A to Z Challenge, 2014: Hyperventilating on Hyphens

Oh Heck! More Quirky Writing Errors

June Casagrande, author of Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies, titles her chapter about hyphens this way:

Hyphens: Life-Sucking, Mom-and Apple-Pie-Hating, Mime-Loving, Nerd-Fight-Inciting Daggers of the Damned

Many people would agree with that assessment. There are just too many rules for hyphens.

Hyphens get nine full pages of coverage in the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS). Following an introduction of nine general principles, CMOS then lists out over 100 specific points related to words or phrases that need or don’t hyphens. That sounds like enough to make you hyperventilate. Let’s try to simplify some of that.

***

My sister just sent me a childhood picture of the six girls in my family. This picture makes me smile.

Back row L to R: Joyce, Joanne, Shirley.
Front row L to R: Beverley, Judie, Janice

I can only guess at our ages in the picture: eighteen-year-old Joyce, seventeen-year-old Joanne, fourteen-year-old Shirley, eleven-year-old Beverley, seven-year-old Judie, and little five-year-old me.

Note three things about these ages:

1. Use hyphens on ages. Omission of hyphens on ages is a common error in the drafts of articles for our community newsletter.
2. Newspapers generally use numerals for ages according to their own style sheet. Use the style of the publication for which you are writing.
   9-year-old brother
   11-year-old sister
   3-year-old bobcat
3. When talking about an age group, use a hyphen and space after the first age group:
   The five- to ten-year-olds had a field day at the park.
   The school has classes for three-, four-, and five-year-old children.

…talking to a classroom of six-year-olds about dinosaurs definitely beats talking to a room full of adults about politics.   WE ARE TEACHERS    (blog), “12 Reasons Teachers Have the Best Job in the World”

Why add hyphens when using numbers?  To ensure clarity.

eleven year olds  or  eleven-year-olds

Is it eleven children who are each one-year-old, or is one child who is eleven-years-old? The hyphens clarify.

Other ages:  five-and-a-half-year-old girl, four-month-old baby, seventy-five-year-old man

Note: if the age comes after the noun, do not use hyphens.

The baby is four months old.
Sarah is ten years old.
The gentleman is seventy-five years old. (Use the hyphen on the compound number only.)

Use Hyphens On Time:

The fourteen-year-old girl took a four-week class on babysitting at the YMCA.

photo credit: commons.wikipedia.org

How about making spaghetti sauce? How long should you cook it?

But for those cooks in the know, breaking down a Jersey tomato into a five-hour sauce is a no-no….Blasphemy,” says Robert Bell, executive chef of the group that runs Gourmet Italian Cuisine, The Carriage House catering hall and Sweet Gourmet Bakery, all in Galloway Township (NJ). “A good Jersey tomato you just eat like an apple, in my opinion.”      Felicia Compian, “Gourmet for the Whole Family,”  The Press of Atlantic City,  July 23, 2013:

Use Hyphens On Sizes:  

a nine-by-twelve rug

Use Hyphens and Numerals on Measurements
12-story, stainless steel model of the Earth
10-foot-tall ladder

How much is civic pride worth? In Whatley, Mass., at least $650. That’s how much the local historical society spent to refurbish a 20-foot-tall concrete milk jug in the middle of town. The group felt it important the bottle be in tip-top shape because it’s the “symbol of Whatly.”   AP news brief, “Milk makeover,” The Press of Atlantic City, NJ, July 23, 2013

Use Hyphens On Compound Numbers from Twenty-one through Ninety-nine.

twenty-four,    thirty-three,      ninety-two,       two hundred ninety-two,    five hundred

Be sure to check the style guidelines for different genres to see how numbers whether numbers should be spelled out. Newspapers generally spell out numbers from one to nine, but even that is not consistent with all newspapers. Otherwise, write out numbers above 100.

On fractions:    one-quarter , one-half, two-thirds majority, half-inch

The boys ate three-quarters of the pizza before dinner.

