NYTimes.com’s most looked-up words for 2011

Interesting to see what words most people don't know; but the thrust of the article is that the words tend to have such negative connotations. 

Is this because the world is a miserable place? Or the NY Times' outlook is sour? Or, more positively, that we know more difficult happy words than we do sad ones?

NYTimes.com's most looked-up words for 2011: Even more morose than last year's list
http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/07/nytimes-coms-most-looked-up-words-for-2011-even-more-morose-than-last-years-list/

Awful Opening Sentences competition

How not to. But here, deliberately, and funny.

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2011.htm

An Uh, Er, Um Essay

Looks like it's not so great to be umless... Sometimes filled pauses are useful for more than just buying you thinking time.

http://www.slate.com/id/2299739

N-grams and terrorism

What's being tracked here? Language, culture, or history? 

Google Ngrams viewer is a powerful tool, though its results are prone to error and open to interpretation. As the writer notes at the end of the article, this is just 'playing around' rather than hard data. 

More terrorist N-grams | Fully (sic)
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/fullysic/2011/07/28/more-terrorist-n-grams/

Decoding Your E-Mail Personality

Cool piece on forensic linguistics. 

Decoding Your E-Mail Personality - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24gray.html?_r=1

Aftercrimes, Geoslavery & Thermogeddon

Neologisms ahoy!

Aftercrimes, Geoslavery & Thermogeddon: Lexicographer Erin McKean's TEDBook on New Words
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/07/22/erin-mckean-tedbook/

British Library's new website

BL have a new homepage just gone live. Check it out here:

THE BRITISH LIBRARY - The world's knowledge

Top 12 Internet Acronyms?

Here's an interesting, and I dare say typical, collection of 'Internet acronyms'. 

For a starter they're not all strictly acronyms, but we'll let that pass. The context given is a teenager communicating with a parent - but as the article dimly concedes, not all these terms are appropriate for a teenager to use. 

Whilst BFF is young-girl talk, several of these are from online PC games played predominantly by young boys (and not-so-young men). Many are from rather older discussion boards used by significantly older engineers, techies and computer scientists. 

There's a tendency to treat 'internet' language as if it's one thing. But just like 'I found it on the internet' is about as specific as 'I found it in the world', so 'internet language' is increasingly as unhelpful a term as 'people language'. 

Top 12 Useful Internet Acronyms
http://www.grammar.net/acronyms

Video: Typography about language

Wise words by Taylor Mali. 

Typography about language by Ronnie Bruce
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kdrsPRZnK8

The 'Grammar' of Comics

Actually, it's more the graphology and style guide of comics, but this is still a very well-observed description of comics' linguistic conventions.

Blambot Comic Fonts and Lettering
http://www.blambot.com/grammar.shtml

A Guide To Potterisms

I'm sure you'll be familiar with these. Are they crossovers into everyday life?

A Guide To Potter-isms: Wizardspeak In Translation : Monkey See
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/07/15/137854047/a-guide-to-potter-isms-wizardspeak-in-translation

Million-dollar manuscripts

Oxford's Bodleian library just bought an unfinished manuscript of an unpublished novel by Jane Austen - for a very large sum of money indeed. This is perhaps of more literary than linguistic interest - but at this site, you can read facsimiles and transcripts of Austen's writing, which reveals the corrections and editing Austen went through when drafting. It's also a good example of early 19th-century English, for A2 study. 

Home
http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/index.html