Is there a fingerprint in the syntax of your email?

The New York Times tells of a lawsuit "filed by Paul Ceglia, owner of a wood-pellet fuel company in upstate New York. Mr. Ceglia says that a work-for-hire contract he arranged with Mark Zuckerberg, then an 18-year-old Harvard freshman, entitles him to half of the Facebook fortune." The gist of the evidence is a collection of emails purportedly from Zuckerberg to Ceglia, ostensibly saved in Word files. The foundation of the refutation is an analysis of syntactical minutiae -- whether "internet" is capitalized or "cannot" is one word or two as commonly written by the Facebook founder.

Many linguists, however, would challenge the notion that the “fingerprint,” a supposedly unique identifier, can be metaphorically applied to writing. Surely we all have our own written quirks and mannerisms — I tend to overuse em-dashes, for instance. But there is just too much internal variability in any person’s body of writing to imagine that we could take just a bit of it — a handful of e-mails — and recognize some sort of linguistic DNA.

Punishment

The xkcd.com comic site occasionally riffs on language.

Cursive sieve

Indiana is the latest state to dump cursive handwriting as part of the curriculum.

The national move away from cursive is being fueled by the Common Core curriculum. That is an effort led by governors in 46 states, including Indiana, to agree to common standards and, eventually, common tests to measure whether kids are learning them. Cursive is not part of the Common Core curriculum. Keyboarding is.

What flavor of American English do you speak?

An online quiz purports to determine your regional accent in 13 questions, like this:

Our next word is "horrible." How does that first vowel sound?

The euphoric bliss of words

An amazingly lively defense of the liveliness of English.

It's not a lack of vowels that makes them sound stupid

Weighing the pros and cons of textspeak, this essay balances the ideas that communication skills are enhanced by every means and the short-hand is short-sighted.

“These different channels of communication have led to the emergence of new communicative styles including text abbreviations and acronyms,” says Prof Merchant. According to him, writing is “enjoying a moment of creativity”, with young people at its heart.

His conclusion is that “there is no evidence that literacy is in decline, reading and writing, in whatever form, is advantageous”.

And

... textspeak is not enough. “As someone with a deep concern for English literature, and the full possibilities of the use of the language, I’m eager for children and young people to read real books as extensively as possible, so that they can absorb all the things that textspeak doesn’t cover: a large vocabulary, the shape that well-made sentences can take, how to develop ideas through language, even punctuation. I want them to experience all the pleasure that reading gives, and the satisfaction that writing well brings.”

Comma chameleon

Following the dictum of "comma for clarity," Oxford University has dumped the "Oxford Comma."

Here’s an explanation from the style guide: “As a general rule, do not use the serial/Oxford comma: so write ‘a, b and c’ not ‘a, b, and c’. But when a comma would assist in the meaning of the sentence or helps to resolve ambiguity, it can be used – especially where one of the items in the list is already joined by ‘and’ [for example]: They had a choice between croissants, bacon and eggs, and muesli.”

A video (with NSFW lyrics) uses the Oxford comma as a metaphor for the small stuff one should not sweat.

Some just call it El Lay

LA Times looks back at the ways to pronounce the name of the city. In a campaign speech, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is the latest to fumble it. But there's a long line.

Mispronouncing L.A. is an old tradition.

"There is no other city in the world whose inhabitants so miserably and shamelessly, and with so many varieties of foolishness, miscall the name of the town they live in," author Charles Lummis wrote in 1914.

As early as 1880 the Chamber of Commerce issued this reminder to visitors (and residents):

The Lady would remind you, please

Her name is not Lost AN-jie-lees."

But what is the lady's name? It depends, of course, on whether one is talking about a Spanish or Anglicized pronunciation

In the early 1900s, The Times advocated the Spanish version, carrying a box by its editorial page masthead that proclaimed the way to say Los Angeles was Loce AHNG-hayl-ais.

English speakers who found that difficult could only be thankful that the city had shortened its original name, which some scholars believe was El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula.

The Times' campaign aside, the United States Board on Geographic Names decreed in 1934 that the name should be Anglicized to Loss AN-ju-less.

You're not alone

A literary agent has compiled some commonly confused words and commenters have added more.

lie-lay 

Time to lie down for a nap. (verb, present tense)

Yesterday she lay on the grass and daydreamed. (verb, past tense)

       If you are going to use “lay” as present tense, it’s only if you are going to lay something down. The present tense verb “lay” needs to have an object.

affect-effect-effect

Will this post affect the way you write? (verb)

If so, I hope it has a positive effect. (noun)

I’m trying to effect a change in the way writers use grammar. (transitive verb meaning to cause or bring about)

Words as a tool of sexism

Both men and women tend to overlook the more subtle daily acts of sexism they encounter, according to a recent study from Psychology of Women Quarterly.