Hyphenated words can be tricky, but if you develop an eye for them by finding them in your reading material, you will master them. For review, read my previous posts on hyphens:
D is for Deep-Fried Hyphens
F is for Freshly Squeezed Adverbs
G is for Gobs of Hyphens Used Correctly

And just for fun, here is a picture of my mother and her sisters. Mom is top row, third person.

***

Your turn: What quirky errors do you find in writing? Which ones annoy you the most?

***
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator and now nitpicky editor of On the Horizon, a bi-monthly community newsletter for Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, NJ.

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A to Z Challenge, 2014: G is for Gobs of Hyphens Used Correctly

 

Oh Heck! More Quirky Writing Errors

What do writers and brown bears have in common?

Photo credit: http://www.naturalwow.blogspot.com

I could probably come up with some good analogies, but the truth is that I found gobs of hyphenated words in two different articles (one a blog post on writing, the other a newspaper article about brown bears) and wanted to share them in this post. See my previous articles about hyphenated words here:

D is for Deep-Fried Hyphens

F is for Freshly Squeezed Adverbs

Phrasal adjectives that need a hyphen

attention-getting commercial
cost-prohibitive place
front-row seat
high-definition webcam
mate-swapping brown bears
multi-published, bestselling authors
recently-discovered secret
post-deadline catatonic stupor
in-person conference
pre-conference panic attack
worst-case scenario

Jami Gold, “Insights from Bestselling Authors”  (blog post)

Even in the worst-case scenario, where we’re receiving rejections because we’re not yet “good enough,” we can study writing craft and change our fate.

Several multi-published, bestselling authors let me pick their brains and shared great advice (including Christie, Mary, Calista Fox, Erin Quinn, Morgan Kearns, and Jennifer Ashley).

“Famed Katmai National Park (Alaska) brown bears ready for season 2” by Mark Thiessen, Associated Press, The Press of Atlantic City, July, 2013.

A high-definition webcam captures a brown bear as it climbs on top of Brooks Falls for a better angle at salmon swimming upstream in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. (photo caption)

Stars snarling at each other, mate-swapping dominant males posturing and establishing their territory.”

Katmai is a cost-prohibitive place to visit…

The new (web) camera is at eye-level of the bears…

Here are more compound adjectives (phrasal adjectives) I gathered from today’s newspaper:

four-level appeals
year-end numbers
Grammy-award-winning singer
non-security-related problems
in-store sales
high-end groceries
anti-freedom crowd
same-sex marriage
inner-city neighborhoods
long-term lease
solar-panel array
post-traumatic stress
tax-rate increase
world-class education
tax-lien sales
Twitter-like network

More examples of adverbs ending in -ly that do not need a hyphen

frequently asked questions
freshly made pastas
gently used items
randomly generated questions
highly regarded citizen

Examples of adverbs not ending in -ly that need hyphens

little-known facts
well-qualified buyers
low-paying jobs
hard-earned money
less-educated workers
best-known writer

Here’s a final thought from the Oxford University Press style manual

“If you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.”

Your turn: What quirky errors do you find in writing? Which ones annoy you the most?

**
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator and now nitpicky editor of On the Horizon, a bi-monthly community newsletter for Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, NJ.

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A to Z Challenge, 2014: Freshly Squeezed Adverbs

Oh Heck! Another Quirky Writing Error

I recently went to a street fair in Summerville, South Carolina, and amused myself by taking pictures of people and signs.

I was a bit hungry and drooled over the deep-fried Oreos, the deep-fried mushrooms, and the hand-dipped corn dogs, but I resisted their high-calorie goodness. (Note the correct hyphen use on these popular street-fair snacks. I wrote about hyphens in “Deep-Fried Hyphens.”)

Street-fair snacks: hand-dipped fried mushrooms and hand-dipped corn dogs, among other things.

