Writing = rewriting

"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter."  ~James Michener

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.  By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say." ~Mark Twain

"The wastebasket is a writer's best friend."  ~Isaac Bashevis Singer 

"Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out."  ~Samuel Johnson
 

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector.  This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it."  ~Ernest Hemingway
 

"Write your first draft with your heart.  Re-write with your head."  ~From the movie Finding Forrester
 

"Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially."  ~A. Bronson Alcott


"Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer.  But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."  ~Colette, Casual Chance
 

"Proofread carefully to see if you any words out."  ~Author Unknown

 

Wanna get ahead? Learn Mandarin

I had no idea that an estimated 7,000 languages are being spoken around the world. That number is expected to shrink rapidly in the coming decades.

Here are some factoids:
    •    6% of the world's languages are spoken by 94% of the world's population
    •    The remaining 94% of languages are spoken by only 6% of the population
    •    The largest single language by population is Mandarin (845 million speakers) followed by Spanish (329 million speakers) and English (328 million speakers).
    •    133 languages are spoken by fewer than 10 people

According to Ethnologue, a U.S. organization owned by Christian group SIL International that compiles a global database of languages, 473 languages are currently classified as endangered. Among the ranks are the two known speakers of Lipan Apache alive in the U.S., four speakers of Totoro in Colombia and the single Bikya speaker in Cameroon.

Lude, dude

illude /  i-lud / adjective

To deceive with false hope, to trick with a false impression.

Dr. Goodword notes:

Most of us use illusion as though it exists in a vacuum. This word, however, is the noun from the very legitimate verb illude. Aside from the noun, this verb sports an adjective, illusive "ghostly, deceptive in appearance, appearing to exist but vanishing as you approach". Several cousins of illude share very similar meanings. Elude is a homophone, pronounced the same as illude, but implying escape from capture, as to elude police arrest. Delude sounds different but is a near synonym, with a meaning very similar to that of illude. The noun from this word, of course, is illusion, as in that trick on the eyes, the optical illusion.

Hopes, dreams, and goals can be both illusive and elusive, so it is important that we keep these two words separate when we write: "Thom Dunderhead was illuded into thinking he could become a professional football player by his success in college sports." Remember that illude refers to deception, like an optical illusion: "The glitz and glamour of Las Vegas illuded Phyllis Limmer into thinking she would be happy as a showgirl."

History: Illude was taken from Latin illudere "to mock or ridicule". This verb is made up of the prefix in- "in, at" + ludere "to play". The N in the prefix in- is a consonantal chameleon, which is to say it assimilates with the initial consonant of any word it attaches to. So, it becomes il- before L as in illuminate, ir- before R as in irradiate, and im- before sounds made by the lips, as we see in import and imbue—all borrowed from Latin or its daughter language, French. The same root appears in ludicrous "utterly ridiculous", the English adaptation of Latin ludicrus "sportive, playful".

Great rules of writing

From William Safire:

Do not put statements in the negative form.

And don't start sentences with a conjunction.

If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.

De-accession euphemisms.

If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

Are you saying what you really mean?

Here are some common phrases that don't mean what we think they mean.

1. I could care less
What you think it means: "I couldn't care less."
What it actually means: You actually do care.

2. It begs the question
Would you think it means: To ask or raise a question
What it actually means: To use an argument that assumes as proved the very thing one is trying to prove.

3. Let's table this
What you think it means: To discuss something later
What it actually means: This is tricky, because in the United States, it means what you think it does. But it means the exact opposite -- "let's discuss this right now" -- in most of the rest of the English-speaking world. Best not to be used in any international setting.

4. I did a 360
What you think it means: Completely changing your opinion.
What it actually means: Your opinion changed, but then changed back to your original opinion.

5. PIN number
What you think it means: A non-repetitive way to refer to your personal identification number
What it actually means: That you're being redundant. Especially when you use your PIN number at the ATM machine.

