Create and print your favorite word calendar online
and you can print it .. :)
http://www.calendarsthatwork.com/
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Friday, April 27, 2007
come to know noun strings
I don't know that people called them that, even though they appear very frequently in my words. It is a happy thing to know that they exist and they are legitimate, even though warnings are given to people who deal with them. Potentially, they become bad stains to your writing. Here are some comments on noun strings:
From
http://trc.ucdavis.edu/bajaffee/SAS90B/Course%20Content/Grammar%20Syllabus/nouns%20as%20adjectives.htm
Nouns as adjectives
====================
Some authors advise against using nouns as adjectives, but consider the following example, where the first two words are nouns functioning as adjectives:
(a) Plant disease diagnosis requires both traditional and new techniques.
To avoid using the nouns as adjectives, you would need to add two prepositional phrases:
(b) The diagnosis of diseases of plants requires both traditional and new techniques.
How do you decide which is better? As always, use your ear (listen for rhythm or its absence) and most importantly, consider your reader. I would use (a) because the noun string isn't difficult to understand and doesn't wring the rhythm from the sentence, whereas the repetitive start of (b) The diagnosis/ of diseases /of plants/ is deadening. A third version would be fine:
(c) The diagnosis of plant disease requires both traditional and new techniques.
Now let's use a longer string of nouns as adjectives:
(d) Plant disease diagnosis technology has become sophisticated.
Your ear and brain should tell you that something is wrong with (d). When too many nouns are strung together as adjectives, the reader must wait too long to understand how the nouns are functioning. There is also a consonance problem (disease diagnosis technology).
I would revise (d) to (e) but not to (f):
(e) The technology of plant disease diagnosis has become sophisticated.
(f) The technology of the diagnosis of diseases of plants has become sophisticated.
In the following example (g), note how the excessive use of nouns as adjectives complements a static writing style:
(g) Earthworm burrow construction information has increased our understanding of soil stable aggregate formation.
Rather than resorting to prepositions, I would find an actor and action.
(h) By studying how earthworms construct burrows, we better understand how stable aggregates form.
From
http://www.designsensory.com/pws/lesson5/index.html
Unraveling Adjective-Noun Strings, Reducing Preposition Sprawl
A problem closely related to excessive use of jargon is excessive use of "adjective-noun strings"--that is, long strings of words that stack up in an attempt to modify a single word. These strings are common in science, technology, industry, and government. But that doesn't make them good professional style. They may sound impressive (if you allow yourself to be impressed by that sort of thing), but they are hard to decipher and are therefore bad style.
Here's a fairly simple example:
employee compensation level evaluation procedures
Tell the truth: didn't your brain stick and sputter over that phrase a couple times before you grasped its meaning? I'd have made your reading task easier if I'd written:
procedures for evaluating the compensation level of employees
Now unravel this string:
military trainee firing range regulations orientation manual
You should have come up with something like:
manual for orienting trainees to the regulations of a military firing range
The fundamental technique for unraveling adjective-noun strings is to read them backwards and break them into smaller modifying units, using prepositional phrases and sometime entire clauses. However, using this reversal technique doesn't mean that you always reverse the exact word order represented in the adjective-noun string, as you'll see in Exercise 1. Still, for many adjective-noun strings, a straight back-to-front flip (peppered with a few prepositions and articles) is all that's needed:
building radon source location method
We know the writer is telling us about some kind of method. A method for locating something. Locating what? The source of something. The source of what? Radon. What kind of radon? Radon in buildings. So, flipping the adjective-noun string front to back, we get:
method for locating the source of radon in buildings
Much easier to read, don't you agree?
Another technique for unraveling adjective-noun strings is to hyphenate chunks in the strings to show better modification: "Oil bearing shale deposits" becomes "oil-bearing shale deposits," lest your reader think you mean: "oil that bears shale deposits." There's a big difference between a man-eating shark and a man eating shark.
Remember, the rule is to hyphenate bundles of modifying words when they fall before the word they modify: "a pea-green boat" versus "a boat that was pea green."
You may argue that the first versions in all these examples are shorter than the second; am I not violating my own principle of "fat trimming"? Shouldn't professional communications be as brief as possible? Well, yes and no. Certainly, they should get the job done with as much economy, power, and persuasiveness as possible. But what IS the job? Saving space on paper or on a computer screen? No! The job is always to supply the reader's needs, and/or accomplish your persuasive purpose, while exhausting a minimum of the reader's mental energy.
True, in the previous four units I've urged you to use active voice, denominalize, trim fat, and reduce jargon, all of which tend to reduce sentence length at the same time they make sentences easier to read and information easier to assimilate and remember. But with unraveling adjective-noun strings, the task of making sentences easier to read happens to increase sentence length a little. Don't worry about that. I repeat: your goal as a communicator should be to supply the reader's needs, and/or accomplish your persuasive purpose, while exhausting a minimum of the reader's mental energy.
