Grammar Punk Blog

Air travel, as I have noted before has become much more…businesslike. We travelers are no longer treated as guests on the worlds biggest and fastest buses, we are now merely cargo. Or so it feels as you’re stuffed into those tiny little excuses for aircraft.

 This, I’m assuming is the reason for the rather odd display I noticed at the baggage claim on my last trip.

 I have arrived at my home airport after midnight on the past couple of trips—I’m also assuming this has something to do with the additional…cargo.

 You may or may not have heard about ARUP, which is a company which deals in, among other things, human hemoglobin. Yup, blood. ARUP ships their cargo in bright yellow boxes, largish, about three by four or so. They are distinctive. The last couple of flights I have noticed several—say six or seven—ARUP boxes being offloaded with the rest of the luggage, and while I didn’t think much of it, it was a little…unsettling. All that blood, flying by itself. Okay, I’m reading too much into it, but remember, I tend to read Stephen King novels when I travel, so there you go.

 Anyway, on my last trip there I was, awaiting my luggage to disembark and lo and behold, bright yellow ARUP boxes began to appear. And appear. And appear. There were forty-three, count ‘em, forty-three boxes of human blood. And intermixed meekly and awkwardly, our hapless luggage. It was quite a site, the conveyer belt going round and round, tons of yellow boxes, wee pieces (comparatively) pieces of luggage.

And all I could think, (knocking wood, crossing fingers, crossing anything) was what if the plane had landed…more firmly than intended. Think of the mess.

 Teachers of English, writing and grammar, here’s a good writing challenge to throw at your students—ask them to look around and notice the oddities that might pop into everyday life. Then write about it.

The March Hare

“The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won’t be raving mad — at least not so mad as it was in March.”

“Mad as a March hare” is a common British English phrase, both now and in Carroll’s time, and appears in John Heywood’s collection of proverbs published in 1546. It is reported in The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner that this proverb is based on popular belief about hares’ behavior at the beginning of the long breeding season, which lasts from February to September in Britain. Early in the season, unreceptive females often use their forelegs to repel overenthusiastic males.

The wonderful illustration by Sir John Tenniel shows the March Hare with straw on his head which was a common way to depict madness in Victorian times. I couldn’t find an etymology as to what straw on one’s head had to do with madness but I’m supposing it may have to do with tossing unfortunates into prisons with straw strewn on the floors as small comfort.

I’m more interested in the ongoing theme of madness in the story itself. These folks are not just mildly eccentric but seriously…odd. And the more delightful, if disconcerting for it. As Mad as a March Hare is about as bad as it gets, this means you’ve gone completely round the bend which is never good.
It serves us well to remember the day and age this tale was written (1865) and the prevailing opinion of things like insanity let alone children best seen but not heard.

Teachers of English, grammar and writing, this is another interesting topic to explore with your students. What other expressions do they know to connote someone who’s… a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Then write about it. Then share.

chi·ca·nery noun \-ˈkān-rē,-ˈkā-nə-\ pluralchi·ca·ner·ies

1: deception by artful subterfuge or sophistry

2: a piece of sharp practice (as at law)

This one comes from the French, to chicaner, which means to complain or argue in a trivial or petty manner. How arguing pettily became deceitful by subterfuge is a bit dim. I like that this definition includes another cool and underused word, namely, sophistry:

sophistry (countable
and uncountable;
plural sophistries)

1. (countable) An argument that seems plausible, but is fallacious or misleading, especially one devised deliberately to be so.
2. (uncountable) The art of using deceptive speech or writing.
3. (uncountable) Cunning or trickery.

So instead of just accusing someone of dishonesty or deceit you can tell them their chicanery smacks of sophistry. That’ll teach em.

Grammar Punk Sentence: R A 4

He wasn’t above using chicanery to ensure his diorama of the Grand Canyon won first place; he was quite sure no one would tumble to the fact that he’d used real
rocks instead of salt clay.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, this is a great word to add to your students lexicon. Challenge them to write about chicaneries they might have witnessed—or attempted themselves. Then write about it.

