When a plane crashes ...

... where should the survivors be buried?

If you are considering where the most appropriate burial place should be, you are not alone.

Scientists have found that around half the people asked this question, answer it as if they were being asked about the victims not the survivors.

What makes researchers particularly interested in people’s failure to notice words that actually don’t make sense, so called semantic illusions, is that these illusions challenge traditional models of language processing which assume that we build understanding of a sentence by deeply analysing the meaning of each word in turn.

Instead semantic illusions provide a strong line of evidence that the way we process language is often shallow and incomplete.

When volunteers read or listened to sentences containing hard-to-detect semantic anomalies -- words that fit the general context even though they do not actually make sense -- the researchers found that when a volunteer was tricked by the semantic illusion his brain had not even noticed the anomalous word.

What to do. The researchers suggest:

We process a word more deeply if it is emphasised in some way. So, in a news story, a newsreader can stress important words that may otherwise be missed and these words can be italicised to make sure we notice them when reading. 

The way we construct sentences can also help reduce misunderstandings. It’s a good idea to put important information first, because we are more likely to miss unusual words when they are near the end of a sentence. Also, we often use an active sentence construction such as 'Bob ate the apple' because we make far more mistakes answering questions about a sentence with a passive construction -- for example 'The apple was eaten by Bob'.

We are lazy listeners. And lazy thinkers.

Stealing to write better

A friend asked the other day what he should read to learn to write better.

"Books," I said.

When I picked myself up and dusted myself off, I said, "Mark Twain."

"I don't like fiction," he said.

Oh.

Being the original thinker that I am, I Googled it and came up with some thoughts worth passing on. These are from Leo Babauta, who also writes about Zen things, which should tell you something. Here are a few.

Analyze character, plot, theme. Break down the books you read. You can either do this as you read, or afterward, when you reflect on them while doing something else (for me it’s running and doing housework and when I’m in the shower). Why did the writer make the choices she made? How did she create the characters and convey their qualities? How did she start the book and lay out the plot? How is the theme of the book conveyed throughout the book.

Pay attention to what they do with words. Beyond the big things mentioned above, the writer does little things with words, in every paragraph and sentence and phrase. A good writer pays close attention to words, the effects they create, how they mix together with other words, twists and turns of meaning. See how he does this, as it is the best instruction you can get.

Rip them off. A writing teacher once told me not to mimmic other writers — but instead to rip them off. Steal blatantly. Take things that you discover in other writers, things that work, things that you love … and use them in your own writing. Don’t worry — you can always revise later or throw it out completely. For now, rip them off. It’ll help you make these techniques your own.

Riff off them, experiment. Once you’ve ripped off a few dozen writers, start to riff. Do variations and experiments on stuff you’ve found. Give their techniques and styles your own twists and flair.

All the great writers steal. Don't worry about it. In graduate school I heard Joseph Heller give a lecture about Catch-22. He spent the whole time telling what he'd stolen from Shakespeare and the rest of them. 

“Good writers borrow, great writers steal.” -- Oscar Wilde 

“Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.” -- Aaron Sorkin 

"Good writers borrow, Great writers steal."  -- T.S. Eliot

See what I mean?

A love of quotations

"I love spending time going through my various “Quotations” books. I have Bartlett’s, of course, and many others, some from the popular culture, some from politics, some from business and so forth. I have always wished to be better-educated than I am, and I find the “quote” books to be an expeditious way of familiarizing myself with the thoughts of writers, philosophers, thinkers; often reading a provocative quote from a writer will be the springboard for a brief obsession – a flirtatious and giddy mental love affair that sends me skipping down a new neighborhood, on my way to Worship, which is “home”.

"I recall finding this from Voltaire: “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong,” and thinking, “ah…a kindred spirit!” only to find myself at odds with him about a great many things, and yet I did love romping through his fields and playing in the shady arbor of his prolific writings."

-- The Anchoress