Grammar Punk Blog

Killdeer don’t Kill Deer I think it has been established that I have a thing for birds. Of all kinds, shapes, sizes and temperaments. I’m crazy about them and have been known to nearly drive off the road watching them.

The other morning I came out to my car to find a duck waddling about the parking lot of my workplace. A cute brown duck that had no business being in the parking lot, yet there he was. This morning I pulled into the same parking lot to find a pair of killdeers wandering about the rock gardens that front the building. Killdeers! I hadn’t seen a killdeer since the last time I was in the canyon camping. A long time indeed.

Killdeers are very cool indeed if you haven’t run across them before. Not only are they quite distinctive looking with beautiful markings but they have these very long legs and tend to run about as often as flying from spot to spot. Their name apparently comes from the other very cool thing about them, namely their particular cry, which does indeed sound like “kill-deer, kill-deer” in a very high range. Which is a good thing since I’m also very fond of deer…

They also have another cool thing that I did not know about until I went looking.” These birds will frequently use a distraction display (“broken-wing act”) to distract predators from their nests. This involves the bird walking away from its nesting area holding its wing in a position that simulates an injury and then flapping around on the ground emitting a distress call. The predators then think they have easy prey and are attracted to this seemingly injured bird and away from the nest. If the parent sees that a potential predator is not following them, they will move closer and get louder until they get the attention of the predator. This is repeated until the predator is far from the nest, and the killdeer suddenly “heals” and flies away. And good parents too. I knew there was a reason I love killdeer.

Molls or Malls

Moll: [mawl] the woman companion of a gangster

A prostitute

I do love a homonym. I was recently reading a mystery and one of the characters obliquely
referred to a rather antiquated phrase, calling another character a “moll” A
moll is a gangsters girlfriend though the term fell out of favor at roughly the
same time period as the term gangster. Now it denotes a woman of less than
stellar brainpower who allows herself to be bullied by a man. I did not know
that the dictionary also includes the term prostitute in the definition. Live
and learn.

Not to be mistaken for its homonym, mall.

Mall: [mawl]

Also called shopping mall. a large retail complex containing a variety of stores and often restaurants and
other business establishments housed in a series of connected or adjacent buildings or in a single large building.

2. a large area, usually lined with shade trees and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade.

Now before there were malls: congregations of excess, there were malls: lovely expanses of nature and
walkways. Guess which one I prefer.

This led to the hyphenate, pall-mall.

4. the game of pall-mall.

5. the mallet used in the game of pall-mall.

1. a game, popular in the 17th century, in which a ball of boxwood was struck with a mallet in an attempt to drive it through a
raised iron ring at the end of a playing alley.

Which sounds an awful lot like croquet to me—another of those things like malls with promenades not made of indoor/outdoor carpeting that have gone the way of the dodo bird. Alas.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, challenge your students to examine this particular pair of homonyms. Then write about it!

Headlining Headlines

I know I’ve griped about this before, but seriously, headlines crack me up sometimes. Like
daily. I’m a big fan of my MSN homepage and enjoy this little nuggets of
mini-news. Except for possibly the snippets of headlines—and the always-present
typos and missing words—but that’s another rant.

I wouldn’t necessarily call these dangling modifiers as much as confusing modifiers,
missing modifiers or maybe mysterious modifiers.

Mother of homeless man beaten by cops gets $1M settlement

Now is it the mother of the homeless man who was beaten by the cops or the homeless man?

Or this little jewel: Flesh-eating bugs after birth

Are the bugs eating each other after birth? To whose
flesh does this refer? Do I really want to know? Okay, you know I clicked on
this one.

And my favorite—for today: Close escape as tree hits car

Don’t you just hate it when a tree leaps out of the
forest just to hit your car? I didn’t actually read this one so I suppose it is
possible the tree was somehow in flight when it accosted the car but I have no
idea who—or what managed the close escape.

