Reblogged from susan.t.sweeney.:

and people think grammar is no fun.

Blog post by Susan T. Sweeney 5/4/13

A to Z Challenge Reflection and Celebration-My 100th Post

Today is Double Whammy Day! I got my A to Z April 2013 Survivor badge, then wrote this reflection post to make my 100th post. Double celebration!

I participated in the 2012 A to Z Challenge and loved it. I was a new blogger then and needed the push challenge that the A to Z gave me. I didn’t think I had twenty-six ideas to write about, and I didn’t think I could keep up the pace. But I did, and I did.

I continued blogging for six months after the 2012 A to Z ended, then took a break because of family health issues. When the 2013 A to Z Challenge turned up this year, I jumped in the deep end. I love the challenge to write on a regular basis, and the discipline keeps me going. I like this year’s theme focus and decided to write about a not-so-popular topic, grammar. I have always loved grammar and feel bad when people disparage it. I want to make grammar fun and powerful for writers. (This will take a while!)

Like many of us, I have met new friends through interesting blogs. I wish I had so much more time to read what everyone has to say. I love the travel and photography blogs, the cooking blogs, the nonfiction blogs, and the whimsical blogs. I read as many writing blogs as I can, and read through everything that appears in my WordPress reader based on my categories of interest. I love making new discoveries and meeting new people. And I love reading the wide variety of writing styles. Such talented people! I am impressed.

I commented on many posts, but “liked” a lot more. Commenting is good, but I also like to read widely, so I had to work out a compromise on how many comments I could write. Besides answering comments on my own posts took time, too.

New ideas for posts come floating at me as I read other posts. Now I have way more than twenty-six ideas to write about!

For my X post, I wrote “X is for X-It (exit) Strategy,” a reflection post on A to Z itself. I wrote out ideas for how to keep my blog going and how to clean-up my blog a bit.

Special thanks to the organizers of A to Z, Arlee Bird and assistants. I think you have helped a lot of bloggers move from being baby bloggers at the starting point to becoming more mature bloggers. We Are Not Alone (Kristen Lamb). We learn from each other.

Thanks to my new blogger friends. I hope we can keep in touch.

And now, care to join a new challenge?  My new friend at The Sock Zone posted about this one, The Blog Every Day in May Challenge, and I jumped right in.

Now for your bedtime reading, here’s a list of my 2013 A to Z Posts.

Bye for now. =<^;^>=  See you in the 2014 Challenge…and hopefully before!

L is for List of A to Z Challenge Posts, 2013, by Janice Heck

Reblogged from JaniceHeck:

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This is a round-up of my posts in the 2013 A to Z Challenge (in progress). At this date, April 14, we are almost halfway to the finish line. At the end, all 26 posts will be listed here.

Updated May 1, 2013 at completion of A to Z Challenge.

Week 1
A is for Adjectives, Anteaters, Armadillos, and Aardvarks…

Read more… 289 more words

Update of April 2013 A to Z Challenge posts.

U is for Use, Usage, Utilize, and other Useful and Utilitarian Units

What with all the rules about grammar, usage, and style, it’s a wonder anyone can get anything down on paper. Fortunately, native-born English speakers have internalized the rules and can speak and write from intuitive knowledge of how words work together in sentences. Any time we have a question about correctness, we can just pull our our handy reference manuals or go online to find the information we need. Or better yet, we can just let our editors fix the glitches in our writing.

What? You don’t have an editor?

Well, I don’t either, but my grammar-picky husband steps in and whacks at my writing. Sometimes he’s even right.

Grammar Reference Books and Textbooks

Good writers do use grammar reference books, and proofreaders and editors keep a large stock of them on hand. My own rather extensive collection starts with one first published in 1926. Here’s its classic opening sentence:

The Doorway to English is an outgrowth of a need of the classroom teacher of English who has been struggling long to achieve results in quality of speech from textbooks instead of making technique contribute to the quality of better speech. Almost any teacher of English can readily distribute the technique in orderly fashion through the respective grades, but few teachers are capable of allotting through a definite period of instruction the expanding qualities of good speech. L. Rader and P. Deffendall, The Doorway to English, Fifth Book, 1926.

