Five Wonderful Phrases That I Resolve to Use More Frequently in Conversation
soup to nuts
by hook or by crook
ass-over-teakettle
dollars to doughnuts
tits up
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From the category archives:
writing
The PicoPad® is pure genius. It’s a pad of sticky notes — with a tiny pen — in a case the size of a credit card that you can easily slip it into your wallet. The PicoPad and its refills are also incredibly inexpensive. I am always scribbling notes on the backs [...]
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Recently I saw a commercial for Sylvan Learning Centers. This is a company that is selling products to help your children do well in school. The ad showed a teenage girl gabbing on the telephone. The voice-over said, “Sally sure can talk fast. We can help her read fast,” or something [...]
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Last night I writhed in agony while watching the 11 o’clock news. The local NBC affiliate was running a story about the Sacramento disc jockeys that were fired recently. (The radio personalities had sponsored a contest which led to the death of a woman.) Behind the anchorman the screen displayed DJ’s Fired. [...]
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Quite nifty! My mini-tutorial — Five Tips for Smarter Playlists — has been published in the second issue of the online pdf magazine CRAM. A few weeks ago I received an email from one of their editors requesting permission to republish the essay. I had actually forgotten all about it. Then [...]
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About a decade ago I bought a Gotham model pen from Levenger. It is by far my favorite pen. This weekend I found it in the cigar box I use to hold all my “best” pens and was quite disappointed to discover that its ink had run dry. Levenger no longer makes [...]
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This is an essay I wrote a loooong time ago … I must have been 13 or 14 … good old St. Paul’s Catholic Elementary School in Daytona Beach, FL …
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Amazing! According to this test I am an English Genius. It was not a surprise to see that I scored a perfect 100%, actually, on the advanced sections. What was shocking was that I scored in the embarrassingly-low 80s on what were supposed to be the simple sections. That, and the [...]
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These are from a joke email circulating that purports to be “ANALOGIES & METAPHORS FOUND IN HIGH SCHOOL ESSAYS”. I highly doubt that these were actually culled from high school essays. The main reason I don’t believe it is because there is no point of reference. There is no notation or source. [...]
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The “plural apostrophe” (e.g. no dog’s allowed, sofa’s for sale, UGH) is running rampant these days, and it’s not just my imagination. It’s so wrong that I can’t even begin to fathom how anyone could make such a mistake. I hate it when people dismiss it with, “Oh, not everyone’s a grammar freak.”
Grammar? You think [...]
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