I spent my years learning French in Highschool(and now forgotten). Now with double the disappointment as I realize how word-awesome German is. Consider this small list: Weltschmerz – world weariness. Schadenfreude – a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about the troubles of other people Backpfeifengesicht – It describes someone who you […]
Continue readingTag: language
Scripturient: Type Crimes and Taxes
Type crime is the term author Ellen Lupton uses in her book, Thinking With Type, to describe egregiously bad typography. That description came to mind as I perused the latest fluff mailer from our MP; the so-called “Tax Guide.” So-called be…
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Confronting Evil: Not with a bang, but a whimper? Neither, I say
Yes, it is best to be cordial, courteous, friendly and respectful, and to avoid harsh words and harsh speech, generally speaking. But when it comes to confronting power, when it comes to addressing the power elite and their willing vassals, servants, p…
Continue readingScripturient: Teas or Tisanes?
I suppose it’s crotchety of me, but whenever I hear the term “herbal tea” used to refer to an infusion of leaves or fruits that contains no actual tea, I get shirty. They’re actually not tea at all, they’re tisanes, a plea…
Continue readingScripturient: Myth and Meaning
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the physical pl…
Continue readingScripturient: The Secret to Good Writing
Spoiler alert: the secret to writing well is…. (insert drum roll)… writing. Writing a lot. Every day. Every possible minute you can spare. Writing and writing more and then writing even more. But doing so within a pre-specified limit. Oops̷…
Continue readingScripturient: Grammatical Hell in a Handbasket
The Washington Post has started the apocalypse. Yes, they have. And the whole world is about to go to hell in the proverbial handbasket because of it. The maw of Hell has opened… The Post has decided after decades – centuries? – of e…
Continue readingScripturient: Moved by myself…
After watching Collingwood council meetings on Rogers again, I felt I should re-post a link to a piece I first wrote several years ago, then again in 2014, then re-wrote in April of this year: Me, myself and I Every time I watched the meetings, I als…
Continue readingLeft Over: Teach All the Children Well…..
http://www.vintag.es/2015/12/children-with-dolls-15-vintage-photos.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daily-pics+%28vintage+everyday%29 There is a blog that I go to eagerly, one of few words but many images…the link is above.. This blog is one I visit on a daily basis and I have provided a link to today’s offering..it is … Continue reading →
Continue readingScripturient: A Sense of Pinker’s Style
I share one of Steven Pinker’s passions: I like to read style books, grammar books, language books. To me, they’re like literary chemistry sets. When I was young, getting a chemistry set for Christmas or a birthday opened a whole world to …
Continue readingScripturient: Where Have The Real Heroes Gone?
Heroes, it sometimes seems, have been relegated to legend and myth. There are none left, none of the sort I used to associate with the name. Not in the media, anyway. The word has been so abused in the media over the last century, tossed about in such a cavalier
Continue readingScripturient: Boccaccio’s Decameron
I never read The Decameron in any original, or complete translation. I have a bowdlerized edition I read in part some time ago, perhaps the 1970s. I recall seeing an art film based on the book, in the 1970s (directed Pier Pasolini). But I can’t recall it in any detail,
Continue readingScripturient: The Venereal Game
The Venereal Game is the provocative subtitle of James Lipton’s 1968 classic, An Exaltation of Larks (reprinted in 1977, and later expanded in the 1993 “ultimate” edition). Venereal, in this sense, comes from venery which in turn comes from the Latin venari, to hunt or pursue, rather from the sexual connotation.* The
Continue readingScripturient: The Road Not Taken
I was surprised to read a recent piece in the New York Post that suggests a poem I have long loved was actually not what I thought it was about. It was one of those epiphanies that made me reassess my attitude not only towards the poem but towards what
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Memo from The Old Copy Editor: The offensive flag in question is not ‘the Stars ‘n’ Bars’
PHOTOS: An offensive symbol on the front of a Canadian truck, right here in Alberta. The Old Copy Editor reminds readers that this is not the Stars ’n’ Bars. Below: HMCS Iroquois back in the day when she still had a gun on her foredeck. The Old Copy Editor reminds
Continue readingScripturient: Propaganda?
Last term, when council sent out community newsletters to keep residents informed, the illiterati screamed these were ‘propaganda’ and a waste of tax dollars.* Now this council has done the same thing and these nattering nabobs of negativity have raised their voices and screamed… nothing. Their silence is deafening. Well, they wouldn’t
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Prenzie Scamels
Four hundred years after he wrote them, we still use in everyday speech the many words and phrases Shakespeare coined. He gave us so many, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to list them all here. But two words he wrote have stopped us dead: prenzie and scamels. What do
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Bad Designs
I’m not a graphic designer. I was not formally educated in that art. However, over the years, my jobs in editing and writing for books, newspapers, magazines and publishers have required me to learn the rudiments of layout, typography and design. I am the first to admit my design talent
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Me, Myself and I Redux
At Collingwood Council meetings, you will always hear someone say “Moved by myself…” when presenting a motion at the table.* Argh! Where did these people go to school? Clearly our education system has failed us if people were raised to say that. And this is in the public record, too. To
Continue readingScripturient: Blog & Commentary: Defining Classical Music
I listen to classical music a lot, even more than before since the arrival of the new classical FM station in Collingwood. But while my listening at home is through a selected collection of CDs, the content played on radio – internet radio included – is more eclectic. Airplay often includes
Continue reading