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What Color is Your Language?
After writing my “Ode to the Thesaurus,” I started to think about how I could write a multitude of such Odes and have a great time. The problem is that I’d probably lose my readership. This left me at a bit of a loss for blog topics. Recently, I bought a second pack of colored…
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Provocative Words
Welcome to my “Ode to the Thesaurus.” One of my favorite Facebook pages is The Writer’s Circle. I always seem to glom onto their lists of Other Words For <fill in the blank>. I’ve several of them clipped into my Blog Ideas notebook in Evernote. One I’ve been looking at a lot lately is for…
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Going Too Far with Gender Neutrality
When being specific could be wrong, when referring to a person of unknown gender, it is better to be general than specific. And, job positions ought to be neutral. Male or female, someone is a server or a flight attendant. However, I believe people are taking gender neutrality too far. The idea for this blog…
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What’s Your Value Proposition? – Guest Blog
Value (noun): Estimated or assigned worth; valuation Proposition (noun): a thing, matter, or person considered as something to be dealt with or encountered I am frequently the gate keeper between my employer and outside sales people. As such, I hear many sales pitches about how fantastic this widget is versus another widget. One term that…
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Words that Bug Me: Irony
I have previously ranted – and will rant again, I am sure – about words because I feel they are misused or I do not care for their meaning. “Irony,” however, does not fit into either of their categories. Instead, “irony” bugs me because I don’t get it. Occasionally, I know an example of it,…
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What is a Paradigm Shift?
Before we can have a shift, we need to know what a paradigm is. Once again, I went to my friend dictionary.com for the official definition. There were several, I’m listing the relevant one here: A framework containing the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific…
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Worthless Writing Words
In my last blog, I mentioned that people keep sending me things about words. One that I really enjoy is 10 Words to Cut From Your Writing from entrepreneur.com. This blog on copy writing tips really appealed to the editor in me – maybe because people frequently come to me to reduce their word count.…
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Don’t Should on Me
Since declaring myself a writer, people keep sending me blogs about words – mostly about words not to use, in either writing or speech. Actually, there is a good deal of overlap, but that’s not my point. Today. What is my point? Well, I have more than one, but I think I’ll stick to what…
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Is “Twerk” Really a Word?
Admission number 1: I’m not sure I would recognize a twerk if it were performed on my coffee table while I’m watching Criminal Minds. Admission number 2: I fell for the hype that the Oxford English Dictionary added “twerk” to its hallowed pages. The truth is that the Oxford Dictionaries Online, a source for the…
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Why Not Adnoun?
So, I’ve been wondering why a word that describes a verb is an adverb, but a word that describes a noun is an adjective – instead of an adnoun. Finally, I went to the all-knowing Google and came up with some interesting things. There Is an Adnoun! I was surprised to find that Google did…