I’m sure you all know what a double negative is — two negative words that together mean a positive. For example, if you say “I don’t have nothing in my hand” means you must be holding something. I have heard of intellectuals (I think that’s the appropriate description) who like to string negatives together to
How good is your knowledge of chemistry? What if I were to tell you that there is a dangerous chemical throughout our environment? It is a major component of acid rain, contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape, accelerates corrosion of many metals, causes electrical failures, in its crystalline form has been implicated in
Basketball isn’t my favorite sport, but it does interest me. I played in high school, or rather I was on the team. My senior year was my only full year on the varsity, because there was nowhere else to go at that point. I never got into a game where the outcome was in doubt.
One rule in life — things are not always what your common sense thinks they should be. That’s especially true in geography. For example, go due south from Detroit, Michigan — what is the first foreign country you come to? It’s actually Canada. And did you know the Atlantic Ocean entrance to the Panama Canal
My brother, Dr. Gregory E. Welbaum, a professor at Virginia Tech (the smart one), has announced publication of his book, Vegetable Production and Practices. Although written as a college text and reference book, it will appeal to serious educated home gardeners who really want to know what they are doing. Most gardening books in stores
No Problem –Or How to Handle Difficult People I’m sorry, I cannot accommodate you. You see, I have things more important to do. You’re just causing problems and wasting my time, and I’ve fulfilled my quota, so please get in line. I’ve solved all the problems I can for this week so I just cannot
While surfing Facebook last night, I ran across a link about banned books on The Literacy Site. I was initially surprised that No. 1 was a dictionary. As a writer, I have little respect for people who ban books. But in some cases I do think there has to be a common-sense decision on age appropriateness,
I had a busy day teaching Language Arts yesterday, which triggered my favorite teaching memory. Several years ago, I was helping out in a middle school science class. The students were doing an experiment in teams, writing their findings in notebooks. Toward the end of the period, there was a mad dash to finish and
Yesterday I discussed how redundancies in common expressions, like pots & pans and law & order, imply that English has too many words. Yet the opposite case can also be made. In the words of Bill Bryson in his book The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way — “And yet there are odd gaps.
How many words are there in the English language? I’ve seen estimates ranging from as many as 400,000 to a million if all the scientific and technical words are counted. Are we getting to the point where we have too many words? (Also see my post on “The English language is about one half redundant.”) Previously
