New NEA Report | Reading at Risk

The National Endowment for the Arts has just released a new report which concludes there's a been a sharp decline in literary reading among the adult American population during the last 20 years. (Literary reading includes novels, short stories, plays, and poetry—reading associated with leisure time, not work or school.)

While all age groups have experienced a declining literary reading rate, those with higher education levels read more while the youngest age groups demonstrated the sharpest decline in reading. What's worse, the report concludes, the rate of decline is accelerating.

The NEA believes that a decline in literary reading will result in a corresponding decline in cultural values, including those of a well-read citizenry and strong democracy.

Among the report's ten major conclusions is that electronic media (the electronic culture of the Internet, video games, radios, CDs, and television) are partly to blame:

The decline in reading correlates with increased participation in a variety of electronic media, including the Internet, video games, and portable digital devices.

Some observers, however, have noted that a decline in literary reading may not mean a decline in reading in general. (See blog posting at Kairosnews.)

The Guardian | Where to stick grocer's apostrophe

According to a press release from Oxford University Press (OUP), only 8% of the population places "unnecessary, misplaced or omitted apostrophes in the words 'its' and 'it's' . . .."

This kind of apostrophe misuse is called—in Britain—the grocer's apostrophe because of rampant, irregular, and incorrect apostrophes sprinkled on storefront signs. (E.g. price's slashed.) May the grocer's apostrophe rest in peace.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that we have replaced this error with a list of common word confusion:

• diffuse | defuse (50% commit this error)


• rein | reign (26%)


• tow | toe (21%)


• pouring | poring (12%)


• pedal | peddle


• draw | drawer


• compliment | complement


• there | they're | their

OUP ranks the common errors by examining its 300m-word database. An OUP representative suggests that electronic spellcheckers may be part of the problem:

This seems to be something of a new situation. These errors are occurring in texts that are otherwise quite well spelt, possibly because of the increasing use of spellcheckers. Spellcheckers can tell you whether a word is correctly spelt—but not whether it is properly used.

The Chronicle: "Fending Off a Plagiarist"

In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Kim Lanegran writes about the experience of discovering someone had plagiarized her dissertation, presenting it as his own.

Eventually, her efforts to establish her own innocence (to prove that she wasn't the plagiarist) caused him to lose his degree, his job, and his reputation.

When she shared her story with her students, they were supportive, but she feared that they misunderstood her. They related her saga to her college-wide reputation as a professor who was the terror of campus plagiarists. She feared that the students thought she took some kind of perverse pleasure in checking sources and detecting plagiarist:

Clearly they think it was outrageous that Mr. X plagiarized my work. But they do not yet see that Mr. X got away with what he did precisely because he did not have a professor who checked all of his sources. They do not yet see that I check their sources so that I can teach them a skill and a principle that could keep them from someday losing a degree, a job, or a reputation.

What I Mean By Supporting Detail

One common weakness of novice writing is a lack of specific, supporting detail. Our brains are so quick to look for common denominators that we gravitate toward generalities that are blandly true. One of the secrets of good writing, however, is the specific detail that creates a picture in the reader's imagination, ignites a corresponding emotion, and persuades her of the truth of what she reads.

I'm addicted to obituaries written by London's Daily Telegraph. They chronicle fascinating lives with frankness and charm, and I enjoy honoring the memory of the departed. Tonight as I read the obituary of Wing Cdr. Douglas Wilson, I detected a common element of the obituary page's style: the well-supported generalization.

Here's what I mean:

[The generalization:] Some of Wilson's work was extremely hazardous. [Here follows the first example of hazardous duty.] In 1942 the scientists at Farnborough were conducting experiments to invent a system which would allow low-flying bombers to cut the wires of barrage balloons. To obtain data, Wilson had to make a series of flights in a specially modified Hurricane, a task which involved flying the aircraft into the wires of tethered balloons. On one occasion the wire jammed his controls, and he had great difficulty extracting the aircraft from a spin. He recovered at 1,000 ft, and landed with a length of wire trailing behind his aircraft.