I considered having a cool drink to quench my thirst.  I checked the signs and found that I could have

Fresh Squeezed Lemonade

 

Freshly Squeezed Lemonade

Fresh Brewed Iced Tea or Fresh Squeezed Lemonade

Hmmm. It got me wondering about hyphen use again. Which of these drinks is listed correctly? Should it be fresh squeezed lemonade or should it be freshly squeezed lemonade? And do either of these need a hyphen? The answers to these questions have to do with adjectives and adverbs.

Adjectives modify or describe nouns. Multiple-word descriptors before a noun require a hyphen to clarify meaning.

deep-fried Oreos
deep-fried mushrooms
deep-fried artichokes
hand-dipped corndogs

Adverbs with -ly endings modify verbs and do not get hyphens.

But now, here come the adverbs. Adverbs do not follow the same add-a-hyphen rule, primarily because the adverb makes the meaning of the phrase clear without any help from a hyphen, thank you very much.

• Freshly squeezed orange juice.

The juice has recently been squeezed from the oranges. Freshly modifies squeezed (past participle), telling us when the juice was squeezed.

But wait, in this next example, fresh modifies orange juice, a noun, making its use okay as well.

• Fresh, squeezed orange juice.

In this case, fresh modifies orange juice (fresh orange juice) making its use without a hyphen okay. It is fresh juice, and it is squeezed juice. A comma makes it clearer.

Here are examples of -ly adverbs correctly written without a hyphen.

**  recently discovered secret
**  freshly baked bread
**  freshly brewed tea
**  freshly pieced quilts
**  newly discovered ores
**  freshly picked veggies
**  brightly lit sign
**  highly paid officer

Now, just to confuse things, you use hyphens with some adverbs, (much-deserved vacation, well-known author), but I’ll write more about this in another post.

If you want to read more about orange juice, you can read this article: Freshly Squeezed: The Truth about Orange Juice in Boxes.

And you might want to try this recipe for Fresh Squeezed Lemonade.

Space invaders would probably get all of these hyphens mixed up, but wait, they can try the Alien Sippers: fresh lemonade that happens to be from squeezed lemons.

But who worries about hyphens on a hot day at a street fair while drinking cool lemonade or orange juice. Well, me. Obviously.

Your turn: What quirky errors do you find in writing? Which ones annoy you the most?

**
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator, blogger, wannabe photographer, and now nitpicky editor of On the Horizon, a bi-monthly community newsletter for Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, NJ.

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A to Z Challenge, 2014: E is for Extra Exclamation Ecstasy

Oh Heck! Another Quirky Writing Error

When I was in high school so many long years ago, my girlfriends and I loved to dot the letter -i- with little circles or hearts as an expression of our creativity and independence. The boys thought we were just being show-offs and teased us, but we just laughed at them and their own sloppy writing.

Another fad was to use an excess of exclamation points at ends of sentences in love notes, letters, essays, and reports, or other homework assignments.

Sally loves Johnny!!         Sally loves Harry!!!        Sally loves Joey!!!!   

Sally loves Sam!!!!!

Cute, but oh so high school. Definitely not cute in adult writing.

Here’s the rule:

An exclamation point at the end of a sentence indicates strong emotions or high volume. It can also be used at the end of ironic statements. The Chicago Manual of Style states that exclamation points should be used sparingly to be effective.

F. Scott Fitzgerald reportedly disliked exclamation points and urged writers to cut them out of their writing. “An exclamation mark,” he supposedly said, “is like laughing at your own joke.”

Genevieve Graham, in a blog post on entitled “Hurray a Blog about Excess Exclamation Points. How Exciting!” suggested that the ultimate function of an exclamation mark is “to provide an editor with one more thing to delete or replace.”

However, if you really want to be cutesy on special occasions, here’s a font you can use

http://www.dafont.com/sweetie-pie.font

Your turn: What quirky errors do you find in writing? Which ones annoy you the most?
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator and now nitpicky editor of On the Horizon, a bi-monthly community newsletter for Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, NJ.

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A to Z Challenge, 2014: D is for Deep-fried Hyphens

Oh Heck! Another Quirky Writing Error

Hyphens can be troublesome little pipsqueaks. You see them used incorrectly just about as often as you see them used correctly.

