I’m coming a week late to this, but apparently in the U.S., 24 September was National Punctuation Day.

The website for the cause is a fun browse.

There are photos of annoying punctuation errors, information on resources (print and online) for improving your punctuation usage, tongue-in-cheek suggestions for how to celebrate National Punctuation Day, and products celebrating proper punctuation.

My two favourite T-shirts are “Jesus and the Twelve Apostrophes” and “Is There a Hyphen in Anal-Retentive?”

Via I Buy Books.

Posted by Amy as Punctuation, Special Days/Weeks at 7:54 AM EDT

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Yesterday the third Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan was announced.

Robert Currie of Moose Jaw will hold the position from 01 January 2007 to 31 December 2008.

You can read the official announcement here.

Posted by Amy as News, Poetry at 2:35 AM EDT

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Here’s something for Jane Austen fans: Mastermind Quiz: Specialist Subject Jane Austen

This is one of the more advanced quizzes I’ve seen. It asks questions such as “What was the maiden name of Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and Mrs. Price?”

It also asks questions about her juvenalia, which you don’t normally see. It’s also where I was reduced to guessing, sometimes incorrectly!

Via Truth Universally Acknowledged.

Posted by Amy as Authors at 1:18 AM EDT

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The next time you’re feeling stuck in your writing, check out Dan Wiencek’s quirky list of Thirteen Writing Prompts.

There’s a little something for everyone here. If you’re inclined toward speculative fiction, try this:

Choose your favorite historical figure and imagine if he/she had been led to greatness by the promptings of an invisible imp living behind his or her right ear. Write a story from the point of view of this creature. Where did it come from? What are its goals? Use research to make your story as accurate as possible.

If you prefer something more contemporary, see what you can do with this:

A husband and wife are meeting in a restaurant to finalize the terms of their impending divorce. Write the scene from the point of view of a busboy snorting cocaine in the restroom.

Or for something completely different:

Imagine if your favorite character from 19th-century fiction had been born without thumbs. Then write a short story about them winning the lottery.

Who knows? Maybe a blockbuster novel will come out of one of these.

Via manageable imaginations.

Posted by Amy as Humour, Writing at 4:09 AM EDT

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a lovely online exhibition of a medieval prayer book: The Hours of Jeanne D’Evreux.

The site explains the background for the book:

This tiny illuminated manuscript was made between 1324 and 1328 for Jeanne d’Evreux, queen of France, who died in 1371.

Besides showing the pages of this gorgeous book, the exhibition gives information about Jeanne d’Evreux, illuminated manuscripts, and much more.

Definitely check this site out; click on the original photo of the prayer book to enter.

Via Weblog V2.

Posted by Amy as Medieval and Old English at 1:19 AM EDT

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I’ve recently discovered the Klingon Language Institute. There’s more information about the Klingon language
here than I knew existed.

For example, I learned that the Klingon language does not just comprise a few phrases tossed around on screen:

Klingon was invented by Marc Okrand, for use in some of the Star Trek movies. He invented not just a few words to make the Klingons sound alien, but a complete language, with its own vocabulary, grammar, and usage.

The site offers resources for learning Klingon as well as free E-cards in Klingon with messages ranging from “Happy Birthday” to “When Do We Attack?”

After visiting their website, I see that they’ve translated Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing into Klingon.

Apparently a documentary has been made about Klingon and the Klingon Language Institute: Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water.

Via Boing Boing.

Posted by Amy as Language, Speculative Fiction, Unusual at 2:14 AM EDT

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I see that this is the beginning of Banned Books Week in the U.S.

If you’re looking for an innovative way to show your support for this cause, The Millions (A Blog About Books) points us in the direction of some Jewellry Featuring Banned Books.

Also, don’t forget to check out Banned Books Online.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 11:35 AM EDT

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All About Jazz is an interesting website devoted to jazz; one of its sections helpfully tells us the meaning for many jazz slang words.

I like jazz very much, but I’m not current with the slang. Some of these words seem a little dated to me (such as “bag”—as in “That just isn’t my bag”).

