Number 56
Here are links to web sites I've been collecting this year on language and literature. It's by no means a definitive list of anything, but rather a miscellaneous list of things I like, although I'm not as familiar with all of them as I'd like to be ~ not enough time. Parvum Opus readers brought some of these to my attention. Maybe you'll find something here to amuse or instruct, or both. I'm sending this in a plain format so all the links should be live (and as of December 30, 2003, all the links are good).
Happy New Year!
All Austen: The Republic of Pemberley
Complete texts of Jane Austen's books, plus discussions, articles, and more. Thorough.
Automatically makes anagrams from any word. (Hark, hon, edit! Thanks to Dave dB for this one; I don't know if he got this one mechanically or through his own wit, of which he has plenty.)
From the UK. I mentioned this in PO 4.
Barbara Wallraff’s column, "Word Court," and more. You can take a test online to qualify as a Word Police Officer, and print out language abuse tickets to give to your soon-to-be ex-friends and former co-workers.
It's always an education to read bad writing, even the intentionally bad. Go ahead and enter one of these contests!
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Results of the "dark and stormy night" contest.
Hemingway and Faulkner Parodies
You'll have to search this site under "contests."
Martha Barnette's funwords.com
What it says.
Bartleby.com: Great Books Online
Excellent resource for fiction, nonfiction, quotes, usage, and more. Named, I assume, for Melville's great non-communicator.
What George W. said.
Columbia Journalism Review online, with a bimonthly bit on language by editor Evan Jenkins. Links to alphabetical list of FQUs (frequently questioned usages).
Daily Grammar will send you e-mail messages with a grammar lesson five days of the week and a quiz on the sixth day.
Democrat, English, and the Wars over Usage
I ran across an interesting ~ and very long ~ article about language, language snobs (including those (of us?) who are (sometimes) wrong), dictionaries, and other fun stuff from the April 2001 Harper's Magazine, by contributing editor David Foster Wallace.
Wallace starts out with a long list of terms he doesn't like ~ he doesn't identify them as such, but you will recognize many of your own pet peeves among them, as well as things to worry about that you've lived with peacefully until now. He also starts with a quotation from St. Augustine (actually he starts out a few times): "Dilige et quod vis fac" ("Love and do what you will", this love being the esteem and good friends sort). In other words, you must love (as someone once said, love is a cognitive act) the language and maybe even its rules before you can flout them. But it's funny, not heavy ~ "We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else."
The essay goes beyond cheap wit (not that I don't like cheap wit, like cheap sentiment and cheap perfume). Meanwhile here are a couple of snippets:
". . . did you know that some modern dictionaries are notoriously liberal and others notoriously conservative, and that certain conservative dictionaries were actually conceived and designed as corrective responses to the 'corruption' and 'permissiveness' of certain liberal dictionaries?"
". . . the issues surrounding 'correctness' in contemporary American usage are both vexed and highly charged, and . . . the fundamental questions they involve are ones whose answers have to be 'worked out' instead of simply found."
Cites interesting quotations as examples of usage, along with definitions.
By Douglas Harper. Readable.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language
Plus numerous links to foreign dictionaries, sound file pronunciation guide, and much more.
Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic strip, reports anecdotes from his readers about stupidity in the workplace, much of which arises from, and creates, verbal confusion.
Peculiar English appearing on Japanese commercial products and signs. Weirdly wonderful. “Be careful of the bee” is perhaps my favorite, but it doesn’t begin to hint at the treasures within, thanks to the Japanese fascination with Western culture. See PO 55.
Sign up for a daily e-mail tip from Bryan Garner's well-regarded Modern American Usage.
Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation
The Gettysburg Address as a Powerpoint slide show. Brilliant bad example by Peter Norvig.
A project begun at the University of Illinois to put as many public domain texts online in simple ASCII format ~ from Anonymous to Zola, with the Bible, Shakespeare, and others in between.
The headline is "My Father, the Wanker," so it could just be a disgruntled adolescent diatribe by someone who thinks he isn't one (a wanker, that is), but it's a funny summation of typical bad Web writing.
Politics and the English Language by George Orwell, 1946
Serious stuff, required reading.
Useful when you want to locate the source of a quote or get a quote right or check to see that your quote really is from Shakespeare.
A web site for copy editors by Bill Walsh.
Sound files of English as spoken by people from many countries, even different cities, reading the same paragraph.
Larry Crumbley formed the Society for A Return to Academic Standards.
Patrick Moore on declining academic standards.
Walter Williams on Declining Standards.
"Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses"
Classic Twain on the literary failings of James Fenimore Cooper.
Twain on German.
By Richard Lederer, for ”wordaholics, logolepts, and verbivores”. Also lists language Web sites.
Robert Hartwell Fiske, Editor and Publisher: “A society is generally as lax as its language.” We are all doomed, and now we know why. Recently went from free to $5.95 a year for 12 issues, with some freebies for certain professionals; a good deal.
Online version of a newspaper column answering readers' questions about words and language.
Spots new words and usages. By Paul McFedries, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to a Smart Vocabulary and other books.
Parvum Opus is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Feel free to comment in the Guestbook, linked below the back issue links.
Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. If you don’t want to receive Parvum Opus, please reply with “unsubscribe,” “quit,” “enough,” or something like that in the subject line, and I’ll take you off the mailing list.
Return to KeithOps.