Today I went down to the 42^nd Annual Flowertown Festival in Summerville, South Carolina, a street fair that covered many blocks on Main Street and much of downtown Azalea Park. The gorgeous azaleas, already in full bloom, filled the park with pinks, lavenders, and whites. Showy dogwoods displayed their white flowers. Beautiful flowers and beautiful weather. Perfect for the festival.

Street vendors lined the streets and park pathways: arts and crafts, ornamental garden décor and wooden outdoor furniture, flowers and veggies, jellies and sauces, doggie leashes and outfits, gourmet foods and hand-made soaps, and much more. Food vendors claimed their share of the festival real estate, too.

And among the usual hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken-on-a-stick food vendors, I found the following items for sale: deep fried Oreos, deep fried Twinkies, deep fried Snickers, deep fried peaches, and deep fried apple fries (all minus a required hyphen).

Being a picky editor, I cringed about the spelling/usage, but I still ate a deep-fried Oreo, snickering all the while about the lack of hyphen.

Here’s the rule.

In a multi-word adjective (phrasal adjectives), when each word by itself does not describe the noun, you must use a hyphen.

These high-calorie yummies are neither “deep Oreos” nor “fried Oreos,” but “deep-fried Oreos” (Oreo cookies that have been submersed in hot oil and fried). Therefore the multi-word adjective should have a hyphen: you need both deep and fried together to describe this yucky incredible treat.

Obviously, rules for hyphens do not apply at street festivals, county fairs, zoos, and other food-filled outdoor activities!

Here’s the corrected, but definitely unhealthy menu:

deep-fried Oreos
deep-fried Twinkies
deep-fried Snickers
deep-fried peaches
deep-fried apple fries..

Here’s to your health!

Your turn:  What quirky errors do you find in writing? Which ones annoy you the most?
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator and now nitpicky editor of On the Horizon, a bi-monthly community newsletter for Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, NJ.

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A to Z Challenge, 2014: C is for Calendar Quirks

Oh Heck! Another Quirky Writing Error

Important date coming up on my calendar: April 4th, my birthday. Nothing quirky about that! But in our house, April is Birthday Month with little presents arriving daily. (Hmmm, maybe I could extend this to Birthday Season. I’ll try that idea out on my husband. I’m sure he’ll agree.

The cats always manage to sneak into this blog! They are shameless in their desire for attention.  Photo: sugar delicious online

Seriously, though, one error that pops up frequently in draft articles for our community newsletter is the use of capital letters on the seasons.

Names of months, days of the week, and holidays all begin with capital letters, but, alas, the generic four seasons do not receive any special recognition so do not get capital letters.

When you write for academic or journalistic purposes write your seasons like this: spring, summer, fall (and autumn), and winter.

Of course, there are times when you should capitalization the seasons.
1. When it is the first word in a sentence or quote. (Duh.)
**  Summer is my favorite time of the year, but winter in Florida is nice, too.
**  Many of us use a mnemonic device to help us remember when to change our clocks for Daylight Savings Time, “Spring ahead; fall behind.”

“Spring has sprung,
The grass has riz.
I wonder where the flowers iz.”

2. On titles of articles
**  Here is an article that does it right: “Spring Equinox Desert Reborn.” A season is capitalized in the title but not in the body of the article.

3. When it is part of a formal title
**  Winter Olympics
**  Autumnal Equinox Celebration & Official Farm-to-Fork Week Kick-off (Soil Born Farms, Sacramento, CA)
**  Spring Semester 2014
**  2014 Spring Jazz Fest, Cape May, New Jersey

Sorry,  summer vacation, though it is, indeed, a very special time of the year for many people, does not merit a capital letter.

4. In poetry, when a season is given human qualities (personification).

The Greeks and Romans and other ancients loved the seasons, often attributing human qualities to them, a technique called personification,  and when they did, they used capital letters.

This second century limestone mosaic depicting Summer and Medusa, wearing a crown of wheat stems, can be seen at the National Archaeological Museum, Madrid, Spain.

