber." One could be flippant not only on one's feet, but also in speech—that is, someone "flippant" might have a capacity for easy, flowing speech. Such flippancy was considered a good thing at first.

But people who speak freely and easily can sometimes seem too talkative, and even impertinent. By the end of the 18th century, the positive sense of "flippant" had slipped from use, and the "disrespectful" sense had taken its place.

So the rule is: be flippant but don't be flippant.

The power of parallelism

Here is an easy way to add strength to you writing. Your readers will bless you for it, because it makes it easier on them.

Parallel construction, in the words of William Strunk, "requires that expressions of similar content and function should be outwardly similar. The likeness of form enables the reader to recognize more readily the likeness of content and function."

Wrong: Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method, while now the laboratory method is employed.
Right: Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method; now it is taught by the laboratory method.

Strunk: "The first version gives the impression that the writer is undecided or timid; he seems unable or afraid to choose one form of expression and hold to it. The second version shows that the writer has at least made his choice and abided by it."

By this principle, an article or a preposition applying to all the members of a series must either be used only before the first term or else be repeated before each term.

Wrong: In spring, summer, or in winter
Right: In spring, summer, or winter (In spring, in summer, or in winter)

Red flags: Correlative expressions (both, and; not, but; not only, but also; either, or; first, second, third; and the like) should be followed by the same grammatical construction.

Wrong: It was both a long ceremony and very tedious.
Right: The ceremony was both long and tedious.

Designing with words

There's a word for it:

wordle / wêrd-êl / noun

1. A creative design composed of words; an artistically arranged word cloud.  
2. (also spelled wortle) One of several pivoted pieces forming the throat of an adjustable die used in extruding wire and pipe.

Dr. Goodword: Wordle has been loitering in the English vocabulary since the 15th century in the second meaning above but has been reactivated in the first meaning as a result of the appearance of word inside it. Its recent resurrection in the realm of graphic arts looks good, since -le is a fairly common suffix in English.

So far wordle has not broken free of the world of graphic arts. However, I can see metaphoric uses for it, should it eventually escape the graphic arts: "Rather than saying a few words, I would say Reginald babbled in wordles, words arranged more for their beauty than for clarity."

History: The original wordle, which may have been better spelled wortle, lies in a fog of mystery; no one knows where it comes from. The resurrected wordle, however, seems to be a recent derivation from word + -le. The ancestry of word leads all over the Indo-European landscape. It emerged as verbum "word" in Latin and as rhetor "speaker" in Greek.

Lithuanian vardas "name", Sanskrit vrata "command", and a host of Germanic words like German Wort and Swedish ord are all related. The suffix -le is no longer active in English but historically it has marked instruments, as in treadle and candle and diminutives as in puddle (a little pool) and sparkle, a little spark. The -le in the revived version of wordle is neither of these but then it is a real suffix that makes this word legitimate.

Metaphor alert!

From The Wall Street Journal's Best of The Web Today blog:

Metaphor Alert

• "As their political lives flash before their eyes, House Democrats who marched in lockstep with the president and Speaker Nancy Pelosi are now running from the sinking ship."--Jennifer Rubin, Commentary website, Sept. 20

• "I think the American people feel that too many programs have come down. There are so many rocks in our knapsack now that we're having trouble carrying it. I think the president has to, like a, like a, like a razor blade, just go right after the single issue that is uppermost in the minds of the American people and that's employment."--Colin Powell, "Meet the Press," Sept. 19

Discrete or discreet?

Be discrete by being discreet.

discreet adj. Showing discernment or judgement in the guidance of one’s own speech and action; judicious, prudent, circumspect, cautious; often esp. that can be silent when speech would be inconvenient.  

discrete adj. Separate, detached from others, individually distinct. Opposed to continuous.

So: Because we have to be completely discreet about this project, I have divided the work into discrete units so that no one will be able to let our competition know exactly what our product will be.

Here's a little trick to remember: in "discrete" the e's are separated by a t, and discrete is the word that means separate, apart, discontinuous.

More: Discrete is about separating into distinct parts: notice how the two e’s are separated. Discreet, on the other hand, is about keeping information contained and under wraps: notice how the e’s are closed up within the boundaries of the word.

Sic!

Michael Quinion, editor of World Wide Words, a must for serious word lovers, collects mistakes in print spotted by his readers. He entitles the collection "Sic!"

A bit on the term.