On the other hand, no matter how dated this might or might not be, there are some entertaining items:

• “Bose Bouncing — To play notes so low as to bounce a Bose speaker from its foundation.”
• “Balloon lungs — A brass man with plenty of wind.”
• “Finger Zinger — Someone who plays very fast.”

I was also interested to learn that the term “down by law” means “to have paid dues; that is, to have earned respect for your talent or ability to ‘get down’.”

I can’t remember the Jim Jarmusch film of the same name well enough to know if the term had a significance in the film.

Via Incoming Signals.

Posted by Amy as Words at 7:55 AM EDT

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Did you know that “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a legitimate sentence with a clear meaning?

Stop snickering, you in the back.

If you’d like proof, you can check out the Wikipedia entry for the explanation.

There are also examples of other such sentences in English and other languages.

Via robot wisdom weblog.

Posted by Amy as Language, Unusual at 1:07 AM EDT

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If you’re up for another round of bad writing, check out The Worst Analogies Ever Written In High School Essays.

You can find such gems as the following there:

• “Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center.”
• “Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid55328.com\aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake.”
• “He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.”

Not for the faint of heart.

Via Look At This . . .

Posted by Amy as Humour, Writing at 1:57 AM EDT

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Writing that was created 3,000 years ago has been found in Mexico, and it appears to be an unknown system of writing (although although scientists believe it was used by the Olmecs).

Its finders believe that it is the oldest script in the Western Hemisphere.

The work has not yet been deciphered, but “Several paired sequences of signs, scholars said, have even prompted speculation that the text contained poetic couplets.”

Via Rebecca’s Pocket.

Posted by Amy as Writing Systems at 1:33 AM EDT

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David J. Montgomery at Crime Fiction Dossier has an interesting debate going; he’s trying to compile a list of the 10 Greatest Detective Novels.

Hmm. That’s a challenging one, and I have to confess I had a hard time coming up with ten; I only reached five. If I’d been asked to name my ten favourite, that would have been different, but the greatest?

I’ve defined greatest as “influential” or “groundbreaking” and, rightly or wrongly, mine are all classics from the Golden Age.

Here’s my short list (in no particular order):

• Gaudy Night (Dorothy L. Sayers)
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Agatha Christie)
• A Study In Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle)
• The Big Sleep (Raymond Chandler)
• The Maltese Falcon (Dashiel Hammett)

I’d like to have included Robert Parker, but much as I love his stuff, he’s really Chandler in modern dress.

Via Petrona and Books, Inq.

Posted by Amy as Mysteries, Readers & Reading at 1:47 AM EDT

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If you like thinking about the origins and histories of words, you might like to take this quiz: Etymologic: The Toughest Word Game On The Web

The quiz gives you the chance to see if you can determine the etymologies of the 10 words it gives you (along with multiple choice answers).

I got 8 out of 10 (I tripped up on “hobo” and “bistro”).

Posted by Amy as Words at 1:45 AM EDT

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A long time ago I saw this meme over at Brandywine Books; I finally got around to doing it.

We’re intended to provide answers to the following questions:

• a book that made you cry: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• a book that scared you: the Book of Revelations (when I was about eight)
• a book that made you laugh: Kinky Friedman’s Meanwhile, Back At the Ranch
• a book that disgusted you: I can’t think of any
• a book you loved in elementary school: Little Women
• a book you loved in high school: Kim
• a book you loved in college: Mansfield Park
• a book that challenged your identity or your faith: hmm . . . can’t think of any
• a series that you love: Harry Potter
• your favorite horror book: I hate horror
• your favorite science-fiction book: Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and The Stars
• your favorite fantasy book: The Lord of the Rings
• your favorite mystery book: anything by James Lee Burke or P.D. James
• your favorite biography: Park Honan’s Jane Austen: Her Life
• your favorite coming-of-age book: David Copperfield
• your favorite book not on this list: Pride and Prejudice

Via Brandywine Books.

Posted by Amy as Memes at 7:38 AM EDT

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An older article (January 2005) in the LA Weekly highlights some books with lists.