This second century Tunisian mosaic features Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter (in the four corners) garbed in seasonal attire. This piece can be viewed at the Bardo Museum, Tunisia.

 

Finally, remember, in the most common usages of the seasons in writing, do not use capital letters.

Your turn:  What quirky errors do you find in writing? Which ones annoy you the most?
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator and now nitpicky editor of On the Horizon, a bi-monthly community newsletter for Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, NJ.

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A to Z Challenge, 2014. B is for BBQ and Buffalo Chips

Oh Heck! Another Quirky Writing Error

On Monday night, we celebrated (okay, we didn’t celebrate, we mourned) the end of our second snowbird stay in Florida by having dinner at Hogbody’s Bar and Grill in North Fort Myers, Florida.

As you might guess, Hogbody’s is not an elegant restaurant. Rather, it has, shall we say, a somewhat western look with red and white siding, a weathered-white porch, white wooden benches and red folding chairs for waiting guests, and rails for tying up your horses. And for more fun, right next door is the Horsin’ Around Deli.

Of course, we all know that a fancy setting is not necessary for eating good barbecue. Some of the best barbecue joints are tin shacks down in the deep South or smoky pavilions alongside a country road.

All the tomfoolery at Hogbody’s got me thinking about all the variations in spelling of barbecue: BarBQue, Bar-B-Q, Barbeque, bar-be-cue, barbeque, Barbq, or just Barbie. And don’t forget the abbreviations of barbecue: BBQ, B-B-Q, bbg, and Bbq. It probably has a many spelling variations as Albuquerque!

Despite all these differences in spelling, the official, correct spelling is barbecue. But who cares? Regardless of whether you use the most popular variation (BBQ) or the official correct spelling, barbecue is just finger-lickin’ good.

Just for fun, I had to try the buffalo chips and the fried dill pickles. Buffalo chips? Yes. Deep-fried slices of baked potatoes smothered in melted cheese. Oh my, the calories, but oh, so good. Of course you could also try sweet corn fritters, fried okra, and fried green tomatoes along with your rack of ribs. A veritable country feast!

By the way, if you want to have some good country fun, check out Hogbody’s Annual Wing Eating Contest and Lawnmower Tug-o-war Contest in mid-September. What could be more fun than that?

And remember to get your Hogbody’s T-shirt. My husband loves his. It’s real uptown.

Oh, and don’t forget the correct spelling of barbecue. Hogbody’s knows both how to spell it and how to cook up some mean barbecue ribs.

Your turn:  What quirky errors do you find in writing? Which ones annoy you the most?

=<^;^>=
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator and now nitpicky editor of On the Horizon, a bi-monthly community newsletter for Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, NJ.

A to Z Challenge 2014: A is for Ampersands. Right or Wrong?

A to Z Challenge: Oh Heck! Quirky Errors in Writing

Pretty, aren’t they? Ampersands can be artsy and fanciful depending on the fonts you use and the purpose you have in mind.

But beauty aside, how useful are they? And why do I call the use of ampersands  a quirky error in writing?

Ampersands are twisty little symbols that look somewhat like the salty pretzels (Auntie Annie’s Ampersands?) that you buy at the mall.

The ampersand is shorthand for the word “and.” Blame this funny little symbol on the Roman scribes of the first century AD who chiseled lofty inscriptions on their blocks of marble, joining two letters to save a bit of room on their fine craftmanship. After all, you wouldn’t want to shortchange an emperor would you? The consequences could be deadly!

Despite its noble and historic beginnings, the ampersand  has persisted through the centuries to modern times even though we rarely write on marble these days.

Today the ampersand has its friends and foes, each arguing eloquently for why or why it shouldn’t be used in writing. That little mark has blogs, books, and websites dedicated to it. Who would have guessed that this little squiggly would have such power?

Well, friends and foes of the ampersand, there are times to use the ampersand correctly and times when it should not be used at all.