I understand pithiness is essential given the nuggets of
news thing, but really, are you just trying to drive us grammar folk nuts on
purpose? Good work.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, here’s a good
writing assignment. Send your students on a search for unintelligible and
ungrammatical headlines—then let them rewrite the stories to match the
headline. Then share.

To Overlook or To Oversee

Overlook: o·ver·look – to fail to notice or check something as a result of inattention,
preoccupation, or haste; to choose to disregard or ignore a shortcoming or fault

Oversee: o·ver·see  - to watch over, manage, and direct
somebody or a task done by somebody; to observe something covertly or secretly
while it is happening

I do so love a pair of words seemingly so similar when in fact they are nearly antonyms of
one another. Overlook is carelessness while oversee is micromanaging.

Look and see.

Look: to use the eyes to examine, watch, or find somebody or something

See: to examine, look at, or watch somebody or something using the eyes

And to add to the fun, the word over can be either a preposition denoting a position
directly above something or an adverb, positioned on or moving to the other
side of something such as a barrier or obstacle. So no help there.

Hmmm.

Teachers of English, writing, and grammar, here’s a good writing challenge for your
students. Explore the two words and then write a paragraph or two explaining
the differences types of characters might display being the overlook or the
overseer.

Agreeable: pleasing to the senses or to somebody’s taste

pleasant, friendly, and ready to please others

willing to consent to or consider something

good enough or suitable for somebody

I’ve been killing my long commute every morning with books on tape—or to be precise, audio books on my iPod.  This week’s offering happens to be Pride and Prejudice. It’s a lovely book, and a long-winded one positively stuffed to the gills with twenty dollar words and phrses and colloquialisms that are sadly long gone. Agreeable being an-oft used one and a word you almost never hear anymore. More’s the pity.

Jane liked the word agreeable and used it in each and every one of it’s definitions. Elizabeth’s sister Jane was agreeable, Mr. Bingley was decidely agreeable, the English countryside was agreeable and Elizabeth’s friend Miss Lucas was most agreeable. And yes, I’m going to say that Jane did indeed rather overuse this rather bland little word—at least if feels more that way having it read aloud by a soft-spoken English accent. It’s still a good word. A very agreeable word.

Grammar Punk Sentence: L E 4 Agreeable

Though entirely and noticeably agreeable on the surface, everyone knew that beneath Stu’s clown makeup there lurked a grouch.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, challenge your students to see how agreeable—or disagreeable characters in their favorite books can be. Then write about it.

Why worry about expository writing? Think about the type of writing most of us encounter in our daily lives. When was the last time you read a non-fiction book, a magazine, or a newspaper article? You guessed it, the author used expository writing. And you, the writer use it all the time. In school there are school exams, research papers, and book reports; in the workplace there are business reports, memos, emails, not to mention those pesky resumes. Developing strong expository skills can only make you a better writer.

As with any kind of writing, the key to exceptional expository writing is to know your topic, your audience, your purpose, and to make a plan before beginning to write.

 Sample outline

• Topic: What your essay is about. What information do you want to impart?
• Thesis Statement: This is usually a single sentence that defines, states, and encapsulates the gist of your essay. 
• Introduction: Usually the first paragraph of your essay, (put your topic/thesis here).
• Catch your reader’s interest; begin with a good “grabber”.
• Restate the topic and define it.
• State three explanations or examples proving your point. Some research may be involved.
• End with a transitional word or sentence that leads into the next paragraph.
• Body: expands upon your topic/thesis
  • Use a transitional word at the beginning of each subsequent paragraph, (don’t use the same one twice) as well as an introductory sentence.
  • Develop different aspects of your argument, point, fact, or evidence to support your thesis.
• Conclusion: Wrap up time
  • Restate your topic using different wording than paragraph one.
  • Summarize your essay in one or two sentences.
  • Draw a final conclusion in one sentence if possible.