Corollary: cor·ol·lar·y

Natural consequence: something that is a natural consequence of or accompaniment to something else

Statement easily proved from another: logic: a proposition that follows, with little or no further reasoning, from the proof of another

Obvious deduction: something that is very obviously or easily deduced from something already proven

Something added: something added to something else, e.g. something appended to a document

I do so love a good corollary; I just find it a bit tricky to define—at least to myself. I did find a cool definition that says it well:

A corollary is something that is true by default based on indirect facts. You see it a lot in mathematics, specifically geometry. For example, you are shown a triangle and are told that two of the angles are 90 degrees and 35 degrees. it is a corollary that the third angle is 55 degrees. You weren’t told that… but based on other facts, it has to be true.

Grammar Punk Sentence:  T A 5 corollary

Faced with a most daunting corollary, Stu solved the mathematical equation with the only logical explanation he could find: he cheated.

Write a Grammar Punk sentence that contains at least five words with the letters T and A and the word corollary.

Teachers of English, grammar and writing, this is a tricky one. Challenge your students to find corollaries in their own schoolwork. Then write about it.

Names that are also…

Don, Jack, Bob, Frank, Sue, Curt, Lance, May

Names that are homonyms: Phil (fill), Carol (carrel), Harry (hairy), Bill, Josh, Art, Mark, Sue, Bea, (okay, diminutives probably shouldn’t count but…) Mary, Barry, Drew, and on and on.

Names have always fascinated me. From what I’ve gathered there are any number of reasons for the names given, occupation, tribal, geographical, the confusion that arises with so many “hey, you’s! floating about. And of course time and distance further corrupts to the original name. My own last name is a case in point; half of the extended family added an E the rest kept the E at bay but we’re all still related.

Look at all the occupation names: Smith, Baker, Cooper, Goldsmith, Miner, Carpenter, Gardener, Thatcher, Wagoner, etc.

And all the possessive father names: Johnson, Peterson, Matheson, Larson, Swenson, Neilson, Anderson, Olafson, (the Swedes seem to be particularly possessive) Jenson, Stevenson, Carlson, Brunson, Davidson, Ferguson, Haroldson, Isaacson, Richardson and on and on and on. I’m still waiting for Fransdaughter or Louiseson to catch on.

Teachers of English, grammar and writing, here is a great writing prompt that will get your students thinking. Have them compile their own name anomalies, then give them character attributes, then write about it! And share!

Color My World

I love colors. As far back as I can remember I’ve been crazy about colors. All colors, bright, dark, neon, pastel, bold, subtle. Some of my earliest memories revolve around the big box of Crayola crayons. Not the little box but the huge box with the 100 or something crayons. I especially loved a new box with all those sharp crayons and their flat tops, I would just sit and look, relishing the colors.

As much as I adored the visual aspects of that big box of crayons the names were just as intriguing. I learned my colors from those crayons and not just the regular ones, the red, blue, green, yellow, brown, black, white, but lovely, scintillating, luscious names like periwinkle, plum, sienna, magenta, butterscotch, azure, crimson, salmon, aqua and brick. And lovely descriptive ones like soldier blue, forest green, persimmon, peacock, charcoal and vermillion.

Nature provided so many inimitable names for colors how can you resist raspberry, almond, melon, mulberry, nutmeg, pine, mustard, buttercup, mint, canary, lemon, pistachio, celery, corn, and chocolate. Great, now I’m hungry.

Incorporate color in your world and in your writing. When writing creatively go for the unusual description, charcoal instead of grey, cobalt instead of blue, buff instead of tan, burgundy for red, emerald for green. Get colorful!

Teachers of English, writing and grammar encourage your students to get colorful with their writing. Toss out a color and ask for first impressions, characterization, emotion, etc. Then write about it. Then share!

You’ve gotta love editing. Or not. Editing is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it meant to be relegated to spell-checkers. I know, I’ve harped on this concept before and I’m going to do it again.