[Second example of hazardous duty.] On November 30 1942, he took off from Exeter airfield in his Hurricane for a further test. As a special precaution, his cockpit was reinforced to reduce the risk of decapitation, but the heavy structure gave him a very limited view. He did not see two German fighters, which were on a tip-and-run raid over Devon. Their Cannon shells thudded into the Hurricane, severely damaging the aircraft's controls. Wilson tried to bale out, but could not open the heavy canopy; after several attempts he managed to land, then discovered that most of the rear of the aircraft had been shot away.

[Third and final example of hazardous duty.] Early models of the four-engine Halifax bomber suffered control problems resulting in many accidents with heavy loss of life. A test crew from Farnborough endeavouring to identify the problem were killed when the aircraft crashed out of control. Immediately afterwards, Wilson took an engineer on a test flight for a further attempt to obtain data. As the heavy bomber entered a turn, it rolled violently and entered a vertical dive. With great difficulty, Wilson managed to regain control before landing the aircraft safely. A major modification to the aircraft's two fins eventually solved the problem. Wilson was awarded the AFC.

Now *that's* what I call supporting detail!

Wisdom From the Grammar Goddess: Breaking the Spell

Diane Sandford from LLRX.com takes on spell-checkers and concludes we need to be careful about relying upon them: "The moral is try to become a good speller—and keep a good dictionary nearby."

Her article has a little quiz of 30 commonly confused words (such as wreak / wreck / wrack) to test your acumen.

Quote o' the Day

"Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get his man up on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope."

E. B. White in "Will Strunk," his New Yorker essay on his former teacher and original author of The Elements of Style

According to Today in Literature, William Strunk, Jr., was born on this day in 1869.

BW Online | Internet Explorer Is Just Too Risky

"Until Microsoft proves it can fix IE's security bugs, you're better off using one of a few good alternatives as much as possible" (Wildstrom).

Stephen H. Wildstrom, writing for Business Week Online, has decided that using Internet Explorer as one's default browser is just too risky:

In late June, network security experts saw one of their worst fears realized. Attackers exploited a pair of known but unpatched flaws in Microsoft's Web server software and Internet Explorer browser to compromise seemingly safe Web sites. People who browsed there on Windows computers got infected with malicious code without downloading anything . . .. I've been growing increasingly concerned about IE's endless security problems, and this episode has convinced me that the program is simply too dangerous for routine use.

According to Wildstrom, "Later this summer, Microsoft will release Windows XP Service Pack 2, a major overhaul of Windows that focuses almost entirely on improving security. One component of SP2, as it's known, is a reworked browser that may make a big difference -- but it'll be many months before we know for sure. "

In the meantime, Wildstrom recommends what I've suggested before, too: use another browser. Wildstrom suggests Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera. He's more cautious about recommending Netscape 7.1 because it is less well-maintained than Mozilla (with which it shares code).

I've used Mozilla, Netscape, and Opera with success. In many ways, I like Opera the best BUT it has a large drawback for me and my students: WebCT doesn't work with Opera. WebCT *will* work with Netscape and Mozilla (although I've hit a bug with Mozilla when trying to download files to students).

For concerned students, I suggest you use Mozilla or Opera for your regular Internet work, but then switch to Netscape or IE for your WebCT work.

BBC NEWS | 'Quarter of students cheating'

According to a survey conducted by the British Plagiarism Advisory Service, approximately 25% of students have cheated by copying material from the Internet and integrating it into their essays.

Researchers disagree on what the findings suggest:

Ranald Macdonald of Sheffield Hallam University, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, said that there had been a "hysteria built up" over the problem of plagiarism.

And he said that students sometimes did not have the research skills to recognise what was meant by plagiarism - and that universities had to show how original research should be carried out.

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, rejected this interpretation, saying that students knew when they were cheating - and that universities preferred to "turn a blind eye" rather than confront the problem.

"There is a major conspiracy of silence over this," said Mr Furedi.

"A culture has been created which sends the message that second-hand, unoriginal work and cheating are part and parcel of university life," he said.

In my teaching, I've encounted *many* more students who have plagiarized because they do not have good research skills and do not recognize what is meant by plagiarism.

Increasingly, colleges and universities are turning to software programs to help professors detect plagiarists more easily. If students are warned about this software, some reason, then plagiarism will go down.