See, not nearly as scary as it sounds right? Writing is writing, the key is knowing what you want to say and then letting the words do it for you.

 Teachers of English, grammar, and English challenge your students to see how fun writing for fun and facts can be.

Renaissance: ren-uh-sahns

the period in European history from about the 14th through 16th centuries regarded as marking the end of the Middle Ages and featuring major cultural and artistic change

the cultural and religious spirit that characterized the Renaissance, including the decline of Gothic architecture, the revival of classical culture, the beginnings of modern science, and geographic exploration

This is a word that is a particular favorite of mine. The Renaissance is more than just a period of time; it was a time of tremendous change, volatility and movement. The word also came to represent the concept of rebirth or revival of culture, skills, or learning forgotten or previously ignored. This concept makes the impossible seem possible, the unreachable accessible, the implausible worth trying for. What a great word to embrace and strive for.

Teachers of English, writing, and grammar, challenge your students to stage their own renaissance as they explore this fabulous word. Then write about it!

Grammar Punk Sentence: R E 5 Renaissance

Determined to demonstrate a Renaissance of edible food, Stella raised her hand to volunteer for cafeteria duty.

Unperforated vs. Imperforated

Partially or completely closed: anatomy describes a body
part lacking an opening of the normal size, especially because of atypical
development

With no holes: describes a sheet of postage stamps
produced without the perforations that allow easy tearing or division

First of all, ewww, I know,
especially the one about anatomy, but it’s the prefix that gets me about this
one. Is it just me or does unperforated sound more correct than imperforated?
Both un and im mean not or without so they are pretty much interchangeable. And
then I ran across another of those wonderfully obscure even nonsensical little
rules: the prefix ‘im’ means ‘not’ when it proceeds a
B, M or P. As in, immature, improper, imbibe—and imperforated. Really? I don’t
care, still looks weird.

The same premise works backwards with the word infamous rather
than unfamous, I’m just saying.

Teachers of English,
grammar, and writing, here’s a good one to get your students thinking about
those pesky prefixes. And why it’s not unperforated.

car⋅tog⋅ra⋅phy

   /[kahr-tog-ruh-fee]

–noun

Origin:
1855–60; < L c(h)art(a) carte + -o- + -graphy

Cartography is one of those words that’s fun to know. Anyone can be referred to as a mapmaker, a maker of maps, but to be able to properly address that someone as a cartographer is just plain powerful.

And like a good powerful word, it has more than one part that means what it means standing on its own. The word carte means chart, or the practice of gridding out a location  and of course graph

Grammar Punk Sentence: G A 3

Sneaking glancesat his rare map of the thirteen colonies, Hubert waited anxiously for the Cartographers of American club meeting to begin.

bil⋅ious

[bil-yuh s]

Use bilious in a Sentence

See web results for bilious

See images of bilious

–adjective

Origin:
1535–45; < L bīliōsus. See bile, -ous

Synonyms:
3. grumpy, crabby, cross, grouchy, dyspeptic.

 As you know if you have been reading this blog I do so enjoy a word that sounds or looks or behaves like its definition. Bilious is such a word. You can see this word has been around a while, they knew how to create words back in 1525. To be more succinct (if a little on the ick side) bilious is another of those words that when taken apart offers more illumination into its origin. Namely the word bile. (I warned you about the ick thing.) Which just makes bilious not only a literal kind of word, but also a nice use of imagery. Bilious can pertain to a physical condition, an emotional state, or just a particularly noxious color. You have to love the English language.

 Grammar Punk™ Sentence:

B I 2 Pro | bilious 

Write a Grammar Punk™ sentence that contains 2 words that contain the letters B and I, a pronoun and the word bilious.

 Stricken, Clementine spotted him across the room, resplendent in a particularly bilious green sport coat, the promised pink rose in his lapel; her blind date.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, this is a great challenge word to add to your student’s vocabularies. Just don’t let them get bilious about it.