6. Lion's share
What you think it means: The greatest of multiple shares
What it actually means: You're not technically incorrect, because, over time this has become one of the phrase's definitions. But the phrase originally comes from an Aesop's Fable in which the lion took all -- not the largest -- of the shares. Because that's what lions tend to do.

7. The exception that proves the rule
What you think it means: Any counterexample to a rule proves the rule. For example, if you said you only date blondes, but somebody pointed out the time you dated a brunette, you might say that it is "the exception that proves the rule." This popular usage makes no sense at all.
What it actually means: The idiom actually does make sense -- but you have to think about it along the lines of the exception proves that a rule exists. For example," No parking on Saturdays" would mean that you can park in the spot any other day of the week.

8. I am nauseous.
What you think it means: I have a sick feeling in my stomach.
What it actually means: It depends. Prior to World War II, you'd have been clearly saying, "I make other people sick," and the correct term would have been "I am nauseated." However, over time, the usage has shifted to the point that many language experts have deemed "I am nauseous" as an acceptable explanation of your own queasiness. Just be careful using that term around the old folks' home.


(Thanks, Lainey)

What's in a name?

I often marvel at the names of companies we routinely do business with today -- Amazon, Yahoo!, Google, Monster. Here are more:

Kodak - Kodak is the completely original creation of George Eastman, the founder and inventor behind the company. He believed that the letter K seemed strong, and liked that no one would mispronounce the name.
Lycos - This one comes from the word Lycosidae, the spider family that contains wolf spiders.
Coca-Cola - The world-famous beverage is named for the coca leaves and kola nuts that are used for flavoring. It's actually a lot more appetizing than Pepsi, which was named for the digestive enzyme pepsin.
QVC - Quality, Value, and Convenience.
Starbucks - Starbucks was named for the character Starbuck in Moby Dick. See, even the name is pretentious and overrated.
Mozilla - This popular web browser was originally designed to replace a program called Mosaic. Mozilla is a combination of Mosaic and Godzilla.
Taco Bell - Taco Bell was named for its founder Glen Bell. Because you know it's good Mexican food when it comes from a guy named Glen.

People actually get paid to help companies come up with names. One such professional namer is Mark Gunnion. He describes how he does it:

I retreat to my work lair/library, put on some music – preferably without English lyrics! – and pull out a blank piece ofpaper.  Some of my peers use computers every step of the way, but I like to look at the brief, make some new notes, and then just start making a list on a piece of light-green graph paper, with a purple Flair pen.

I look at every line of the brief, review the criteria and objectives for the name, and then I start writing. I write down whatever ideas come bubbling up from the materials the client has provided.  I make chains of ideas – sounds, metaphors, and words -  just free-form connections between different concepts derived from the client’s briefing and any conversations we’ve had. Before long, the names are just tumbling out of me. I have hundreds of reference books on language (and everything else) that I refer to, books on slang and etymology, Shakespeare, comic books, technical manuals, any kind of word-source where the name ideas might be hiding.  When I’m doing the creative part, I don’t interrupt it with the availability checking, I just let the ideas pour out on to the page, where they can connect, and re-combine, and re-arrange themselves in different configurations. At the end of eight hours, there’s usually a hundred or more names scrawled down, created just for that client, ready to organize and check out.

We accept these creations after awhile, even the odd ones. "Names," Salman Rushdie has written, "once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit."

Three ways to persuade people

Aristotle identified three modes of persuasion in his Rhetoric, which I consider as relevant today as in his time for anyone seeking to move someone else to his point of view. Do you take these three forms of persuasion into account? Here's what he wrote:

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. 

Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided. This kind of persuasion, like the others, should be achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of his character before he begins to speak. 

It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses. 

Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile. It is towards producing these effects, as we maintain, that present-day writers on rhetoric direct the whole of their efforts. This subject shall be treated in detail when we come to speak of the emotions. 

Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

Maybe I should think about this when I want the boy to take out the garbage.