You can read here about a book that itemises the inventions of prisoners, a guide to overlooked music, and a book with ideas for people who want to be idle. There are also books of book lists (such as Alberto Manguel’s A Reading Diary).

I am especially intrigued by Lost in the Grooves: Scram’s Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed. The following comment alone is enough to make me want to explore it:

Reviews of albums are accompanied by such lists as “5 Hypothetical Sesame Street Covers,” “6 Greatest Midget Rock & Roll Records,” “Songs for Word Geeks,” “Deeply Wrong Big-Eye Pop-Psych” and “10 Non-Goth Albums Goths Listen To.”

This is one book I’m going to track down very shortly.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 8:49 AM EDT

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Jim Theis has a wonderful parody of awful writing in his SF spoof The Eye Of Argon.

If you’d like a sample, consider this masterful paragraph:

Consciousness returned to Grignr in stygmatic pools as his mind gradually cleared of the cobwebs cluttering its inner recesses, yet the stygian cloud of charcoal ebony remained. An incompatible shield of blackness, enhanced by the bleak abscense of sound.

Or, if you can stand more, take a look at this one:

“Up to the altar and be done with it wench;” ordered a fidgeting shaman as he gave the female a grim stare accompanied by the wrinkling of his lips to a mirthful grin of delight.

This site also features the “legendary lost ending” of this great work. It starts out as follows:

With a sloshing plop the thing fell to the ground, evaporating in a thick scarlet cloud until it reatained its original size.

Words fail me.

Posted by Amy as Humour, Writing at 4:36 AM EDT

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Here’s a nice site: A Celebration of Women Writers.

This site, run by Mary Mark Ockerbloom, aims “to promote awareness of the breadth and variety of women’s writing.”

There are writers listed that go as far back as 3000 B.C.E. and the countries listed are world wide (Burkina Faso, Western Samoa, and Martinique are just a few of the many countries represented).

You can search for writers by name, date, country, and ethnicity information.

Some of the links to these authors simply go to websites that provide information about them. However, there are also many links to electronic texts by the authors.

The site explains its effort in this regard:

The goal of the Celebration of Women Writers is to provide a comprehensive list to access works by and about women writers on the net. The majority of works listed in the Celebration are stored elsewhere. However, a number of previously published works are being put online at the Celebration site.

The list of these online works can be found here.

This list is extensive; here are a few titles:

• The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective (Catherine Louisa Pirkis)
• The Beau Defeated, Or, The Lucky Younger Brother (Mary Pix)
• Rural Hours (Susan Fenimore Cooper)
• Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (Jane Welsh Carlyle)

This site is well worth several visits.

Posted by Amy as Authors, History at 2:03 AM EDT

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Here’s a great site for word lovers and fans of the obscure: Luciferous Logolepsy.

This site lists the meanings for over 9,000 obscure words. They’re arranged alphabetically, and you can browse by letter.

I’ve enjoyed learning such words as tattogey (“someone who cheats by using loaded dice”).

In case you’re wondering (as I did) what on earth the name of the site meant, here’s the explanation given:

The name of this project is also its description: Luciferous [adj. - illuminating, literally and figuratively] Logolepsy [n. - an obsession with words], in other words: ‘an illuminating obsession with words’.

This is certainly a fun site to browse.

Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

Posted by Amy as Words at 2:05 AM EDT

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Every now and again, someone writes something that makes me want to stand up and go “Hear, hear”—and then take that writing and rush around getting people to read it.

I won’t force this on random people in the street, but I so strongly agree with what Michael Allen, aka the Grumpy Old Bookman, has to say about literary snobbishness, that I want to highlight it here:

It is a fundamental error, with moral implications, to think of fiction as a hierarchy, a sort of tower block, if you will, with literary fiction at the top and the ‘lower’ types of fiction tucked away in the basement. That is a concept which has no intellectual validity.

The correct way to think of the various genres of fiction is as a street of many bookshops; and in this street there are no prime sites. Each shop pays the same business taxes as any other: all shops are equal. And the smart customer places her business in different shops at different times; to the advantage of everyone, most importantly herself.

