“Avoid for Avert. ‘By displaying a light the skipper avoided a collision.’ To avoid is to shun; the skipper could have avoided a collision only by getting out of the way.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
“How many Pulitzer Prizes did Eugene O’Neill win? Four, for Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), and Long Day’s Journey into Night (1957).”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Relative Pronoun: A pronoun that connects a dependent clause to a main clause in a sentence: who, whom, whose, which, that, whoever, whomever, whichever and whatever.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Balance of terror: Mutual fear of commencing a nuclear war, a concept which postulates that no country will use nuclear weapons because of the fear of retaliation by the other side. Such a balance has been held because nuclear war, believed to be mutually destructive, would be non-productive to the aggressor. However, the concept is now questioned by proponents of a ‘limited’ nuclear war who believed that the use of nuclear weapons can be closely controlled and restricted to certain areas without provoking massive retaliation.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
“Relative Clause: A clause introduced by a relative pronoun, such as who, which, that, or by a relative adverb, such as where, when, why.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“Avocation for Vocation. A vocation is, literally, a calling; that is, a trade or profession. An avocation is something that calls one away from it. If I say that farming is some one’s avocation I mean that he practices it, not regularly, but at odd times.”
Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage
“Expressionism: Art in which the emotions of an artist are paramount and take precedence over a rational and faithful-to-life rendering of subject matter. Expressionist compositions and forms therefore tend toward distortion and exaggeration, as in the art of El Greco. In modern art, expressionism is associated with German movements of the early 20th century, especially in Die Brucke and Der Blaue Reiter, which are usually referred to as German expressionism. In the Americas expressionism was embraced by Mexican muralists searching for a national style that incorporated European and pre-Columbian elements. See neo-expressionism.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Academic problem: A learning difficulty, usually in a schoolchild, that does not amount to a learning disability.”
Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
“Balance of payments Macroeconomic term to denote the balance between a nation’s expenditure on imports and its receipts from exports, including invisible imports and exports. If the receipts from exports exceed the cost of imports, the balance is said to be in surplus: if vice versa it is in deficit. It is possible, and is often the case in the UK, to have a deficit balance on visible trade and a surplus balance on invisible trade. The sum of the two balances is known as the ‘balance on current account.’
A deficit can be financed by loans from abroad or by using national gold and foreign currency reserves to finance foreign payments which cannot be met any other way. However, if a deficit persists a government has to readjust permanently the pattern of trade. This may be done: (1) by reducing the value of its currency, making exports cheaper to foreigners and imports dearer, thereby discouraging demand for them; (2) by exchange controls, making it difficult to convert its own currency into foreign currency, thereby restricting investment of capital and spending abroad; (3) by import controls and tariffs to place foreign competitors at a disadvantage in competing with home producers, thereby decreasing demand for imports; (4) by deflating the home economy, by cutting employment and income and reducing the demand for both home-produced and imported goods.”
Excerpted from: Cook, Chris. Dictionary of Historical Terms. New York: Gramercy, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged readings/research, term of art, united states history
“Proper Noun: The name of a particular person (Frank Sinatra), place (Boston), or thing (Moby Dick). Common nouns name classes of people (singers), places (cities), or things (books) and are not capitalized.”
Excerpted from: Strunk, William Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition. New York: Longman, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged diction/grammar/style/usage, punctuation, term of art
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