Sic is a Latin word meaning "thus," "so," "as such," or "in such a manner." It is used when writing quoted material to indicate that an incorrect or unusual spelling, phrase, punctuation or meaning in the quote has been reproduced verbatim from the original and is not a transcription error (i.e. it appeared thus in the original). It is normally placed within the quoted material, in square brackets and often italicized—[sic]. Alternatively it can appear after the quote in parentheses (round brackets)—(sic). It had a long vowel in Latin (sīc), meaning that it was pronounced like the English word "seek," [ˈsiːk]. However, it is normally anglicized to /ˈsɪk/, like the English word "sick."

Here's what Quinion's readers spotted recently.

• Hazel McDonald told me of the most recent Bush Fire Survival Plan, issued to residents of New South Wales, Australia. She comments that one piece of advice requires psychic ability: “The safest option is for you and your family to leave early, hours or the day before a fire occurs.”

• David Read and Anthony Chadwick were startled by a report on the CBC News website on 15 September: “Police in the Bahamas believe they have found the remains of a boater who disappeared off a beach where one of the Jaws movies was filmed in the belly of a shark.”

• Diana Platts encountered an accident report in the Shropshire Star of 8 September: “In the collision, two cyclists were injured. One appears to be a 12 year-old-boy and a woman.”

• Andrew Haynes e-mails, “Since the BBC2 series Gareth Malone’s Extraordinary School for Boys shows Malone trying to improve the boys’ literacy, it’s particularly unfortunate that the TV review in the Times on Friday 10 September included the sentence, ‘So Malone ... coached the boys in how to martial an argument.’”

• Suzanne McCarthy read a news item on AOL news on 15 September. about a traffic incident in Orange County, Florida, during which a driver crashed a car and vanished into a wooded area. It was headlined “One-Legged Man Escapes on Foot”.

Facing the blank page

Jonathan Safran Foer published his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated. in 2002, winning several literary awards including the National Jewish Book Award and The Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, dealt with a 9-year-old coming to terms with his father's death in the World Trade Center during 9/11.

Here he describes his process for writing fiction.

I begin with nothing and I unfortunately usually end with nothing in terms of the day-to-day process, but you know, it’s just a blank page.  I’ve never had characters before I started writing.  I’ve never had a moral.  I’ve never had a story to tell.  I’ve never had some voice that I found and wanted to share.  Auden, the poet, said, “I look at what I write so I can see what I think.” 

And that’s been very true for me in my process.  I don’t have a thought that I then try to articulate.  It’s only through the act of writing that I try to find my own thoughts.  So, it can be quite scary because you know, it’s... there’s a kind of faith, I guess, that you have to have either in yourself or in the process that something good will come from filling blank pages. 

And it very, very often doesn’t feel that way, but every now and then you stumble upon something.  Some idea which you didn’t know you had, or a feeling that you didn’t know that you had.  And there’s nothing like that revelation and I don’t know of anywhere else in life to find it.

If it ain't working, call it something else

I'm amused by the Obama Administration's push to rename "global warming" as "global climate disruption." Oh, that's easy to remember.

The administration hasn't had much luck on its climate legislation, so it thinks a new name might do the trick. It's like magazines that put themselves through a major redesign -- you can be pretty sure the magazine is in trouble. I can recall only one redesign of a publication that actually improved the look and actually made it easier to read, and that was done by my local weekly newspaper, The Ridgefield Press.

But I digress. Already people are making fun of the new name. "Are they going to change the name of weathermen to disruption analysts?" quipped GOP strategist Pete Snyder. I prefer "weather liars" myself.

This is the administration that brought us "man-caused disaster" and "overseas contingency operation." More recently it relabeled the "Bush tax cuts" as the "Obama middle-income tax cuts."

If you're not careful in this game you're likely to generate only cynicism. Do I sound cynical?

What other examples can you think of? One obvious one is labeling "pro-abortion" as "pro-choice." Watch for these in your reading.

Cut the clutter

Richard Nordquist on his Grammar & Composition blog:

1. Reduce Long Clauses. When editing, try to reduce long clauses to shorter phrases:

Wordy: The clown who was in the center ring was riding a tricycle.

Revised: The clown in the center ring was riding a tricycle

2. Reduce Phrases. Likewise, try to reduce phrases to single words:

Wordy: The clown at the end of the line tried to sweep up the spotlight.

Revised: The last clown tried to sweep up the spotlight.

3. Avoid Empty Openers. Avoid There is, There are, and There were as sentence openers when There adds nothing to the meaning of a sentence:

Wordy: There is a prize in every box of Quacko cereal.

