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Wisdom and Wit About Words
Published by Bob Kelly
Resident Wordsmith and Quotemeister
WordCrafters, Inc.
www.wordcrafters.info
Providing the Right Word for Speakers, Writers, Ministry Leaders and Business Executives – since 1979!
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Volume 1 – Number 1 January 2003
Introduction
Welcome to the first edition of The KellyGram, a monthly ezine that opens a window on the wonderful and sometimes wacky world of words. Every month, we’ll do our best to impart some wit and wisdom designed to help you hone your writing and editing skills.
We’ve taken the liberty of including you on our mailing list, but we’ll delete your address immediately on request. Simply follow the "Unsubscribe" instructions at the end of this newsletter and poof: you’ll vanish into cyberspace. Hopefully, however, you’ll stick around long enough to see what value the following material may have for you.
We further assure you that we’ll completely protect your privacy. Under no circumstances will we trade, sell, publish, give away or otherwise distribute any information about you to anyone.
Before investing any more of your time, you may want to check out our credentials at www.wordcrafters.info. As you’ll see, we’ve lived in this wonderful world of words for a very long time. Along the way, we’ve picked up some information we think you’ll find valuable.
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In This Issue:
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Another year has arrived, which means it’s time for that annual tradition – making resolutions. How long has this practice been going on, and where did it begin?
In the 1925 book, The Customs of Mankind, author Lillian Eichler wrote: "In ancient England it was the custom to clean out the chimneys on New Year’s Day so that luck could descend and, of course, remain all year. With us it is customary to speak of ‘cleaning the slate’ and making good resolutions so the ‘slate’ will remain clean throughout the year."
In The Year’s Festivals, written in 1903, author Helen Patten noted that "some make the effort to shake themselves free from their old year’s garment, worn and tattered and patched, in exchange for one which they hope to wear unspotted for a twelvemonth."
At about that same time, an article in Will Carleton’s Magazine poured a bit of cold water on such optimism. The author noted: "Some people have a regular practice of making New Year resolutions – generally shattering them before January has hidden its cold head out of sight."
So, whether or not you make resolutions, and whether they wind up shattered or unspotted, we wish you all the best in the coming twelvemonth. May the following quotations about the New Year, and resolutions in general, provide a bit of encouragement, motivation, inspiration – or simply a smile – as 2003 makes its debut.
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"The old year dies and we face the new year as though it were an entity, new as a newborn babe….Yet, all our yesterdays are summarized in our now, and all the tomorrows are ours to shape…and year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us."
- Hal Borland
"New Year is not only the oldest and the most universal of festivals; it is also, in a sense, the parent of them all. More than a mere accident of the calendar, it is a triumphant reassertion, from year to year, that Life is in the end victorious and that Death is swallowed up forever."
- Theodor Gaster
"New Year’s resolutions come in for a good deal of ridicule, but the resolutions are all right in themselves. The reason for ridicule is rather the irresolution which leads to the breaking of so many of the good resolutions of New Year’s Day."
- Cheesman A. Herrick
"As a new year dawns, we stand before an open door. Looking through its arch, we see all things new. Behind us the door is closing, closing forever…sealed to everything but our memories."
- E. Paul Hovey
"At each New Year it is common to make new resolutions, but in the life of the individual, each day is the beginning of a New Year, if he will only make it so. A mere date on the calendar is no more a divider of time than a particular grain of sand divides the desert."
- William G. Jordan
"Time has no divisions to mark its passage; there is never a thunderstorm to announce the beginning of a new year. It is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols."
- Thomas Mann
"Nothing relieves and ventilates the mind like a resolution."
- John Burroughs
"You may be whatever you resolve to be. Determine to be something in the world, and you will be something. ‘I cannot’ never accomplished anything; ‘I will try’ has wrought wonders."
- J. Hawes
"Make your resolutions so clear and firm that nothing can lure you from your chosen path. Substitute doing for dreaming and achievement for apathy."
- Grenville Kleiser
"Good resolutions are a pleasant crop to sow."
- Lucas Malet
"I believe that the resolutions less likely to be kept are those most likely to be made – the high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard."
