Blue Cord

A friend of mine pointed me to Grammar Girl: Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. The site answers questions that readers submit. The site is peppered with a good deal of humor, making it an enjoyable read. She does a parody entitled “Grammar Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Her knowledge of English far surpasses her singing ability, so I recommend reading the transcript instead of listening to the mp3.

One of the most enjoyable sections of the site is her photos at Flikr, where she collects examples of poorly worded and/or punctuated signs. Having been working in retail for the past few months, I am amazed at how many people make mistakes when writing signs to be hung in public places. Presumably most of the errors come about through ignorance of grammer and punctuation or through carelessness. But if you are making signage that will be seen by everyone, take the time to do it right. The signs hung in a store are intended to give customers information. You don’t want part of that information to be “Employees can’t spell.”

While we are on the topic of punctuation, I wanted to share a product our store is selling that is driving me nuts. It is a wooden cutout of a snowman holding a sign that says “6 Days T’il [sic] Christmas.” Our sign up front that says “No ice melt till [sic] Friday” is bad enough, but this is a product that presumably had to go through Q.C. at some point. We have about fifteen of these in stock, so they stare me in the face as I walk to and from the break room.

And please, people, for the love of God, stop putting quotation marks around everything in sight!

Attention logophiles. Looking for some new, obscure words to drop into your conversation? Have you ever needed to look up words like brompnea, quincunx, or kerfuffle? Are you the kind of person who would write a piece of music entitled Triskaidekaphile? Then have I got a site for you!

The site is called World Wide Words. It is written by Michael Quinion, who writes books about words and provides citations and advice for the Oxford English Dictionary. He focuses on new words that have entered the English language and older words that are dropping out of use.

So, if you would like your vocabulary to be cutting edge or so obscure and archaic it makes your eyes water, absquatulate from your couch and head on over to his site. You’ll read a few new words, add them to your patois, and suddenly Bob’s your uncle!