More Weary Words

"A few years ago it seemed as if writers couldn’t be hired at The Times unless they used the word “frisson” in just about every column. That usage has receded a bit, but not much. The new word-that-must-be-used is “trope,” meaning metaphor, example, literary device, picture — and maybe whatever else the writer wants it to mean."

More Weary Words (via The New York Times)

Writing quote of the day:

"Anyone who translates knowledge from the technical into the popular language is disregarding the rules of caste, and is thus taboo. Technical terms, long words, learned-sounding phrases, are the means by which second-rate intellectuals 'inflate their egos' and feed their sense of superiority to the multitude. If an idea can be expressed in two ways, one of which involves a barbarous technical jargon, while the other needs nothing but a few simple words of one syllable which everyone can understand, this kind of person definitely prefers the barbarous technical jargon. He wishes to be thought, and above all to think himself, a person who understands profound and difficult things which common folk cannot comprehend." W.T. Stace, "The Snobbishness of the Learned," in Atlantic Essays 94, 99 (Samuel N. Bogorad & Cary B. Graham eds., 1958).

Wednesday coffee break: Fun with Google Analytics

Some of the keyword searches people were using over the past year when they stumbled upon our little ol' URMAblog. Feel free to use any of these as a jumpoff point for your next poem, short story, folk song, or flashback:

don't step in that
short words are words of might
break a kindle
cap'n franks nc
found that ducks may be even more comfortable standing under a sprinkler
hot housewives 2008 pictures
urma pics
redsex
was darwin wrong
bluesex
coffee makes you happy
oh evolve
best way to win a debate
chuck berry is on top
pretend restaurant
cold down
nyuk nyuk
break nut
endowment effect cartoon
good screenplay
new zealand citizenship requirements
perks for employees
the snobbishness of the learned
a&m rubber ducks
agoraphobia parrots
parrots for psychosis
black hole black coffee
coffee makes you break out
egg corns
easy ways to win a debate
evolution for dummies
feel dizzy
i hate my copy editor
jason smith breaks neck
nutjobs r us
pictures of 100 year old men
rich kids want pity
rubber ducky you're the one

How's this for headline writing?

She shot him and broke his heart
The forbidden relationship began behind bars, where she was his psychologist... (Raleigh News & Observer)

Thursday coffee break: Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (2009 Results)

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

Writing quote of the day:

"The poorer a man's intellectual equipment, the more does he revel in technicalities. A man with a wealth of valuable ideas is anxious to communicate those ideas, and will naturally tend to choose for that purpose the simplest language he can find. But a man whose intellectuality is a sham, and who has in truth nothing to communicate, endeavors to conceal his emptiness by an outward show of learning. . . . He fails to see that the love of long words and technical terms is in fact nothing but a symptom of his mental infirmity. It is a kind of intellectual disease." W.T. Stace, "The Snobbishness of the Learned," in Atlantic Essays 94, 99-100 (Samuel N. Bogorad & Cary B. Graham eds., 1958).

Eustace Tilley Comes to Class

A writing instructor at San Francisco State University makes "The New Yorker" her textbook.

(From the Chronicle of Higher Education)

Friday coffee break: course description and prereqs

"Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness...."

From INTERNET-AGE WRITING SYLLABUS AND COURSE OVERVIEW, ENG 371WR:
Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era (mcsweeney's)

Today's writing quote:

"The greatest merit of style is, of course, to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought." Nathaniel Hawthorne (as quoted in Sherwin B. Nuland, "The Uncertain Art," Am. Scholar, Winter 2001, at 129, 130).

Writing quote of the day

"Short words . . . come from down deep in us -- from our hearts or guts, not from the brain. For they deal for the most part with things that move and sway us, that make us act." Frank Gelett Burgess, "Short Words Are Words of Might" (1939), in Weigh the Word 104, 107 (Charles B. Jennings et al. eds., 1957).