A few days ago, I came across the delightful What, Exactly, is a #2 Pencil? on Tim Warner’s blog Mother Tongue Annoyances.
Read it if you’ve ever wondered about the pencil-numbering system or felt curious in general about your first writing tool. And don’t forget to check out the World Championship of Illegal Pencil Fighting video, whether or not you ever engaged in this adolescent (mostly “guy”) game.
At his humor blog, Bantereist, Brian Sack offers a collection of signs guilty of such word crimes as homophone abuse, prefix neglect, inexplicable usage of a semicolon, negligent hyphenation, and use of an illegal apostrophe, under the collective heading Grammar Cop.
Check out this list for a few good chuckles and a potent reminder of the importance of having someone else check your copy before you distribute it widely.
A few of my favorites:Today’s microcontent mischief:
The ambiguity in this online article’s headline arises from the dual meanings of the capitalized word “Bill.” Does the headline writer mean a man named Bill, or the draft of a proposed law?
Early Saturday morning my yowling cat Reiki wrenched me from a close-to-consciousness dream in which I was watching a panel of experts haranguing each other on TV.
I came to just as one of the commentators shouted, “I don’t care if you do have an 18-verb advantage, it won’t change the fact that the secretary lied about weapons of mass perception.”
Yikes! Time to lay off the late-night blogging after hours of C-SPAN.
I find a little humor helps keep cabin fever at bay this time of year. Bloopers always give me a quick pick-me-up.
A few bloopers hot off the church bulletin presses:
The Jack and Kill Daycare is looking for someone to help part time on Saturdays.
Our Wednesday Night Family Cafeteria meal will feature a variety of Chinese dishes including One Ton Soup.Events: December 9th, Christmas Caroling at the Parkview Nursing Home 7:00 p.m., December 10th, Breakfast with Satan 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. in the Fellowship Hall.
What are you doing for lunch Tuesday? Local Funeral Director Barry Gilbert will talk about the benefits of cremation.
Saturday the Youth Group will serenade a number of our seniors with Christmas thongs.
What about these resume bloopers?
Experienced supervisor, defective with both rookies and seasoned professionals.Seeking a party-time position with potential for advancement.
Headline in the Food section of Wednesday’s Concord Monitor: Cooked differently, you may love Brussels sprouts.
In my day, I’ve been fried, grilled, steamed, and toasted, seared, poached, boiled, and roasted. But I’ve always liked my sprouts steamed and served with a little garlic butter.
From an Associated Press article about the University of Iowa's preparations for a pandemic influenza:
Christopher Atchison, associate dead of the University of Iowa College of Public health, said universities need to be prepared should the virus spread to the United States.“Any institution that assembles and houses thousands of people needs to have this as a concern,” said Atchison, chairman of a task force studying the university's preparation for bird flu.
Zombie task force?
Many of you tell me you don’t have time for writing. Help is on the way!
Annoyed by barrages of email requests for papers to “fake conferences” with low standards of peer review, MIT graduate students Jeremy Stribling, Daniel Aguayo, and Maxwell Krohn developed a computer program called SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator, which randomly generates research papers “using a hand-written context-free grammar” complete with charts, graphs, citations, and reference lists.
The three submitted two randomly-generated papers to the World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), scheduled to be held July 10-13 in Orlando, Florida. To their delight, conference organizers accepted one of the papers, entitled “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy” for presentation. Once the truth of the paper’s origins made the national news, organizers withdrew the invitation.
Sadly for us, SCIgen limits itself to computer science research topics. To generate papers on topics closer to the hearts of UNHCE administrators, educators and specialists, try the Essay Generator. Just plug in your topic du jour—nutrient management, plan of work, positive youth development, food guide pyramid—and voila! Slap on a logo, reformat as you wish, and you’re good to go with that newsletter article or op-ed piece.
Finally, for a mission statement or a pithy quotation to open or close an article, turn to the proverb generator.
When I typed “new revenue” into the proverb generator three times in rapid succession and came up with these possibilities. Take your pick.
• The female of the species is more deadly than the new revenue.
• The proof of the new revenue is in the eating.
• New revenue makes the heart grow fonder.