Hey, smarty pants! It is reported that 90% of those who try, mispronounce the words in this poem. Can you do better?
This will get you started:
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Good luck!
Grammar police
TRENDING: Greatest Show on Earth: The Hur report hearing
I confess I do it all the time, resisting the temptation to publicly correct social media posts.
It amazes me to see the multitude of posts and emails that contain misspellings, bad grammar, wrong verb tense, lack of appropriate punctuation and much more. Granted, a certain percentage of these likely are the result of the "auto-correct" feature that overrides one's intended message. Like this one:
"Fuzzy caterpillar sighting. Weather productions?"
Obviously the writer wanted to say "predictions," but that doggone auto-correct subverted her. Yet fear not, grammar-freaks! There's help!
Grammarly has a Facebook page featuring a treasure trove of humorous helpful tips to help make you appear smarter to your readers. (Can you tell I love Grammarly? It's the most user friendly writing app I've come across – and it's free!)
For example, punctuation:
How to select the right word when they all sound the same:
Here's a pet peeve of mine – when someone pronounces or writes "heigth" when they should instead use the proper word "height." Another language misuse frequently seen:
Grammarly is using the occasion of World Teachers' Day (October 5th) to draw attention to the important role teachers play in our society: "Celebrate your favorite teacher on World Teachers Day."
And while we're getting wordy ... looking toward the October 13 Democratic presidential candidate debate, Grammarly has taken to social media to analyze how well the candidates' supporters debated on Facebook.
Metrics were gathered from both Democratic and Republican supporters. Preliminary results showed:
- Of 19 spots, the top five were held by supporters of Democratic candidates
- Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton's supporters were tied in 5th place
- Democratic supporters' vocabularies were 22.4% richer than their Republican counterparts
Grammarly will release the complete study this week.
Twitterers rejoice!
"Twitter May Allow Users to Publish More Than 140 Characters," reads the headline of a recent report in Variety.
The familiar 140-character limit has been in effect since Twitter's inception. It appears the new capability will be separate from the existing Twitter app, allowing users to publish long-form content on Twitter.
According to Recode.net, Twitter execs "have been openly discussing the idea of tweaking how Twitter measures its 140-character limit by removing things like links and user handles from the count, multiple sources say. In the past, Twitter has tinkered with the limit in other ways. Twitter Cards are still beholden to the 140-character limit but are intended to help people (and advertisers) share lots of information, and Twitter added a "retweet with comment" option in April to give people more room to comment on tweets they share. The company also lifted the 140-character rule on private messages back in June."
Factoid: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has opened a Twitter account. His cleverly appropriate and succinct inaugural tweet last Tuesday: "Can you hear me now?".
Who does Snowden "follow"? Just one account: The NSA.
Within 24 hours, Snowden had more than a million Twitter followers. Me among them!
British newspaper Guardian posted a list of Twitter firsts, including this "Shortest, sweetest greeting:"
@BigBird The 8ft 2in Sesame Street resident was a bird of few words, opening in February with: "Tweet?"
An enchanting Church of Trees
It took someone four years to create this nature masterpiece!
The backstory: New Zealand native Brian Cox owns a company that relocates and replants large trees. After traveling the world studying houses of worship, he returned home and began building a tree house, but not the kind you'd imagine.
Cox used steel frames to build the support structure for a variety of trees and plants which would house a worship church. He was careful to construct it so that the canopy allowed in sunlight to illuminate the church. It takes more than eight hours of pruning and mowing to keep it presentable for visitors. The church is open to the public.
Witch city is that?
My hometown of Salem, Massachusetts has officially opened its creaking hasp-clasped doors for Halloween.
The "Witch City" is in the throes of welcoming thousands of thrill seekers who are heading to Halloween headquarters. The city has a permanent monument of "Samantha the Witch," lead character from the TV show Bewitched, anchoring its town square.
During the month of October, "frightful" festivities get underway, climaxing with an Official Salem Witches' Costume Ball on Halloween. Salemites are understanably ambivalent about the 250,000 who descend upon the compact, historic coastal city. Snarled traffic and crowded shopping can be a challenge to those without broomsticks. To read about it and view some of the pics they're posting, head to this Facebook page. But beware! It can be a bit, uh ... spooky.