Things such as calling women "girls" but not calling men "boys" or referring to a collective group as "guys" are forms of subtle sexism that creep into daily interactions. The study helps not only identify which forms of sexism are most overlooked by which sex, but also how noticing these acts can change people's attitudes.

"Women endorse sexist beliefs, at least in part, because they do not attend to subtle, aggregate forms of sexism in their personal lives," wrote authors Julia C. Becker and Janet K. Swim. "Many men not only lack attention to such incidents but also are less likely to perceive sexist incidents as being discriminatory and potentially harmful for women."

Not a good word for crossword puzzles but great for Scrabble

NPR's Robert Krulich on how one word can have many many different spellings.

Mackerel, by the way, was originally an old French word, "maquerel" but when the Normans conquered the British (or was it the Angles and Saxons?) in 1066, they brought maquerel into the English language where it got bounced around quite a bit. James Gleick, the science writer, says the OED in 1989 listed 19 different mackerel spellings down through English-speaking history.

Nineteen is a lot different names to call a fish.

But when you consider that most people were illiterate, there were no dictionaries, and no notion of "correct" spellings, it would have been highly unusual for only one spelling to predominate. 

...

In its 2002 edition, The Oxford English Dictionary almost doubled the number of ancient mackerel spellings. Why?

Blame the internet.

After 1989 the internet made it easier for historians and antiquarians to scan, publish and exchange old documents. With a bigger database, all kinds of new/old spellings turned up.

English B in dee hanz of boofuns

It's called Copy Editor's Disease, where the sufferer's need to make corrections in grammar, spelling and syntax becomes insufferable. They are usually very funny too.

Words matter, pick them carefully

It's not just the words themselves

David Rakoff's essay in the NYTimes discusses the language used in his contacts with his medical professionals.

It has taken years for me to learn not to analyze the voices and vocabularies of those taking care of me. For the most part, I’ve been very lucky even as I’ve been less than fortunate. The doctors and nurses in my life don’t prolong the anticipation with pleasantries. We joke around a lot, but that’s the second order of business. With a long illness, there are stretches of triumph that feel like cosmic rewards for good behavior followed by inexplicable setbacks that seem like indictments of your character. With so much muddy logic crowding out reason, it’s best when news, good or bad, is delivered quickly and clearly. I will forever be grateful to my oncologist for opening the door and saying, “Damn it, the tumor’s 10 percent bigger,” before he even said hello.

Typecast

Boy talk

A study out of Michigan State University shows that building language skills has a greater impact in boys than in girls in regulating their behavior.

“It shouldn’t be chalked off as boys being boys,” Vallotton said. “They need extra attention from child-care providers and teachers to help them build language skills and to use those skills to regulate their emotions and behavior.”

It can be hard to make yourself understood

It was Clowns in clownface vs Clowns in Brown Shirts and the pretend clowns came out on top.

At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”

The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”

What does English look like?

A NSFW example of kinetic typography from a scene in "Pulp Fiction."

Getting it wrong so often as to be right

University of Pennsylvania's  Language Log reports that the single most authoritarian source of English words, the Oxford English Dictionary, has added the word "eggcorn" as a variant of "acorn" since misuse has become so entrenched that the misused word is the embodiment of a whole category of misuses.

As early as 1844, people were reinterpreting the word “acorn” as “eggcorn”, either deliberately, for humorous purposes, or in all innocence, in a struggle to analyse, in a way that made sense to them, what the word’s spelling must be: acorns are, after all, seeds which are somewhat egg-shaped, and in many dialects the formations acorn and eggcorn sound very similar. Since 2003, it has become a widely accepted term for this category of words as a whole, appearing in books and journals, and on the internet, often alongside its musical sibling, the mondegreen or misheard lyric (which first appeared in the OED in 2002). As such, it has now become an autological word: one which belongs to the category it describes.

DEA be wantin' a Prof. Henry Higgins

ABC News reports the federal government is searching for an Ebonics translator.

Such experts, he said, would likely be used -- as with many federal linguists -- to assist with wiretaps and linguistic profiling, when a person's accent or dialect can help lead investigators to the criminal.

"They probably want reliable expertise to make sure they've got an accurate interpretation for what is said," he said."Because there's the perception in many minds that you don't need a translator, people believe they've understood something when they haven't."