Now the ampersand is fine on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest;  in thank-you notes to your mom or loaded missiles to your significant other; on attention-getting T-shirts and tattoos on your pecs and abs; and even on the doodles you draw in the margins of your notebook in your boring stimulating English class. But, please, don’t use ampersands in more formal writing of term papers, journal or newsletter articles, or fiction or non-fiction books.

Being a picky newsletter editor, I get irritated when I see the ampersand in articles repeatedly substituted for the perfectly fine “and.” Why bother to reach up and hit shift and the number 7 key to type an ampersand (&) when you could type the word and just as quickly and be done with it.

Yet, to be fair, there are times when the ampersand may be desired and even required!
1.  On book titles:
**  Marty & Me,
**  Eats, Shoots & Leaves,
**  Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers
**  The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent the Eager, & the Doomed

And now a book whose characters are influenced by the ampersand:
**   & Sons, by a novel by David Gilbert about a reclusive writer who wrote a YA novel called Ampersand. (It’s a bit tricky doing a search on a book title that begins with an ampersand! Hint: Put in the author’s name and the title.)
2. On movie titles:
**  “The Truth about Cats & Dogs”
**  “Fast and Furious”
**  “Batman & Robin”
3. On the legal name of companies:
**  AT&T,    Johnson & Johnson,   New Haven & Hartford Railroad, Ben & Jerry’s, Barnes & Noble
4. On names of clubs and institutions:
**  Texas A&M, Boys & Girls Club of America
5. On movie credits where the use of the ampersand attempts to show levels of input each scriptwriter has had in the development of the screenplay. Look for it in the credits the next time you go to the movies.
6. In bibliographies in cases where the & is part of the official title or publisher’s name (as in the examples above).
7. In trendy graphics designs. (Trend-setters can get away with almost anything. Let them have their fun!)

Hungry now? How about a nice salty pretzel ampersand? Mustard or cheese with that ampersand?

 

Your turn:  What quirky errors do you find in writing? Which ones annoy you the most?

=<^&^>=
Janice Hall Heck is a retired educator and now nitpicky editor of On the Horizon, a bi-monthly community newsletter for Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, NJ.

A to Z Challenge, 2014: Oh, Heck! Another Quirky Writing Error

April has been called the “cruellest month,” (T.S.Eliot) but I can’t agree with that. First of all, it is my birthday month (30 days of presents!), the month where spring actually warms up my home state (NJ), and the month where crocuses and daffodils fight the dregs of the cold winter by pushing up through the crusty ground.   And every April a new A to Z Challenge comes along. Being a person who can never pass up a good challenge, I have awakened my blog from its winter doldrums to announce my participation in the 2014 A to Z Challenge. The A to Z Challenge asks participants to write 26 posts in the month of April, one for each day of the week, Sundays off. The fun is in reading all the other great blog posts written by more than 1600 bloggers in this challenge.

My Theme for A to Z 2014:    Oh, Heck! Another Quirky Writing Error (WR)

I edit a bi-monthly community newsletter entitled On the Horizon, the official newsletter of Horizons at Woods Landing, Mays Landing, New Jersey, a 55+ community. While On the Horizon is just a little community rag, the newsletter committee endeavors to produce an error-free publication. Errors, however, being as devilish as they are, occasionally creep into our pages while we are not looking. Even so, we manage to trash the most egregious ones before the newsletter goes to press. I will pick on some of these quirky errors for this blog challenge.

My first blog post for the 2014 A to Z will be “A is for Ampersands. Right or Wrong?”

Can these cute little guys cause problems in writing? You betcha.

Ampersands? Yes. Ampersands can be used correctly, but they also can be used incorrectly. Read my first post on April 1 to see the difference. The Last Meow As always, my kitties will sometimes fuss about me always stealing the show, so they may demand to write a post now and then. I like to humor them, so I give in once in a while. Spoiled brats! Right now they are negotiating for the letter C. I can’t imagine what they want to write about. (See a CatFurDay Commentary here for a sample of their wit.)

