I'm Not Really a Rhetorician

I'm not particularly girly about many things, though nail polish is definitely one of the few exceptions. I tend to love colors that are dark or rather unusual and although I like to think that I am not attached to any particular brand for any sort of products, I do have a soft spot for OPI, when it comes to nail polish.

I think one of the best things about OPI is the creative names of their nail polish colors. And that's really why they can charge almost nine dollars for each bottle. Sure it's a well designed and esthetically pleasing bottle, but the polish itself is probably very similar to some other, less expensive brand. But it's the names that get me.

Nerdview? Or BS?

This man is Charles Dickens and the relevance of this will become clearer a bit later on.

I recently read an article on Language Log about the use of “nerdview” in a British article covering the recent murder of a young man. The Language Log article talks about the British article's use of the term “bladed items” over the use of the layman's term of “knife”. The article goes on to give more context on the usage of the term, citing it as a use of “nerdview”, when the language reflects the way an expert views something, that is, technical language used in a context where the audience is composed of people who are not necessarily experts on the subject. So “bladed items” was not simply an elitist use of the English language.

Quotations and Serial Killers

A couple of classes ago we discussed the structure of a speech. One component of the speech is the introduction, which requires an Attention Getter, that is, something to capture the attention of your audience. One possible Attention Getter is the often-used quotation. Why do so many people like quotations? Well, they are things said by famous people (usually), and we generally tend to like famous people. But let's turn our attention to quotes that are not necessarily geared towards public speaking.

I am a particular fan of quotations, but not only the kind that comes from famous people. I also like the ones said by the wisest of all people – Anonymous.

I Believe in Nancy Drew

Accuracy, and Passive Voice, and “Grammar Nazis”, Oh My!

I recently read an article online about the use of passive voice. And the article was really interesting in that it criticized the critics of passive voice. Or rather, what the general public has come to perceive as the passive voice.

Now, my own connection, if you will, to the concept of the passive voice goes back to my junior year of high school, when I became the editor-in-chief of our school's newspaper. We had a new adviser that year and she had more journalistic tendencies than any of our previous advisers. She taught me that in journalism, passive voice is to be avoided like the plague (likewise with the cliches). Why? Well, because passive voice is weak, whereas active voice is powerful and portrays interesting action, which is necessary for a newspaper. So in my editing I became more watchful for passive voice, though I couldn't help but continue believing that if it read well, that is, if it sounded good, should it really matter if it was passive or active?