- Rose McCaulay
"You are not going to have the laugh on me by luring me into resolutions. I know my weaknesses…I shall continue to be pleasant to insurance agents, from sheer lack of manhood; and to keep library books out over the date and so incur a fine. My only hope, you see, is resolutely to determine to persist in these failings. Then by sheer perversity, I may grow out of them."
- Christopher Morley
"We always, it seems, do better with resolutions if we tell others, for we fear their mockery more than the prickings of our conscience."
- Gorham Munson
"Good resolutions are often checks drawn on an account with insufficient funds."
- Jules Renard
"The beauty of human life consists in the fact that, as we review our last New Year’s resolutions, we find we have fulfilled one-third of them, left unfilled another third, and can’t remember what the other third was."
- Lin Yutang
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Writing Tips
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Our goal, in each issue of The KellyGram, is to offer you some practical advice on how to improve your writing. The following are a few simple tips, plus the best writing tip we’ve ever received.
Here’s the best advice about writing I’ve ever received: Read your copy aloud. Better still, with your eyes closed or back turned, have someone else read it aloud to you. You'll find something that can be changed and improved, almost every time.
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Test Your Editing Skills
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Each of the following entries, which actually appeared in print, contains one or more errors. See how many you can find. The answers are that the end of this newsletter.
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Linguistic Absurdities
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"Words…infect people with a rage to parrot. Every new vogue in verbiage becomes a stampede."
Leo Rosten
HELP! First it was the PC Police (more about that next issue). Now the "naut" nuts are after us. While the word "astronaut" has been around since the 1920s, there are ominous signs of a new (uh) movement we need to (uh) eliminate before it becomes an epidemic.
Two recent books we reviewed each contained an example of this dangerous virus, labeled, respectively, ‘collaboranaut" and "Internaut." That suffix (naut) is from a Greek word meaning "sailor." How it applies in these two cases is Greek to me.
The writer who coined "collaboranaut" used it to describe "a person adept at building partnerships and networks." I guess "collaborator" or "collaborationist" didn’t quite do it for him.
The other writer, who offered us "Internauts," defines them as "veterans of the Internet potential." Say what? The word "potential" means "possible; capable of being or becoming." Can one be a veteran of a possibility? Just asking!
Let me be the first to suggest a name for this new breed of parrot: Absurdonauts! And if you’ve run across other outbreaks of this plague, or have some other suggestions, email them to us and we’ll publish them in a future issue.
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The Muther of All Typos
A certain well-intentioned college football player had his mother’s first name, which is MABEL, tattooed in four-inch-high letters on his chest. The problem: he spelled it MABLE! As an act of charity, we’ve decided not to identify either the young man or his school.
(Source: Sports Illustrated)
Daffy Definitions
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Carcinoma (n.), a valley in California, notable for its heavy smog.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Frisbatarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there.
(Source: The Washington Post)
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WARNING: Studies have shown that continued use of the Spelling/Grammar feature in your word processing software can cause serious damage to your literary health. Dangerous side effects include loss of income, as editors send you rejection slips instead of checks. Note the following example, in which every word escaped undetected:
Check It Out!
Eye halve a Spelling Checker, eye got four my, pea sea.
It plane lee marques four my revue, miss steaks aye can knot sea.
The above is merely the first stanza of a seven-stanza "poem," containing 80 or more errors our Spelling/Grammar program missed. To receive your free copy of the complete poem, send us an email, with the word "Spellcheck" in the Subject box.
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A Final Word
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Two Rules for Success:
RULE 1 – Never tell them everything you know.
RULE 2 –
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Comments/Questions:
Your comments and questions are always welcome. Please contact us at info@wordcrafters.info, or call Bob Kelly at (480) 895-7617.
© 2003 by Bob Kelly. All rights reserved.
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(Answers to "Test Your Editing Skills")
Note: The first three examples, taken from magazine articles written by professional speakers, involve the use of homonyms, which are words that sound the same but have different meanings. They’d go undetected in speeches, but become glaring errors when written, reflecting poorly on their authors.
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