Revised: A prize is in every box of Quacko cereal.

Wordy: There are two security guards at the gate.

Revised: Two security guards stand at the gate.

4. Don't Overwork Modifiers. Do not overwork very, really, totally, and other modifiers that add little or nothing to the meaning of a sentence.

Wordy: By the time she got home, Merdine was very tired.

Revised: By the time she got home, Merdine was exhausted

Wordy: She was also really hungry.

Revised: She was also hungry [or famished].

5. Avoid Redundancies. Replace redundant expressions (phrases that use more words than necessary to make a point) with precise words.

Wordy: At this point in time, we should edit our work.

Revised: Now we should edit our work.

Isaac Asimov: persistence

"You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist."

-- Isaac Asimov 

Asimov was an American author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers of all time, having written or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 9,000 letters and postcards. His works have been published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System.

Are you one?

wimp / noun, verb

1. [Noun] A weak, indecisive, and ineffectual person; a coward.  
2. [Verb] To act cowardly, to 'chicken' (out), to get cold feet.

Dr. Goodword: The verb whimp has been in English since at least the 15th century alongside its synonym, whimper. In fact, the latter may be a blend of whimp and simper, used dialectally in the same sense. The best guess is that today's Good Word is a variation of this word. It first began appearing in published form in the 1920s. In England it was a derogatory word for woman and in the US the meaning was similar, given the prejudices against strength and decisiveness in women, though it is more often a slur directed at men

Snowclones are the new cliches

The Economist's language blog, Johnson, makes this interesting observation:

Rare are those moments when learning the word for something brings a whole new category into your understanding of the world around you. I had one of those moments recently when I learned the word "snowclone". It is a phenomenon so pervasive and mundane that it never occurs to you to give it a name, but once you discover that there is one, you wonder how you managed without it.

If a cliché is a well-worn fixed phrase, like "he hit the big-time", a snowclone might be described as a meta-cliché: a phrase template, in which one or more of the words is a variable. The term was coined in 2004 in reference to the common journalistic trope of the form "If the Inuit have a hundred words for snow, then X have a hundred words for Y". Once you start looking and seeing, you quickly identify dozens of fixed forms, which are especially common in hurried journalistic writing and in the titles of books, songs and articles, viz.:

X is the new Y
X me no Xs
A few Xs short of a Y
Have X, will travel
What happens in X stays in X
If that's an X then I'm the Y
Man does not live by X alone
and so on.

Shortly after "snowclone" was coined, Language Log (which gave the term its semi-official stamp of approval and has a great selection of posts about it) recorded the snowclone "X is the dark matter of Y", and applied it in the phrase "Snowclones are the dark matter of journalism".

I think this is absolutely true. Snowclones are hidden from view yet exert a huge gravitational pull, tugging the words we write into pre-determined shapes. They are even more pervasive and insidious than clichés, precisely because most of us only dimly realise they exist. Clichés may be the first resort of the lazy writer, but even the moderately careful writer can use a snowclone all too easily.

The oratory of leadership

"Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' "--Winston Churchill on Germany, June 18, 1940

"I don't have a crystal ball. I think that right now the debate surrounding Afghanistan is presented as either we get up and leave immediately because there's no chance at a positive outcome, or we stay basically indefinitely and do quote unquote whatever it takes for as long as it takes."--Barack Obama on Afghanistan, June 27, 2010

(Wall Street Journal)

Is Wikipedia reliable?

I turn to Wikipedia many times during the day, particularly for background information when I'm blogging. It has a reputation for being unreliable -- students are advised not to cite it in their papers -- but I'm familiar enough with judging the quality of information from many years as a journalist and editor that I'm comfortable with it.

Here's what Wikipedia says.

As a wiki, articles are never considered complete and may be continually edited and improved. Over time, this generally results in an upward trend of quality and a growing consensus over a neutral representation of information.

Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start: they may contain false or debatable information. Indeed, many articles start their lives as displaying a single viewpoint; and, after a long process of discussion, debate, and argument, they gradually take on a neutral point of view reached through consensus. 

Others may, for a while, become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint which can take some time—months perhaps—to achieve better balanced coverage of their subject. In part, this is because editors often contribute content in which they have a particular interest and do not attempt to make each article that they edit comprehensive. However, eventually, additional editors expand and contribute to articles and strive to achieve balance and comprehensive coverage. In addition, Wikipedia operates a number of internal resolution processes that can assist when editors disagree on content and approach. Usually, editors eventually reach a consensus on ways to improve the article.

