Did you know that March 4 is apparently National Grammar Day? Neither did I which is why this post is coming on March 9.
In honour of this obscure but auspicious occasion, here's a list of the Top Ten Grammar Myths.
10. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence. 9. You shouldn't start a sentence with the word however.
8. Irregardlessis not a word. 7. There is only one way to write the possessive form of a word that ends in s
6. Passive voice is always wrong.
5. I.e.and e.g.mean the same thing.
4. You use abefore words that start with consonants and anbefore words that start with vowels.
3. It's incorrect to answer the question “How are you?” with the statement “I'm good.”
2. You shouldn't split infinitives.
1. You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition.
It threw me a bit to be typing a random list of common English words rather than the more usual sentences and paragraphs but I did okay on this site's typing test – one of many available online.
When I've done other typing tests, both online and in the real world, I get anywhere from 60-90wpm depending on the day, my mood, etc. etc.
Here's what I got with my first try on this site…
[Edit: I think “real” typing tests have a formula – every mistake counts against your final total and every five keystrokes is a “word”. So if you have 82 words per minute but 4 mistakes, you are 78 wpm – which is what I would've got if I used this methodology. And I'm not sure if they're using the “5 keys = 1 word” rule either. But anyhow, it's good to know that you can just bang away, get 150 mistakes but be told that you type 150 wpm! And make sure you put that on your resume! ]
I've been reading a lot about the race for the Democratic nomination in the US between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
This article from the New York Times caught my eye for doing a particularly good job of capturing the essence of the differences between their campaigns – Clinton, a baby boomer, is part of the establishment who sees politics as a fight between “us vs. them”. Obama, technically also a boomer but younger, is much more open, accessible, collaborative, and inclusive in how he operates his campaign and how he comes across generally.
And where have you heard those words before? Oh yeah, in every buzzword-laden article written about Web 2.0 in the last few years.
For people raised on Jane Jacobs, who
emphasized how a spontaneous dynamic order could emerge from thousands
of individual decisions, [Obama's political message] is a persuasive way of seeing the world.
For young people who have grown up on Facebook, YouTube, open-source
software and an array of decentralized networks, this is a compelling
theory of how change happens.
[Edit: Rolling Stone has a cover story on Barack Obama in their latest issue which takes an inside look at his campaign – much of which evokes the decentralized, “starfish” approach of the most successful web 2.0 companies.]
(via Ceci N'est Pas Un Blog – Emily wasn't sure how she felt about getting that same “high school” rating for her blog. I'm just happy I didn't get “remedial junior high” )
Well, that title's probably a bit of an exaggeration but it got your attention, no?
I have an add-on in my Firefox called “Tab Mix Plus” which is great – it allows you almost total control of how your tabs operate with the bonus feature of keeping track of the sites you have in open tabs when your browser closes or crashes. (I know Firefox has something like this built-in now but I still prefer the Tab Mix Plus version.)
Because of this feature, I've gotten in the habit of keeping anywhere from 10-20 tabs open at any one time rather than using bookmarks or delicious or some other option to keep track of them.
Unfortunately, I recently had a Firefox crash which didn't allow a session restore for some reason. I went into the hard drive looking for a back-up file but couldn't find anything. I tried the online backup program I subscribe to (which has saved my bacon in the past when I've needed to restore files) but it didn't have the proper file either.
I was just starting to accept that I'd lost all my tabs – again, nothing major but things like stories I come across that I mean to read at a later date, potential sites to use as blog fodder, etc. I was trying to be zen about losing all of these links but the feeling lingered that I'd lost something really good that I'd regret.
Then, for some reason, I thought of one other avenue I could try. When I set-up my Gmail account, without even thinking, I gave Google permission to keep a record of my searches. I logged in and, for the first time ever, realised that I'd also agreed to allow Google to keep a record of which sites I visit and when (plus helpfully keeping track of which sites I've visited the most.)
We can have the debate about privacy in the digital age another time (I have a feeling I'd lose!) but the reality is that, by giving Google access to this information, I was able to page through my last month's worth of surfing and pick out the sites I'd had open in my browser when it crashed because they were the ones that showed up as having been visited multiple times (due to the fact that they get reloaded every time I open and close Firefox which I occasionally do on purpose as well! )
So, long story short (too late), I was able to rediscover pretty much every site that I'd had bookmarked when the crash happened. And I realised that most of them were things I'd probably not miss if I hadn't gotten them back. But yeah, it was nice to have my little brain feel settled anyhow.
For the tin-foil hat types, Google also has another feature where they not only track your searches AND sites visited but they can helpfully compile them to show your most frequent searches, sites visited and links clicked on in the past week, month, year and all-time. Yikes!
(Okay, I'll start the debate by saying that I don't mind putting out my personal information because I'm not worried about more serious consequences than having ads targeted to me – something that I actually prefer to be honest. Am I way off-base here? Are the Google overlords plotting my demise? Could the government knock on my door for my frequent clicks to “The Poo Bomb“???)
Ross Dawson, a business consultant who tracks different customs, devices, and institutions on what he calls an Extinction Timeline,
predicts that libraries will disappear in 2019. He's probably right as
far as the function of the library as a civic monument, or as a public
repository for books, is concerned. On the other hand, in its mutating
role as urban hangout, meeting place, and arbiter of information, the
public library seems far from spent. This has less to do with the
digital world—or the digital word—than with the age-old need for human
contact.
You know you've been blogging for a long time when you can do “flashback” posts.
Here's one from last year about the record-setting take ($5 million plus) of the annual TeleMiracle telethon that year. This year looks like it won't hit that height (they're currently just shy of $3 million so there'd have to be a lot of big last minute bequests to get anywhere close to last year's total with only an hour to go.)
Still, no matter what, the telethon always makes me feel proud of my province and of humanity in general.
Author Nicholson Baker takes a look at Wikipedia and includes a critique of the number of articles being deleted for less-than-solid reasons. [Edit to add a link to the article which is a pretty important detail to leave out!]
In the fall of 2006, groups of editors went around getting rid of
articles on webcomic artists—some of the most original and articulate
people on the Net. They would tag an article as nonnotable and then
crowd in to vote it down. One openly called it the “web-comic articles
purge of 2006.” … Rob Balder, author of a webcomic called PartiallyClips,
likened the organized deleters to book burners, and he said: “Your
words are polite, yeah, but your actions are obscene. Every word in
every valid article you've destroyed should be converted to profanity
and screamed in your face.”
]