Here’s the link to read that post in its entirety.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 2:20 AM EDT

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Agatha Christie has always been very popular (some estimates say she is the best-selling fiction writer ever), and she has been honoured in numerous ways.

This week (10—16 September) is another honour: Agatha Christie Week.

The official festivities appear to be centred in the U.K., but everyone can read one of her numerous books, watch the movies, or take part in the chat at The Official Agatha Christie Web Site.

It’s interesting to know that she loathed her fictional creation Poirot but was fond of Miss Marple. I don’t mind Miss Marple, but I’ve always preferred Poirot.

Posted by Amy as Mysteries, Special Days/Weeks at 2:36 AM EDT

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I didn’t know that Dr. Seuss wrote anything other than children’s books, but I see I was wrong.

On the website Dr. Seuss Went To War I’ve discovered a dizzying amount of information about Dr. Seuss’s editorial cartoons.

You can look up cartoons under any one of a bewildering number of categories, including the following:

• prohibition
• racism
• complacency
• isolationism
• war profiteers

This site is definitely an interesting browse.

Via Weblog V2.

Posted by Amy as Comics at 6:36 PM EDT

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The British Library has an intriguing exhibition of recordings of English Accents and Dialects.

You can listen to the curator’s choices or you can browse the whole collection.

The curator’s choices feature an interesting array of samples, and they’re interesting not just for listening to the sound of the language, but also for the content of the conversation.

Here are some of the choices:

• curiosities in Cheadle, Staffs.
• baking bread in Welwick, Yorkshire
• farming in Weare Gifford, Devon

Via Plep

Posted by Amy as Language at 6:36 AM EDT

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I’m not sure the answer is accurate for this little quiz (are they ever?) but that’s o.k.; it was still fun to do!

You Should Be a Joke Writer

You’re totally hilarious, and you can find the humor in any situation. Whether you’re spouting off zingers, comebacks, or jokes about life… You usually can keep a crowd laughing, and you have plenty of material. You have the makings of a great comedian - or comedic writer.

Via BookLust.

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff at 8:11 AM EDT

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One of the attributes of language that isn’t highlighted very often is rhythm. So it’s great to find that the Word Nerds put together a Podcast on Rhythm and Meaning.

Here are some of the highlights:

• “Dave Shepherd and Howard Shepherd talk about rhythm and the significance of language cadence. “
• “Rhythm as a mnemonic device.”
• “Howard Shepherd gangsta-raps the beginning of Beowulf!”

The latter item alone is terrific. It’s great to hear “Hwaet!” roll trippingly off someone’s tongue.

Even better, I’ve discovered that The Word Nerds is a weekly podcast.

Via The Bitter Scroll.

Posted by Amy as Language at 2:26 AM EDT

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Chrissie Maher has been fighting the good fight for English that is free of gobbledegook since 1979. The Plain English Campaign is the organisation that was founded as a result of her work.

According to the Plain English website,

Plain English Campaign is an independent pressure group fighting for public information to be written in plain English. We have more than 10,000 registered supporters in 80 countries.

The Plain English Campaign awards prizes every year for writing in the following categories:

• general public
• the media
• internal government documents
• gobbledygook
• foot in mouth (“baffling quote by a public figure”)
• web page

The deadline for nominations for this year’s Plain English Awards is 30 September 2006; the winners will be announced on 12 December 2006.

Posted by Amy as Language, Writing at 2:49 AM EDT

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Here’s an unusual read: the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible.

It has been put together by Steve Wells; he explains the scope of his work as follows:

It includes the entire text of the King James Version of the Bible, but without the pro-Bible propaganda. Instead, passages are highlighted that are an embarrassment to the Bible-believer, and the parts of the Bible that are never read in any Church, Bible study group, or Sunday School class are emphasized. For it is these passages that test the claims of the Bible-believer. The contradictions and false prophecies show that the Bible is not inerrant; the cruelties, injustices, and insults to women, that it is neither good nor just.

The annotations highlight such points as injustice, cruelty, contradictions, and many more.

Wells also highlights what he calls the “good stuff” in the Bible.

Posted by Amy as Religion & Spirituality at 2:18 AM EDT

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