…well, if you are a child, at any rate. Researchers from Coventry University looked at text messages from three groups of children and young people (83 primary school children, 78 secondary school pupils and 49 undergraduates), who were then measured on their IQ, spelling ability, and understanding of written and spoken grammar. Their results showed that although most people violated...
Not just Moomins
Tove Jansson. She wrote the Moomin books and she’s a bit of an obsession of mine. I always loved the Moomins but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered that she’d written a load of books for adults as well. Cheerful yet melancholy, dreamlike but realistic, semi-autobiographical stories about the joys and pains of being alive. Books with titles like ‘Fair...
What do you call…
… each individual square of kitchen roll?
In our house, they’re called ‘slices’.
Scrabble is good for you
So, there are a couple of songs about Scrabble, and now the latest news is that NCP contractors who painted “20 minuites max parking” on a road in Cambridge have been advised to spend their lunch hours playing the word game – so beloved of, apparently, The Queen, President Obama and Kylie Minogue… and me – in order to revise their spelling skills, according to BBC Cambridgeshire...
Time for a nap
Professor Vincent Walsh (@vinwalsh) from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience University College London and I have something in common: we both believe that taking naps during the working day boosts productivity and creativity. “It’s only since the industrial revolution we have been obsessed with squeezing all our sleep into the night rather than having one or two sleeps through the day,” he...
This is for you, Liz
I have a friend, Liz, who is at home at the moment recovering from a bit of NHS scalpel-and-stitchery action, with only a stack of novels and tv box sets to keep her company during the day. Surprisingly, she also seems to have had the inclination to read my blog more than once, and has called me up to chastise me for not updating it more often. Ah yes, the prioritisation scales of the freelance...
I thought I didn’t have time to blog this week…
…until I read this post by author and entrepreneur Seth Godin. It makes me think that saying I’m “running out of time” is just an excuse, when actually what I’m running out of is a feeling of creative urgency. After all, if Seth’s got time to blog, then I should jolly well be able to make a minute to do so. Thanks Seth.
Could you be a bit more pacific?
I have a friend who for years was pronouncing ‘misled’ as ‘mise-elled’, and we all liked it so much that we joined in. Not to worry, says David Shariatmadari of The Guardian, because “error is the engine of language change, and today’s mistake could be tomorrow’s vigorously defended norm”.
What should you avoid like the plague?
Cliches, amongst other things. As a writer it’s important to get your message across clearly and concisely with as little guff as possible. Carlos Lozada over at The Washington Post has an ongoing game with his colleagues where they’ve been putting together a list here of what he calls “verbal crutches, stock phrases, filler words, cliches and perpetually misused expressions” that they avoid …...