What? Strunk and White, authors of The Elements of Style, would definitely not give this textbook writer an A for clarity.

Of course, some reference manuals vary in their pronouncements and create long-standing, hard-core devotees and crusaders, maybe even Grammar Police and Grammar Nazis.

One good example is the controversy over the serial comma, or the Oxford comma as the Brits call it. Do you use a comma after the second word in a series before the and?  Journalists frown on the use of the serial comma; academic writers adore it. Chicago Manual of Styles says yes, use it. APA says no, don’t use it. What’s a writer to do? Most writers follow what they were taught in junior high and high school, then look for evidence and authorities to support that position.

Usage and Style

Grammar and usage are different. Grammar: how words should be used in sentences. Usage: how words are used in sentences.

It’s Prescriptivist Grammar (this is the way it should be) versus Descriptivist Grammar (this is the way it is.)

Style is how an individual author puts together his or her knowledge of grammar and usage in writing.

A college professor, for example, would use a more formal, politically correct style in presenting his final report to the college president on, “The  Liberalization of the Humanities Department through the Utilization of Descriptivism in Chauvinistic Literature.”

The teenager writing on Internet uses a more informal style: mysterious acronyms that confound mature readers; pop idioms and slang; and improper spelling of there, they’re, and their, and your and you’re.

Here’s an example of a style suggestion from Strunk and White.

Avoid fancy words.

Although Strunk and White’s book does have it gallery of critics, it does offer helpful advice to developing writers. Their advice ranges from elementary rules of usage to the more hard-to-pinpoint style.

Why use a complex word when a simpler word will do? That college professor would do well to tone down his writing. The teenager will hopefully use a bit more formality in his academic writing.

The Last Meow

Hey, humans, why worry about all of this. We cats have our own grammar. The fuss that you make about these sticky details puts me to sleep. Get a life!   Meow for now.   =<^;^>=

Saturday Silliness: Where do cats sleep?

Reblogged from JaniceHeck:

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Where do cats sleep? Like 800-pound gorillas, cats sleep anywhere they want.

Cats pride themselves on NOT being ordinary. They are creative, inventive, independent, unique creatures. They have live-and-let-live attitudes (unless you forget to feed them or interrupt their naps), and they have the most flexible bones in the world. Cats have their own point of view on just about everything.

Read more… 300 more words

S is for Saturday Silliness (on S Day). Popular blog reposted.

K is for Kernel Sentences: Nouns and Verbs Control the World

Today is K-Day in the A to Z Challenge. It is also Friday. Yippee! My kitty friends are happy about that.

Today we will focus on some easy grammar:

kernel sentences.

A kernel sentence is one type of base sentence structure on which longer sentences can be built. It has a pattern that looks like this:

__________________    __________________
Subject                                               Verb

For now, fill in the slots with one noun and one verb and you will have a kernel sentence. These two words can easily be expanded into longer sentences at another time.

One way to do have fun doing this is to write S-V list poems.

Begin with a title, then add specific, present-tense, active verbs to expand the topic. Repeat the title at the end, perhaps adding a twist.

Basketball
Mario dribbles.
Maria screams.
Manuel shoots
Jose dashes.
Jorge pants.
Cole sweats
Larry scores.
Sasha cheers.
Latitia swoons.
Basketball Romance!

Parade
Hands clap.
Feet stomp.
Men march.
Sirens wail.
Balloons float.
Flags wave.
Drummers bang.
Buglers blow.
Ladies dance.
Children cheer.
Popsicles melt.
Lines overflow.
Bodies jive.
Parade

Be creative and have fun with this. Brainstorm topics with students, then let them have a go at it. You will be surprised at the results.

So what. Who cares?

When students get a very firm handle on nouns and verbs, grammatical problems eventually disappear.

Teachers can teach the following concepts in very simple form using kernel sentences. It is much easier to see the patterns in two-word sentences. When students master the concept in the simplest form, they can then move on to expanding sentences.

• subject-verb agreement
• verb tense consistency
• active verbs
• parallel structure
• vocabulary nuances

A firm handle on nouns and verbs will later help students reduce long sentences down to kernel sentences. If students can do this, they will be able to straighten out some of the most common errors.