I would not rely on Wikipedia for anything critical or controversial, but I'm okay using it for, say, biographical notes on people. It's easy to judge the reliability of a piece by the information it contains and by checking the footnotes, which I do often. Obviously, what it says about health matters is useful, but I wouldn't self-diagnose from it. Or anything else on the Internet. Duh.

One thing: it doesn't reveal the author of an entry, and that's important in assessing reliability of any writing. Here are some fascinating facts about Wikipedia that illustrate Wikipedia's sourcing.

• It has 3,407,151 articles, and 21,482,217 pages in total.
• There have been 411,792,023 edits.
• There are 849,873 uploaded files.
• There are 13,019,628 registered users, including 1,754 administrators.

Those numbers come from Wikipedia's own entry about itself, which is constantly updated. And this is one of the strengths of the site. As it says:

Unlike printed encyclopedias, Wikipedia is continually created and updated, with articles on historic events appearing within minutes, rather than months or years.

Because I'm usually looking for basic facts about something, I'll go to Wikipedia first. And for most topics, I've found, Wikipedia is nearly always at the top of a Google search.


James Bridle at the website Booktwo printed off every activity at Wikipedia on its The Iraq War and turned the result into dead tree books. Here's what they look like.

Biz speak: why can't companies speak English?

Having written for many executives and companies, and having read the work of many more, I consider my main contribution to be clarity. This means throwing out cliches and cleaning up clutter in general.

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution explains my never-ending source of revenue.

People disagree in corporations, often virulently, or they would disagree if enough real debates were allowed to reach the surface.  The use of broad generalities, in rhetoric, masks such potential disagreements and helps maintain corporate order and authority.  Since it is hard to oppose fluffy generalities in any very specific way, a common strategy is to stack everyone's opinion or points into an incoherent whole.  Disagreement is then less likely to become a focal point within the corporation and warring coalitions are less likely to form.  

Groupthink it is sometimes called.

Real "straight talk" very often is not compatible with authority, as it breeds conflict.  Do political leaders give us much real straight talk?  Do CEOs in their public addresses?

When direct financial incentives can work well, such as in sales (bonuses) or in some parts of finance, there is much more straight talk.  Disagreement and candor can flourish, because the $$ keep the workers on a common track.

William H. Whyte, the journalist, coined the term groupthink in 1952, in Fortune magazine:

Groupthink being a coinage—and, admittedly, a loaded one—a working definition is in order. We are not talking about mere instinctive conformity—it is, after all, a perennial failing of mankind. What we are talking about is a rationalized conformity—an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right and good as well.

Everything happens for a reason.

This is not your father's note-taking

As a reporter I've spent my career in search of the perfect combination of pen and notebook. I'm still looking. I use a digital voice recorder today, but now I'm starting to look at these fancy new digital pens.

Wired has a review of Livescribe's Echo.

Packed with an ARM 9 processor, an infrared camera, a built-in speaker and mic, the Echo lets you write, record and then seamlessly transfer all your notes (with the help of the company's free desktop software) to your Mac or PC.

Well, of course that's impossible. Of course I'm old enough to remember hearing about some called a "CRT" (cathode ray tube), a TV-like screen on which reporters could type and letters would appear. Impossible, I said.

You're looking at something around $200 for the Echo, depending on how much memory you want -- and depending on the memory of how much you have left in the bank. However:

The real allure of the Echo remains the way the software and hardware work together to make your life easier. Yes, there's something immensely satisfying in seeing your deranged scrawlings rasterize onscreen. And for college students and journalists in particular, the Pencast option is quite simply a Godsend. Simply hit the record icon on the included paper and start taking notes as you usually would. Once you've finished the lecture/meeting/interview, you can not only replay the entire recording, but also instantly move from one section to another by simply tapping on a specific note. The pen will automatically play back the audio from that precise moment. This has the obvious benefit of helping you navigate long, meandering lectures, but it also frees you up to write random or tangential thoughts without the fear of missing important information. 

I feel like a new toy coming on.

Also posted at My Skunkworks

Glimpses: Richard Wilbur on inspiration

Richard Wilbur in his study

Poet Richard Wilbur's auspicious 1947 debut, The Beautiful Changes, earned the admiration of two of the most enduring American poets of the era, Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens.  

Since then, Wilbur has received nearly every award and honor available to an American poet, including two Pulitzers, two Bollingen Prizes, a National Book Award, and the office of the U.S. Poet Laureate. 

In an interview with Littorial, he talks about his muse.