NO, the blog-fame does not go to my head. It’s just sunny out. Okay? And I am NOT a spoiled brat, so there, Missy Jan!

Meow for now. =<^&^>= Sign up for 2014 A to Z Challenge here: http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-to-z-challenge-sign-uplist-2014.html

See more info on A to Z 2014 at: http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/a-to-z-challenge-sign-uplist-2014.html#sthash.vJ462t2y.dpuf

#WANAFriday. Newly Discovered: Cee’s Photo Challenges

Today’s (9/6) WANAFriday prompt comes from Rabia Abbasi Gale

A New Discovery. It could be a recently discovered great author, band, or TV show. It could be a great walking route, an out-of-the-way antique store, or a perfect reading/writing nook. It could be a writing tip or a blogging trick. Share an exciting new discovery with us!

I like blog challenges such as the A to Z Blog Challenge that runs every April. The first A to Z I joined two years ago got me into regular blogging. I enjoyed the challenge of posting once a day for a month and met many new talented bloggers.  I joined the 2013 A to Z Blog Challenge and completed that, too. Blogging has become a habit, and I recently passed my 200 posts milestone.

The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is fun, too. I enjoy coming up with my answer to the prompt, and then looking at the other creative, ingenious, talented photographers and their photo entries.

But recently I have discovered another photo challenge blog: Cee’s Photography: My Life in Photos

Cee’s Photography: Fun Foto Challenge

Cee posts a new Fun Foto Challenge every Tuesday. See the list of sample topics below.

Click on the highlighted link to see entries in each challenge. Upcoming challenges are not highlighted until photographers post entries.

• Upcoming:  Brown
• Upcoming:  Soft Pastels
• Upcoming:  White and Purple
• Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: All One Color   Here’s my entry for the All One Color challenge:

Basket of pomegranates at a street market in Ein Karem, Israel

• Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Blue and Yellow
• Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Liquids
• Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge:  Houses
• Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge:  Anything that Lights
• Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge:  Seating
• Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge:  Locks, Knobs and Handles

Cee’s Photography: Black and White Challenge

Every other Wednesday, Cee posts a new black-and-white photo challenge. See a list of a few upcoming challenges below.

• Upcoming:  Sculpture, Statues, Carvings
• Upcoming:  Close Ups
• Upcoming:  Animals
• Upcoming:  Abandoned or Alone
• Cee’s Black & White Challenge: Your Favorite Thing or Things to Photograph

Cee’s Photography: Which Way Challenge : New challenge posted every other  Wednesday.

Ways we travel and beautify our world.

• Roads:  gravel, asphalt, cobbled, dirt,
• Freeway, Expressway, Highway
• Bridges (any view)
• Sidewalks
• Indoor Walkways:  hallways, aisles, people movers, breezeway
• Paths:  walking, bicycling
• Stairs, Escalators, or Steps:  indoors, outdoors

Cee’s Share Your World Challenge

Cee posts a new challenge in this category every Monday. She asks four questions each week that can be answered in words or pictures.

This week’s Share Your World questions are:

• If life was ‘just a bowl of cherries’…which fruit would you rather be?
• If you could witness or physically attend any event past, present or future, what would it be?
• If you could know the answer to any question, besides “What is the meaning of life?”, what would it be?
• If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Writing prompts tend to get a bad name in the instructional world (“let them write creatively and from their own experiences!”), but real writers know that prompts can be just the ticket to get you on to new lines of thinking and creativity. I hope you check out these photo challenges and discover how much fun they can be!

P.S. Check out these other #WANAfriday Discoveries by my WANAmates:

• Cora Ramos, All Those Pretty Aps (smart phone)
• Liv Rancourt, Discovery: What Does the Fox Say?
• Rabia Gale, A New to Me Author (Mary Stewart)
• Ellen Gregory, 10 Rules for Writing First Drafts

The Last Meow

Well, I don’t think I’d like a bowl of cherries. How about a bowl of kibbies? That would make me happy and help fulfill my life’s goals (eat, play, sleep).

Meow for now.  =<^ ! ^>=