tetra , tessaro , quadri > 4
Examples: tetrahedron, quadrilateral

thermo , calidi > hot
Examples: thermometer

Holly Jahangiri

Reminder! Sign-ups for this year’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) began October 1 (or was it October 3, when they got the new hamsters to power the servers?) at http://www.nanowrimo.org. If you’ve always said, “I should write a book,” or “I know I have a novel in me,” then don’t put it off any longer. NaNoWriMo makes November a great excuse to get it done.

heylorlass wrote:

Jessibelle,

Thanks for the newsletter. I have never thought about looking up a dictionary and studying words before. It really helped me to learn more voabulary. Thanks for the tip. I'm still new here and I have a question that has been buggin me. I have a story I'm writing at the moment. But the thing is , because this is an American website ( I'm a good old Scot you see ) the spellings are different on the spell check. Are there anyway to check it without spending hours and hours pouring over a dictionary? Should I stick with the Brittish way, or go American? This website is the best writing one I have ever found and I love it. I just don't know how to spell check it ? Thanks !

scribbler

sure, maybe as you get older it is harder to remember dictionary deffinitions, but even I find it hard to do that and I am still in high school. It is so much easier to come up with sentances or synonmes for them than the actual deffinition. Again another great news letter

ktbnkr

Reading "Thoughts of a Trash Picker in the Housten Astrodome" was very eye-opening and refreshing at the same time. While it is strange to say refreshing when talking about a natural disaster that affected millions of lives, it was nice to see a different view of people affected by the tragedy. The news has had a field day putting its slant on the reactionsl of the displased people. This has done nothing but split the country even more, making Hurricane Katrina a political pawn. The thoughts of the trash picker should be published so that more people get a chance to see and learn about the personality of the majority of the displaced people rather than the minority.

To keep my vocabulary up, I'm going to get a 'Word A Day' calender. Everytime I run into a particularly good word, I can just save the tear off page. Do you know any good 'Word a Day' ezines or webpages?

Thanks!
ShadowDawn

Jessie:

Wonderful newsletter. I think I will try the NaNoWriMo this year. And thank you for the links to improve my vocabulary.

Jessie,

I was gonna tell you how great your newsletter was, but I've been so forgetful of late. Well, then, just thank you should suffice ,

W.D.

Allwrite

I always seem to have trouble creating a realistic charactor in any story I've tried to write. S/He's always either too perfect, or completly useless. If you have any advice it would be much appreciated!

I absolutely love NaNoWriMo! I did it last year and I just felt so much more driven to write, even afterward. I started five days late because I'd only just heard of it, and my computer died for a week somewhere in the middle of November, yet somehow I still made the 50,000 words. Overcoming those little challenges and actually succeeding made me feel so great. I hope anyone who thinks they could maybe make it gives it a shot. I surprised myself.

Just had to add my NaNoWriMo love =)
~Fenix

hdelphyne wrote:

I enjoyed the letter on Fifty Cent Words. I can relate to the loss of vocabularly. During the past year, I have taken up solo Scrabble (and bought a new dictionary to replace a twenty year old version). I am astounded by the number of words I have never even heard of before. Perhaps the gems won't work in a story, but the exercise does keep the mind active. Thea

If last month’s newsletter was “fifty-cent words,” then this month’s is “how to get rich quick.” –-Jessiebelle

PlannerDan wrote:

Jessie, very interesting and alarming newsletter. As you listed the words from the SAT vocabulary, I cringed to find that I did not know half of them, much less be able to use them in a sentence. "Old timers" has surely established itself in my cranium. I used to love the section in Readers Digest that challenged us to build a more picturesque speech. But I have determined that it is a losing proposition for me. Why know and use words that the majority of your audiance stumble on. And, I know they are stumbling, because I do too.

Excuse me now, as I go dig up my old editions of Reader's Digest need to work on my 'word power.'

condorwings wrote:

Thanks for "Fifty cent Words and the SAT." The west coast editor of Doubleday spoke at our writer's annual banquet, and he very pointedly advised us to write in the vocabulary of the average 8th grade student because this is the average reading level across the country, and this is the buying ($$$) market for us.

Miss_JoJo wrote:

Intriguing topic, la Belle I'm struggling with dictionary type definitions but I reckon 31 is a bit early for Alzheimer's. So as an aide memoir I'm relying on my my.yahoo page to give me a Word of the Day occasionally I realise I've turned into Mrs. Malaprop a very humbling experience...

Ah, yes, Mrs. Malaprop… good idea for a future newsletter! –-Jessiebelle

Dr Taher writes again! wrote:

Dear Jessie,

Thank you for an excellent newsletter. I have routinely advocated learning five new words every day of your life to anyone who dared to ask me the meaning of a word ... be it my doctor colleagues, my daughters, my wife, my brothers, or even my own patients! So I readily agree that this is the best way to spend those two or three minutes of wasted time daily! The links are awesome. Reader's Digest Word Power is something I have always been getting 16+ scores at, though occasionally the jargon words from an unrelated industry put me down to 10 !

drtaher

I love getting feedback on the For Authors Newsletter – it lets me know you’re reading, and it tells me whether I’m writing about the subjects that interest you. Please keep those questions and comments coming!

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