Depressing Or Inspiring? You Decide!

From A.Word.A.Day for 24Feb05--

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. --H. Jackson Brown, Jr., writer

Pandia Search Engine Awards 2004

Pandia.com (a Norwegian web site that's a wonderful source of information on web searching) has announced its Search Engine Awards 2004. Among the winners are the following:

• The best all round search engine: Google
• The best metasearch site: ixquick
• Best site on searching: Search Engine Watch
• Best publication on searching: Web Search Garage by Tara Calishain
• Best search engine weblog: Resourceshelf
• Best desktop search tool: Copernic

I watch for Pandia's awards each year because they do their homework and they've alerted me to some wonderful web search resources. I would encourage everyone to explore their 2004 picks.

10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained

At the end of 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained, author Brad Templeton sums up his advice:

• These days, almost all things are copyrighted the moment they are written, and no copyright notice is required.
• Copyright is still violated whether you charged money or not, only damages are affected by that.
• Postings to the net are not granted to the public domain, and don't grant you any permission to do further copying except perhaps the sort of copying the poster might have expected in the ordinary flow of the net.
• Fair use is a complex doctrine meant to allow certain valuable social purposes. Ask yourself why you are republishing what you are posting and why you couldn't have just rewritten it in your own words.
• Copyright is not lost because you don't defend it; that's a concept from trademark law. The ownership of names is also from trademark law, so don't say somebody has a name copyrighted.
• Fan fiction and other work derived from copyrighted works is a copyright violation.
• Copyright law is mostly civil law where the special rights of criminal defendants you hear so much about don't apply. Watch out, however, as new laws are moving copyright violation into the criminal realm.
• Don't rationalize that you are helping the copyright holder; often it's not that hard to ask permission.
• Posting E-mail is technically a violation, but revealing facts from E-mail you got isn't, and for almost all typical E-mail, nobody could wring any damages from you for posting it. The law doesn't do much to protect works with no commercial value.

Much of Templeton's advice is specific to the internet, but it is useful reading nonetheless.

A "Do Not Use" List

Published by NISOD (National Institute for Staff & Organizational Development), Innovation Abstracts offers practical advice on a variety of teaching topics in articles written by faculty members from around the country.

This week, I ran across one written by an English instructor--Vincent Miholic--on a "do not" list he has created for his writing students: "'I am going to write about . . .' The Virus That Infects Language Art" (PDF). His list includes words and phrases which spread through the writing of novice writers like viruses. He advises his students to revise these words and phrases out of their finished compositions. Here's his list:

• In the world today, in today's world, in today's society (as opposed to the sixteenth century?)
• In my paper I am going to discuss, this paper will show (Just state the point; the reader knows it is "you" and "your" paper.)
• thing (ambiguous; Larson's cartoon inscription is cautiously, yet humorously instructive: "Well, actually, Doreen, I rather resent being called a 'swamp thing.' I prefer the term 'wetlands-challenged mutant.'")
• go, going, gone (weak verb) (Be precise. Doreen traveled, drove, walked, or attended.)
• got, get, getting (weak verb) (Doreen received, bought, or found.)
• come, came, coming (weak verb) (Doreen arrived, entered, grew.)
• went (weak verb) (See go, going gone) (Doreen left, sauntered, waltzed.)
• put, putting (weak verb) (Doreen placed, sat, positioned.)
• alot (misspelled) or a lot (Use many or much.)
• overreliance on passive starts (there is, there are, there was, there were) (Reconstruct with a concrete subject and an active verb; in the top ten of every stylist's rules: "Use active not passive voice.")
• any construct using this pattern: "The reason . . . is/ was because" (a truly wretched construction; equally repulsive "due to the fact that")
• any cliche/hackneyed metaphor (They will multiply like rabbits.)
• basic paragraph-to-paragraph transitions that overly rely on basic first, second, third, last . . . transitions
• needlessly using "then" in "If . . . then" statements; needlessly starting sentences with "then" or "also"
• contractions (more informal than formal) (By the way, "cannot" is the correct spelling for can't.) [I disagree with this one. --dsk]
  
• first person (narratives) (Most writers are expert with "I"; third person needs more practice.) [I disagree with this one. --dsk]
• first person preferred point of view, using "I" in every sentence unnecessary (See "I am going to discuss" above.) [I disagree with this one. --dsk]
• second person "you" (The declaration is usually misused and is unnecessary.)
• the ambiguous "it" (Don't use it if the referent is imprecise or if a more precise word exists.) [my added formating with boldface]
  

While I don't agree with every of his prohibited phrases (such as the contractions one), I find that his list agrees with what I read in the style books I most admire. Those of you looking for a list of forbidden words might start with this one. :-)

Later additions from dsk's list of forbidden words/phrases:

• empty qualifiers such as very, quite, rather, a lot. If you need to strengthen a phrase, do it by using a stronger word, not by adding very. Instead of saying "very big," say huge or gigantic or enormous or immense or gargantuan or . . . you catch my drift.
  
• hopefully, a commonly misused adverb. Most people mean to say something along the lines of, "I hope things go well," rather than, "Hopefully, things will go well" (a construction which makes the things hopeful in their behavior).
• in conclusion. While "in conclusion" and other phrases are good transitions for a speech, they're a little clunky in a written paper. Your readers can see that they are reaching the end of the paper, so you can just eliminate the phrase.
  

"Is there, then, an ideal length for a paragraph?"

Roy Peter Clark's latest entry in his ongoing series on writing discusses Writing Tool #42: Paragraphs. He asks, "Is there, then, an ideal length for a paragraph?" The answer: no. As long as a paragraph fulfills its purpose as a unit of thought, then it can be any length.

Paragraphs can be long: "In a long paragraph, the writer can develop an argument or build part of a narrative using lots of related examples."

Paragraphs can be short: "The writer can use the short paragraph, especially after a long one, to bring the reader to a sudden, dramatic stop."

Paragraphing is also a strategic matter. The British grammarian H.W. Fowler (author of Modern English Usage, 1926--still a standard) points out that the paragraph "is essentially a unit of thought, not of length." But it is also a typographical strategy that helps the reader follow the writer's thought: "The purpose of paragraphing is to give the reader a rest. The writer is saying to him: 'Have you got that? If so, I'll go on to the next point.'"

Shortcut Keys for MS Word

You can find a nice, one-page guide to the most used shortcut keys, courtesy of CADCourse.com (PDF:21KB,1p).

Here are a few of the shortcuts I use most:

• Select all text on page—CTRL+A
  
• Copy highlighted text—CTRL+C
  
• Paste copied text—CTRL+V
  
• Cut highlighted text—CTRL+X
  
• Create hanging indentation (for Works Cited page)—CTRL+T
  
• Increase indent of paragraph (for long, indented quotes)—CTRL+M
  
• Double-space lines of highlighted text—CTRL+2

To print a complete list of Word shortcut key commands (9 pp), follow these directions:

1. Open Word
   
2. On the Tools menu, point to Macro, and then click Macros.
   
3. In the Macros in box, click Word commands.
   
4. In the Macro name box, click ListCommands.
   
5. Click Run.
   
6. In the List Commands dialog box, click Current menu and keyboard settings.
7. On the File menu, click Print.