“Banality (noun): An insipidly dull or obvious remark; dreary commonplace. Adj. banal; adv, banally.
‘At moments, in the bar afterwards, I let the rank maleness of my fellows blow through me, and try to think their wrinkled whiskery jowls, their acrid aromas, their urgent and bad-breathed banalities, into some kind of Stendhalian crystallization.’ John Updike, A Month of Sundays”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Here is a learning support on the use of a comma after an introductory word or phrase. This is the third of fifteen learning supports on using the comma forthcoming on this blog. (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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the United States Selective Service System. This is a half-page worksheet with a two-sentence reading and three comprehension questions. If you teach high school. this might be a quick introduction to a civic obligation–right or wrong–that young people must heed in order to receive a number of other rights.
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.
Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb equivocate. This verb is used only intransitively–so not only is a direct object not required, it would be an error to use one with equivocate. This document’s context clues are keyed to the definition “to avoid committing oneself in what one says.”
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.
“Anachronism: [Stress: “a-NA-kronizm’] In rhetoric, the appearance of a person or thing in the wrong epoch, such as the clock in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Linguistic anachronisms are generally a matter of awareness, context, and expectation: for example, the archaism wight (person, man) may be appropriate at a seminar on the Elizabethan poet Spenser, but is incongruous and probably unintelligible elsewhere. Similarly, a character in a period novel who says OK long before the phrase was current rings false for anyone who knows (or senses) that its time is out of joint.”
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 commas in a series. This is the second of fifteen posts of learning supports on using commas. (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.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Maximilien Robespierre, one of the avatars of the French Revolution whose name has gathered increasing notoriety even in my relatively short lifetime. This is a full-page worksheet with a four-sentence reading and six comprehension questions. It is a basic, if tepid, introduction to a controversial historical figure. As such, it might be better augmented or used in tandem or combination with other documents. Since it is a Microsoft Word document (as are most things on Mark’s Text Terminal), you can adapt it to your needs.
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.
“Anagram: A word or phrase made by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase: mad policy from diplomacy. Anagrams are used mainly in games and puzzles, especially crosswords, where a clue like ‘a confused tailor in Venice’ leads to Rialto, an anagram of tailor.”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Here is an introductory learning support on using the comma. This is the first of fifteen of these I will post in the next few weeks, which I expect merits an explanation.
Somewhere, either in Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, or Tropic of Capricorn (I read all three in one compulsive gulp about thirty years ago), i.e. Henry Miller’s “Obelisk Trilogy,” the author asserts (I paraphrase, but closely, because in spite of hours of research, I cannot find the direct quote online, and I don’t want to spend the money or time to buy the books and find the sentence) that it’s easier to describe the philosophy of Nietzsche than it is to teach adequately the proper use of the comma. Oscar Wilde famously made his own remarks about the use of the comma, which is a little easier (but much more complex in its origin) to track down, which I was able to do thanks to the excellent website Quote Investigator.
Commas tend to bedevil me as well; indeed, I have had a tendency to overuse them. For years, I have meant of create an extensive reference library on the multitudinous uses of the comma in prose. Using what I think is the best punctuation manual in print, I have at last done so. As I post each of them, should you choose to download them, you will notice they vary considerably in length. After thinking about this for several weeks, I decided to use the same major subdivisions that the author uses in her manual.
However, as you may see, there are numerous minor subdivisions within most of these documents. It may be that these need to be broken up further. Because these are Microsoft Word documents, you are able to manipulate these materials to suit your needs. If I’d broken them up myself, this project would have taken much longer than it did, which was plenty long per se.
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.
“Ellipsis: The omission of an element of language for reasons associated with speech, rhetoric, grammar, and punctuation. The omitted element can usually be recovered by considering the context of what has been said or written, In speech and writing, sounds and letters are often left out of words: in the sentence She said he’d come, he’d is elliptical for either he had or he would. Such contractions are informal and usually arise from speed of delivery, economy of effort, and the rhythm of the language. At times, elliptical speech or writing is so concise that listeners and readers must supply missing elements through guesswork or special knowledge, but it they cannot, they fail to understand. Information can be left out or hinted at for reasons of style or discretion; in such areas as politics, diplomacy, and negotiation, remarks are often elliptical in nature and intent….”
Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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