Good news, bad news

The bad news is that California kids need to improve their writing skills. The good news is that those of us who make a living with words don't have to worry about job security any time soon.
Just a quarter of the state's eight-graders scored at grade level in writing. New Jersey has the nation's best young writers.

California students have improved, however. The writing test was last administered in 2002, when 23 percent of the state's students scored at grade level. In 1998, 20 percent did as well.

Verbing

I had a rare chance to listen to the broadcast version of Michael Krasny's "Forum" program no KQED radio today as I drove down to Silicon Valley for an interview. On it, he hosted author and journalist Marilee Strong of Oakland, who has written a book "Erased: Missing Women, Murdered Wives."
Really interesting interview that you can hear here. Really annoying use of the verb "disappeared."
As in: "When he disappeared his wife." I have never heard this construction in my life, and it sounds wretched. But the dictionary allows disappear to be a transitive verb, meaning it can take an object.

v. tr.
To cause (someone) to disappear, especially by kidnapping or murder.

(From Dictionary.com)


I don't know. It still makes me feel creepy saying it.

On writing

I could be wrong about this, but I doubt it. (I once gave my dad a Father's Day card that had that sentiment). Email and IM and the immediacy they introduce into our lives are enabling people to write lousy sentences.
It's not just that email and IM are fast, throw-away forms of communication. They encourage fragmented thoughts (splash something out, hit send, move on to the next message or task).
In this world, prepositions grow like kudzu. They lengthen sentences, bore the reader and obscure meaning.
Write actively, not passively. Show your writing who's boss.

I came across this construction this week:

One of the key learning’s I want to start off by highlighting is never pretend to be something you’re not online.

That's what we get paid the big bucks for.

Sentences should be constructed in such a way that the reader is almost forced to stick with it from beginning to end--the way you roll down a grassy hill. For the reader, it should be effortless.

Word of the Day

It's study hall at home tonight--quiet and peaceful. My wife is reading "Tortilla Curtain," written by T.C. Boyle.
She comes across one of those words you love but are usually too lazy to look up:

Peregrination. It means a walk or traverse, although it sounds like it should mean something a lot more complex, like the act of staring at a subway map in a foreign land trying to figure out where to go. It's obviously related to peregrine, which means "having a tendency to wander" and is a type of falcon (Falco peregrinus).
The Latin root, peregrinus, means pilgrim.
And with that, it's time to fly.

Quote of the day

From Joshua Rosner, managing director at Graham Fisher & Co., on the current financial meltdown:

"We haven't had a full gut check of truth-telling."

Headline of the day

San Francisco Chronicle, Food Section:

Tripe lovers
reveal their
offal secrets

Didn't even need a squeeze to fit the one column.
If you're an offal fan, read on.

Eliot Spitzer and the language of shock

Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York is in very hot water after the New York Times linked him to a high-priced prostitution ring. Keith L. T. Wright, a Democratic assemblyman from Harlem, said it most entertainingly when he tried to describe the news' affect on Albany:

“We’re at a total standstill. Everybody is stunned. Everybody is absolutely stunned.”

Unequivocally. Absolutely. Totally. Darn tootin'.

I hustled to the dictionary to understand the difference between a prostitute and a call girl, having come in contact with neither during my lifetime. (Honest). Prostitute is the umbrella term. It defines a woman who has sexual intercourse for money. Its root is the Latin prostituere, meaning to expose for sale. There's also the variant statuere, which is to cause to stand. And I'll let that stand right there.

A call girl is a prostitute with whom an appointment can be made by telephone. In America in the 1930s it was also used to describe a prostitute who could be called upon at a brothel, but that description has fallen out of favor. Today call girls are generally more expensive prostitutes favored by wealthy businessmen, athletes and, um, politicians who are trying to be discreet.
Doesn't always work out that way, however.