• sentence fragments
• fused sentences (comma splice)
• run-on sentences
• lack of agreement between subject and verb
• verb tense shifts in sentences
• faulty parallel structure
• punctuation errors

Of course, any programs designed to improve students’ speaking and writing must have lots of opportunity for conversation and creative and academic writing.  Writing subject/verb poems is only one aspect of a much larger focus on language, but it can help those students who are unsure of basic sentence structure concepts.  Spend a few minutes each class on grammatical structures and your students will learn patterns that will help them improve in both speaking (ESOL) and writing.

The Last Meow

I have only one word for you all:

Meow for now.    =<^o^>=

Hyper-Hyphenated Words Make Surprising Adjectives

Hello. It’s H-Day in the A to Z Challenge.

H is for Hyphens

Hyphens have been called lots of names: left-over punctuation marks, “the smallest of the little  horizontal line thingies” (The Grammar Cat), and ”short and sweet” as compared to the dash which is long and lean (Laurie Rozakis, Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grammar and Style).  Laurie Rozakis says that the dash and the hyphen are like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito: Confused so often they are taken for each other.

Sometimes called stacked modifiers, or make-it-up-as-you-go adjectives, these adjectives can be humorous if used sparingly, or annoying if overused. This is a “what-you-may-have-been-wondering-about topic” (Grammar Girl), or maybe not.

They look something like this:

• He has a jump-off-the-page personality.
• We went to a shoot-em-up movie.
• I’m a pretty easy-going, live-and-let-live kinda girl.

Personally, I’m a love-those-hyphenated-compound-adjectives-kind-of-person! Evidently a few other writers like these phrasal adjectives, too. Here are a few samples.

• He is a member of the good-writers-understand-commas crowd.
• …give-me-my-content-through-email people…  Bob Dunn For Bloggers By Bloggers
• … a nice, safe, no-one’s-going-argue-with-this-biography. Kristen Lamb
• the best you-can’t-be-there-but-you-can-attend-anyway virtual event… http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/
• I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-any-more crowd… Judy Dunn, in her former blog Cat’s Eye Writer.
• The uses-too-many-silly-hyphens-for-added-effect woman…  Grammar Girl

So What. Who Cares?

Of course, these stacked adjectives can get silly if they are overused, but somehow, just once-in-awhile, a stacked adjective does the job.    This one, for example:  “my good-for-nothing, pot-smoking, boyfriend-of-the-moment…” (Heather Marie Adkins). Now that one just gets right to the point.

The Last Meow

Now to the really important stuff. Here’s how to make cat faces on your very own keyboard. How’s that for a neat cat trick?

=<^ . ^>=   Meow for now.

What’s your favorite hyphenated stacked modifier?

Ten Middle Grade Books that Reflect the US Immigration Experience by Natalie Dias Lorenzi

Reblogged from Nerdy Book Club:

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Like any school librarian, I’m always looking for books that will connect with my students. There’s nothing like reading a new book and thinking, “Yes! I know just the child who will love this book...”

But at the elementary school where I teach outside of Washington, DC, matching books with kids isn’t always easy.  Eighty-eight percent of my students speak a language other than English, most read below grade level as they acquire English as a second or third language, and the vast majority are immigrants or children of immigrants.

Read more… 1,491 more words

With the current diversity in our schools, teachers need resources that will encourage empathy and understanding of the political issues related to immigration as well as the social and emotional aspects of it. These books present immigration issues from the childrens' point of view. This excellent list will be useful to librarians, teachers, and parents.

Guinigi Tower, Lucca

Reblogged from I like photo..!:

Lucca, Italy. An amazing town. Post coming soon.

How I became an honourary Italian (Guest Post)

Reblogged from The Blissful Adventurer:

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**The Blissful Adventurer is running about Italy at the moment so in his stead we happily endorse and support the work of the following blogger, Conor Bofin of One Man's Meat. Please check out this post, leave comments for exchange with the author, and give their blog a read.**

I am posting here with Michael because it is an excellent thing to do.

Read more… 791 more words

The true story of fish and chips...by Conor Bofin, Honourary Italian (guest post on The Blissful Adventurer) in Michael's absense (the cad is in Italy again). National fish and chips day-May 30.