"It is good to have something honorable to toil at when you've not been visited by an inspiration. As embarrassing as that word is– "inspiration"– I do think it corresponds to my experience. A poem comes looking for me rather than I hunting after it.


"It just happens when I'm walking about. I just go about my business. Of course some of the time I'm reading other people, and the impulse can come of reading a good poem of Robert Frost's and thinking "I wish I could do something like that." Every poet, I think, has some other poets in his experience who are, as John Holmes used to call it, their "starters." Holmes said when he read Robert Graves it made him want to write his own poems. I think I feel that way for example about Elizabeth Bishop. Reading her makes me want to have the great pleasure of writing a poem.

"I know that in some of my poems I'm a continuator of Robert Frost, and I hope that I belong somewhere in the same ballpark. I think that poets who are worth a damn are in communion, as it were, with a great part of the poetry that's been written in our language and in others."

I would've if I could've

Reader Elaine, The Grammar Lady, notes in a comment:

Avoid the use of "would have" in "if clauses" expressing the earlier of two past actions. Use the past perfect.

Wrong: If he would have worked harder, he would have made the honor roll.

Right: If he had worked harder, he would have made the honor roll.

Wrong: If I would have thought of it, I'd have called you.

Right: I'd never dream of calling you, you shmuck. (Sorry, editor's license.)

--Warriner's Grammar: The Complete Course

Samuel Johnson: big words

"Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters."

-- Samuel Johnson

I was not aware of this

unawares /  ên-ê-werz /  adverb

1. Without thinking, without being aware, inadvertently, unconsciously.  
2. By surprise, suddenly and without warning. We are generally caught unawares by unusual things.

Dr. Goodword: This word is an oddity: the adverb for unaware is formed by adding the ubiquitous suffix -s: unawares. This is so unusual, most dictionaries are now disposed to accept mundane unawarely as an option.

History: Unawares is a lexical palimpsest. If we remove the final -s, we are left with unaware, the negative of aware, which means "conscious, vigilant". Aware itself is an 'adjective-adverb' that occurs only in the predicate: "The lady was aware of . . ." but not "the aware lady". Most such words carry the prefix a-, e.g. afloat, asleep, aloft, as does aware. Remove that prefix and we come to a noun ware "alert, on guard" that hasn't been used for 500 years, even though its adjective, wary, is still around. We also find it in beware, which was originally two words: be ware, in the sense of "be wary".

You want to be right, right?

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion

draws all things else to support and agree with it.”
-- Francis Bacon

You want to be right about how you see the world, so you seek out information which confirms your beliefs and avoid contradictory evidence and opinions, journalist David McRaney writes. This is called "confirmation bias."

If you are thinking about buying a new car, you suddenly see people driving them all over the roads. If you just ended a long-time relationship, every song you hear seems to be written about love. If you are having a baby, you start to see them everywhere.
Confirmation bias is seeing the world through a filter, thinking selectively.

McRaney points out how we willing use confirmation bias, particularly in the way we look at the news.

Punditry is a whole industry built on confirmation bias. Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, Glenn Beck and Arianna Huffington, Rachel Maddow and Ann Coulter – these people provide fuel for beliefs, they pre-filter the world to match existing world-views. If their filter is like your filter, you love them. If it isn’t, you hate them. Whether or not pundits are telling the truth, or vetting their opinions, or thoroughly researching their topics is all beside the point. You watch them not for information, but for confirmation.

I know this is true, because I deliberately seek out The Onion to confirm my biases about how the world works. McRaney concludes:

Over time, by never seeking the antithetical, through accumulating subscriptions to magazines, stacks of books and hours of television, you can become so confident in your world-view no one could dissuade you. Remember, there’s always someone out there willing to sell eyeballs to advertisers by offering a guaranteed audience of people looking for validation. Ask yourself if you are in that audience. In science, you move closer to the truth by seeking evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the same method should inform your opinions as well.

“Thanks to Google, we can instantly seek out support for the most bizarre idea imaginable. 

If our initial search fails to turn up the results we want, we don’t give it a second thought, 

rather we just try out a different query and search again.”
- Justin Owings

Who will cover the news?

Clay Shirky has written extensively about the Internet since 1996. In addition to his consulting work, he is an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program. His thoughts on newspapers in the age of the Internet:

"Print media does much of society’s heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case. This coverage creates benefits even for people who aren’t newspaper readers, because the work of print journalists is used by everyone from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts to bloggers. The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?

"I don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen."

(Thanks, Paul)