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| I wondered, since one can be overwhelmed or underwhelmed, whether one could simply be whelmed. So I looked it up: whelm /(h)welm/ archaic verb past tense: whelmed; past participle: whelmed engulf, submerge, or bury. "a swimmer whelmed in a raging storm" flow or heap up abundantly. "the brook whelmed up from its source" There you have it. Overwhelmed is really just whelmed. We apparently like adding superfluous syllables. I was underwhelmed by this revelation. |
| "Nuclear" is pronounced NEW-clear, not NUKE-you-ler. This has been a PSA from your resident chemistry geek. |
 R.I.P., http://www.nanowrimo.org |
Brandiwyn🎶  - Thanks for really fleshing out that out. Honestly, it's sad to see NaNoWriMo go, and yes, I think it's a great opportunity to grow WDC as we have some great activities for November. |
Jay O'Toole  - Regarding your question about copyright, are you asking if we can use "NaNoWriMo" and "National Novel Writing Month"? I'm certainly not worried about a lawsuit. I'm no lawyer, but the entity who might claim offense of our usage no longer exists. |
| Brandiwyn🎶 - Thanks, Brandiwyn🎶 . I was wondering about that. Looks like WDC can move forward, “free & clear.” Good to know. |
| I'm flummoxed and flabbergasted. I am hiring a vendor for my business, and they sent me a contract to sign. It's a typical contract, constructed of word salad legalese, but the attorney(?) who wrote it doesn't know their its from their it's. How could you be so good at wordsing and not know your its from your it's??? "(Vendor) will exercise the same reasonable care and due diligence in performing it's obligation under this Agreement..." "(My company) understands that (Vendor) cannot accurately perform it's duties under this Agreement without accurate and timely information..." "(My company) agrees to indemnify and hold (Vendor), it's officers, and employees harmless..."  {e:flummoxed}{e:flabbergasted} |
| My dad would have corrected the grammatical mistakes in the contract in red pen, no cap. Then again, he was an English professor for decades and decades. One of my most cherished possessions is his copy of the U.S. Constitution that he red penned the grammatical mistakes he found. |
| Part of the confusion lies in the way other possessives are formed. The reasoning is like this. "Joe's Diner means 'a diner owned by Joe', so 'a plate owned by the diner' must be 'it's plate,' right?" That's wrong, but it seems correct. The issue is all about clarity of thought and effective communication. That's why I'm still studying grammar & punctuation and word usage after nearly sixty years of writing. |
I know several attorneys with the same issue. Apparently legal writing is a very different skill from regular writing. You'd think that an occupation focused on the use of language would obsess over every plural and punctuation mark... but I guess some of them use up all their language skills inserting all those "thereins" and "heretofores" and "pursuant tos"...  |
| An author accidentally left her AI prompt in the published version of her novel. https://futurism.com/fantasy-novel-ai-prompt-copy-style |
🐕GeminiGem🎁  - did you read the article? The prompt asked the AI to rewrite her passage in the style of a different author. And, yes, also, the fact that it was missed in the edit stage was sloppy, indeed. Unprofessional. |
| 🐕GeminiGem🎁 - oh, I just realized you may have misunderstood the use of the word "prompt" to mean a creative writing prompt generated by AI at the request of the author. Here, I believe it means the author provided a prompt (rewrite in the style of XYZ) for the AI. |
| Oh yeah. Michelle meant that the author prompted AI to write something. Ohhhh, this is hilarious! |
| I interrupt your heated political debates with this very important linguistic announcement: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gigil-overcome-cuteness-oxford-english-dictio... |
Dave  - This was lovely, thank you for sharing. I was kind of expecting it to be adorable animals or babies, though. |
So, I just spent, I dunno, a few months? bingeing "Suits" on Netflix. I finished the series about a week ago. And I was today years old when I realized the double meaning of the title. Clever, Aaron Korsh, very clever. Also, I hereby revoke my writing com membership card.  |
| In the category, "Sometimes even the Oxford comma doesn't entirely prevent ambiguity," I just read the following Google review for a local Goodwill location: Clean, cheap, and pleasant staff. I'll take a dozen, please.  |
I think I may have just slept through NaNo.   |
| I actively ignored it. I tend to instinctively avoid anything that's a "groupspeak/groupthink" type project and NaNo seems very much a rahrah cheerleading thing. |
Aiva Raine  - You're probably correct about it being a cheerleading kind of thing, but we all need a little cheering up and cheering on, at times. So, IMHO NaNoWriMo is generally a good idea. Like almost anything, it's not for everyone. |
Humble Poet PNG - silent now.  - Agreed- I'm bah humbug about stuff like that, but it doesn't mean that it isn't fine for others. |
| I'll be in Tulum tomorrow, if anyone wants me to pass on a message to the Mayan gods. 🇲🇽🏯☀️🍸 Happy Thanksgiving! |
| Let me get this straight: After years of hearing from English teachers and Stephen King - writer that we should limit adverbs in our writing, now Google is telling us to use more, if we want search algorithms to rank our blogs and other web copy?? According to this article from SEO experts at Yoast, we should incorporate transition words (aka, conjunctive adverbs) in at least 30% of our sentences. https://yoast.com/transition-words-why-and-how-to-use-them/#h-what-does-the-transition-word-check-in-yoast-seo-do  |
| Ain't she a woman? Well, yes, she was, but she never actually said it that way. See for yourself: https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches |
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