Comments on: This Week In Linguistic Gymnastics

By: Akston

Akston — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 23:12:19 +0000

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
- Shakespeare

“Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.”
- Thoreau

“If Thoreau had meant it, he only would have written ‘simplify’ once.”
- Akston

By: Michael O. Powell

Michael O. Powell — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:30:44 +0000

Twitter is more symbolic of our society at large than a precursor of illiteracy. I use Twitter all the time and find it useful, but I do have to concede that we are going into an era of the increasing visuals and less attention span. A look at today’s magazines will show you the like of Maxim or People, replete with short articles and lots of pictures.

By: Brad Warbiany

Brad Warbiany — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 21:17:24 +0000

I did a quick scan of the US Senate, and saw no correlation between one-syllable names and political party. I’d say that if you look at the names, most R & D names, when possible, are the “shortened” version of a name (like Rand for Randall, or Ron for Ronald), with the exception of a few Richards — after all, most politicians are already called Dick.

Re: Twitter, I don’t give it the weight you do. While I do agree that the literary abilities of Americans are declining, I don’t blame Twitter for the change — I blame public schooling and a general decline in reading. Twitter I don’t view as much as a true place to “write”, more as a place to disseminate news and have short snarky conversations.

On a side note, I actually find Twitter very useful for myself, as I tend towards unnecessary verbosity. When I want to say something on Twitter, I find myself editing a comment to its essence, and that practice has caused me to improve the concision of my writing.

By: Michael O. Powell

Michael O. Powell — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:52:20 +0000

John – Feel free to send any relevant stories to mopowell07@gmail.com.

By: John222

John222 — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:36:17 +0000

I look forward to future posts and hope to see some exposing the changing definitions of words, especially as used by legislators in their bills. You never really know what a law is until you have read the definitions page.