“How did Jack Kerouac die? The author of On the Road (1957) died at age 47 on October 21, 1969, of a massive gastric hemorrhage associated with alcoholism in St. Petersburg, Florida.”
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, literary oddities
“Manuscript: (Latin codex manu scriptus “book written by hand”) Strictly a book or document of any kind written by hand rather than printed or typed. True, a typewritten document is often called a manuscript. It is, in fact, a typescript.”
Excerpted from: Cuddon, J.A. The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Here is a learning support on using a comma with age, city of residence, and political party affiliation. This is the eleventh in a series of fifteen posts in which a long passage from a leading punctuation manual is presented seriatim under their major headings from the book. (You can find an excursus on this choice of publishing practice here.)
If you find typos in this document, 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.
“visual memory: The ability to take in, store, and retrieve information presented visually. Short-term visual memory is the ability to hold visual information in short-term memory in order to process it, either moving it into long-term memory or shifting focus.
Visual working memory (or nonverbal working memory) involves the ability to hold visual information in mind while considering it, reflecting on it, or in some other fashion processing it.
Long-term memory also involves visual forms, in which images are stored on a long-term basis and available for recall.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Anticlimax: 1. In rhetoric, a descent from the elevated and important to the low and trivial: ‘Here thou, Great Anna! whom three realms obey,/Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea’ (Pope, The Rape of the Lock, (1712). 2. In drama, the lowered state after a climax; in life, an outcome that fails to live up to expectations.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Here is a learning support on using a comma in a location address. This is the tenth of a series of fifteen such documents, all from the same punctuation manual, therefore all intra-connected, posted here. (You can find an excursus on this choice of publishing practice here.)
If you find typos in this document, 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.
“Lierne: In Gothic vaulting, a rib which connects structural, weight-bearing ribs to form part of a decorative, net-like design.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“Apercu (noun): A quick, penetrating insight; immediate expression.
‘The program won an Emmy award in 1969, and its host, though frequently controversial for his acerbic apercus, has earned the respect of conservatives and liberals alike.’ Michio Kakutani, The New York Times”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Here is a learning support on using a comma between repeated words like is is, in in, and that that. This is the ninth of fifteen related learning supports on the use of the comma. (You can find an excursus on this choice of publishing practice here.)
If you find typos in this document, 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.
“Economics: The romance of truth through measurement.
An understanding of the value of economics can best be established by using its own methods. Draw up a list of the large economic problems that have struck the West over the last quarter-century. Determine the dominant strand of advice offered in each case by the community of economists. Calculate how many times this advice was followed. (More often than not it was.) Finally, add up the number of times this advice solved the problem.
The answer seems to be zero. Consistent failure based on expert methodology suggests that the central assumptions must have been faulty, rather in the way sophisticated calculations based on the assumption that the world was flat tended to come out wrong. However, streams of economists are on record protesting that they weren’t listened to enough. That the recommended interest rate or money supply or tariff policy was not followed to its absolute conclusion.
This ‘science’ of economics seems to be built upon a non-scientific and non-mathematical assumption that economic forces are the expression of a natural truth. To interfere with them is to create an unnatural situation. The creation and enforcement of standards of production are, for example, viewed as an artificial limitation of reality. Even economists who favor these standards see them as necessary and justifiable deformations of economic truth.
Economic truth has replaced such earlier truths as an all-powerful God, and a natural Social Contract. Economics are the new religious core of public policy. But what evidence has been produced to prove this natural right to primacy over other values, methods and activities?
The answer usually given is that economic activity determines the success or failure of a society. It follows that economists are the priests whose necessary expertise will make it possible to maximize the value of this activity. But economic activity is less a cause than an effect—of geographical and climatic necessity, family and wider social structures, the balance between freedom and order, the ability of society to unleash the imagination, and the weakness or strength of neighbors. If anything, the importance given to economics over the last quarter-century has interfered with prosperity. The more we concentrate on it, the less money we make.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
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