OK, here is the flip side of the coin for the post two below this one, to wit, a worksheet on forming decimals from prose. If you want it, here is the answer key.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Minutiae (noun plural): Minor or trivial details. Singular: minutia. ‘But its relentless detail and technical concentration are exhausting for the undisciplined armchair historian who might prefer the flavorful bacon of opinion to the dry minutiae of Rumanian pig exports in discussions of inter-war foreign policy and diplomacy.’ Neal Johnston, The New York Times”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
“Blue for space * White for water * Red for fire * Green for wind * Yellow for earth
These are the colours seen in the wind-whipped Buddhist silk prayer flags that fly in Tibet and the mountain valleys of the Himalayas.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
“Every for Ever. ‘Every now and then.’ This is nonsense: there can be no such thing as a now and then, nor, of course, a number of now and thens. Now and then is itself bad enough, reversing as it does the sequence of things, but it is idiomatic and there is no quarreling with it. But ‘every’ is here a corruption of ever, meaning repeatedly, continually.”
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
“In 1930, Benchley commented on his reputation as a bad businessman, a weakness he readily admitted: ‘Of course, if I wanted to, I might point out that that out of a possible $5,000 which I have made since I left school I have had $3,000 worth of good food (all of which has gone into making bone and muscle and some nice fat), $1,500 worth of theater tickets, and $500 worth of candy; whereas many of my business friends have simply had $5,000 worth of whatever that stock was which got so yellow along about last November.’”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged humor, literary oddities, numeracy
“Rococo Art: European art of the period from ca. 1730 to ca. 1780 characterized by the use of curvilinear ornament (see ROCAILLE). Considered the final phase of baroque art, rococo art is aristocratic, displaying a love of elegance in both style and subject matter. The French artists Watteau, Boucher, and Fragonard exemplify this art in painting, while fine examples in architecture are found in Germany and Austria as well as in other parts of Europe.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“Abolitionism: A term associated with protest on grounds of inhumanity and call for the abolition of: first, slavery (see, for example, the work of William Wilberforce, 1759-1833); and, more recently, prisons and imprisonment. The latter stance developed within Scandinavian criminology (see T. Mathiesen, The Politics of Abolition, 1974) but has since been taken up within wider critical criminology. Abolitionists argue that prisons are ineffective, their justification untenable, and their violations of human rights widespread. The abolitionist stance rejects reformism on the grounds that this perpetuates and legitimizes the existing system. Abolitionism proposes new responses to crime, offending, and disputes—for example, community-based alternatives to incarceration—and argues that the urge to punish and inflict pain must be challenged.”
Excerpted from: Marshall, Gordon, ed. Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
“Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, united states history
“Is Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) based upon actual events? Yes, the adventures of J.N. Reynolds, a stowaway who survived a mutiny, cannibalism, and other adventures.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, readings/research, united states history
“Children rarely [are provided work in] redefining what has been encountered, reshaping it, reordering it. The cultivation of reflectiveness is one of the great problems one faces in devising curricula: how to lead children to discover the powers and pleasures that await the exercise of retrospection.”
Beyond the Information Given: Studies in the Psychology of Knowing
Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.
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