I was reading a book the other day and found myself positively jerked out fo the story with the word “patted.” Innocuous word, silly word, harmless word, WRONG word. The author intended the word to be “padded. As in the heroine padded across the room on stocking feet. But of course since she patted instead of padded it just looked and “sounded” odd. And weird. Especially since in the next paragraph the word padded was inserted properly making the first mistake even more prevalent. Not to mention the word shouldn’t have been used twice in such quick succession but that is a topic for another blog.

Editing is paramount. Editing means reading each and every word, each and every sentence, each and every paragraph. Editing is demanding, difficult and impossible to do flawlessly. And what it cannot be replaced with is a computer-generated spell-checker. Not when there are patted and padded to be confused for one another.

Teachers of grammar, English, and writing, make sure editing is a regular part of your student’s writing experience. Write something, edit it, then share!

Defenestration: to throw something or somebody out of a window

 a usually swift dismissal or expulsion (as from a political party or office)

I know this is hardly the cheeriest word ever but it is interesting. And morbid. And creepy. All things I usually like in a word. I know I’ve heard the word before but never its literal meaning. And I do mean literal.

I ran across the definition while watching a Director’s cut of Braveheart, tuning in just in time to see the King-To-Be’s, um, friend, being thrown from the top floor of the castle to the unforgiving flagstones below. Splat. And there, scrolled across the bottom of the screen was the little tidbit that this act was known as defenestration—the irony added that apparently this mode of punishment had been common enough to have earned it its own word. Yikes.

The second definition, the one I had been heretofore familiar with is much less bloodthirsty and all the more effective for its grisly cousin. My kind of word.

Grammar Punk Sentence: L A 3 defenestration

With a particularly effective (and cruel) finality Suzanne’s defenestration from the Girl Scout Troup was all the more shocking since it occurred at the annual Jamboree.

Teachers of English, grammar, and writing, this is a particularly interesting word to incorporate into your student’s vocabularies. Just don’t encourage them to take it literally.

Write a Grammar Punk sentence that contains at least 3 words using the letters L and A and the word defenestration

The Ides of March

March is an in-between sort of month; too far from the lovely snowy cold of winter, way too far from the sunny warmth of spring. But March can surprise you. The ides of March (Latin: Idus Martias) is the name of March 15 in the Roman calendar. The term ides was used for the 15th day of the months of March, May, July, and October. The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 709 AUC or 44 B.C. In William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, Caesar is warned to “beware the Ides of March.

 Beware the Ides of Grammar

The oh-so-important subject of grammar has come to have its own “ides.” Grammar is boring, grammar is tedious, grammar is not fun, whatever you do, beware the Ides of Grammar. With Grammar Punk™, the “ides” will turn. Sorry, we couldn’t resist.

I am not a math person. Intellectually I know that numbers are our friends, and I even embrace the notion that they have their own simple, elegant beauty. But I hate them, nonetheless. And yes, I know that my loathing stems from the simpler emotion of fear, yet I don’t care. I can’t, don’t, won’t do math more complex than the multiplication tables, simple fractions, and the occasional stab at long division.

 That being said, I have always had an affinity for words. Big words, small words, the funkier the better, I mean I am killer at Scrabble and Boggle, just don’t ask me how to extrapolate the perimeters of an Isosceles triangle. Or whatever.  

 My point?

 Writing, the act, skill, everydayness of writing is not what it used to be. I’m not talking about the art of writing, (though no doubt I will at some point) I’m referring to the act of writing in and of itself. The concept of using language to communicate ideas has…changed. To say the least. But this explanation is much too simple and rather beside the point. The fact is language is our form of communication and not an opt-out sort of a thing. Yet that is what seems to be happening. It’s not dramatic, it’s even subtle, which merely adds to the problem. The worry. The crisis. The simple, necessary act of writing is slipping away. Urgency is called for. Because the fact is the skill of writing, writing well is a skill that is a must-have. Never mind penning the Great American Novel, think more along the lines of job applications, resumes, business letters, reports.

 Writing, quite unlike math (at least for me) really can be adapted, adopted, and acquired by doing. The more one writes the more the act of writing becomes like muscle memory, it doesn’t require quite so much thinking. Unlike algebra.