This is not a new idea. Over a century ago, Herbert Spencer argued this idea persuasively in an essay entitled "The Philosophy of Style." In that essay, Spencer points out that the more energy a reader must expend in wrestling with the form of a communication, the less energy he has available to expend upon its content. Conversely, the less mental energy he must expend in grappling with a communication's form, the more he'll have available to devote to its content. You definitely want the folks reading your communications to fall into category "B."
Why do adjective-noun strings exhaust so much of the reader's mental energy? Precisely because such strings pack nouns and modifiers together like figs and nuts, without doing enough to show us the relationship between the parts; consequently, they leave the reader to do the work of unpacking and sorting.
The other good reason to break up long adjective-noun strings is that they are often ambiguous, as we saw in the example of "man eating shark" and "oil bearing shale."
Let's deal with the following adjective-noun string in its full sentence context:
New motorcycle motor durability equipment tests are being performed by engineers.
This could mean:
Engineers are using new equipment to test the durability of motorcycle motors,
or:
Engineers are performing new tests on the equipment that makes motorcycle motors durable,
or:
Engineers are performing tests on the equipment that checks the durability of new motorcycle motors,
--or several other things. Often, if you are editing (or simply reading) the prose of another professional who is prone to express himself in adjective-noun strings, you will have to ask for clarification.
Very well! Let's see how you do at unraveling the following adjective-noun strings. As always, type your answer before looking at mine.
From
http://trc.ucdavis.edu/bajaffee/SAS90B/Course%20Content/Grammar%20Syllabus/nouns%20as%20adjectives.htm
Nouns as adjectives
====================
Some authors advise against using nouns as adjectives, but consider the following example, where the first two words are nouns functioning as adjectives:
(a) Plant disease diagnosis requires both traditional and new techniques.
To avoid using the nouns as adjectives, you would need to add two prepositional phrases:
(b) The diagnosis of diseases of plants requires both traditional and new techniques.
How do you decide which is better? As always, use your ear (listen for rhythm or its absence) and most importantly, consider your reader. I would use (a) because the noun string isn't difficult to understand and doesn't wring the rhythm from the sentence, whereas the repetitive start of (b) The diagnosis/ of diseases /of plants/ is deadening. A third version would be fine:
(c) The diagnosis of plant disease requires both traditional and new techniques.
Now let's use a longer string of nouns as adjectives:
(d) Plant disease diagnosis technology has become sophisticated.
Your ear and brain should tell you that something is wrong with (d). When too many nouns are strung together as adjectives, the reader must wait too long to understand how the nouns are functioning. There is also a consonance problem (disease diagnosis technology).
I would revise (d) to (e) but not to (f):
(e) The technology of plant disease diagnosis has become sophisticated.
(f) The technology of the diagnosis of diseases of plants has become sophisticated.
In the following example (g), note how the excessive use of nouns as adjectives complements a static writing style:
(g) Earthworm burrow construction information has increased our understanding of soil stable aggregate formation.
Rather than resorting to prepositions, I would find an actor and action.
(h) By studying how earthworms construct burrows, we better understand how stable aggregates form.
From
http://www.designsensory.com/pws/lesson5/index.html
Unraveling Adjective-Noun Strings, Reducing Preposition Sprawl
A problem closely related to excessive use of jargon is excessive use of "adjective-noun strings"--that is, long strings of words that stack up in an attempt to modify a single word. These strings are common in science, technology, industry, and government. But that doesn't make them good professional style. They may sound impressive (if you allow yourself to be impressed by that sort of thing), but they are hard to decipher and are therefore bad style.
Here's a fairly simple example:
employee compensation level evaluation procedures
Tell the truth: didn't your brain stick and sputter over that phrase a couple times before you grasped its meaning? I'd have made your reading task easier if I'd written:
procedures for evaluating the compensation level of employees
Now unravel this string:
military trainee firing range regulations orientation manual
You should have come up with something like:
manual for orienting trainees to the regulations of a military firing range
The fundamental technique for unraveling adjective-noun strings is to read them backwards and break them into smaller modifying units, using prepositional phrases and sometime entire clauses. However, using this reversal technique doesn't mean that you always reverse the exact word order represented in the adjective-noun string, as you'll see in Exercise 1. Still, for many adjective-noun strings, a straight back-to-front flip (peppered with a few prepositions and articles) is all that's needed:
building radon source location method
We know the writer is telling us about some kind of method. A method for locating something. Locating what? The source of something. The source of what? Radon. What kind of radon? Radon in buildings. So, flipping the adjective-noun string front to back, we get:
method for locating the source of radon in buildings
Much easier to read, don't you agree?
Another technique for unraveling adjective-noun strings is to hyphenate chunks in the strings to show better modification: "Oil bearing shale deposits" becomes "oil-bearing shale deposits," lest your reader think you mean: "oil that bears shale deposits." There's a big difference between a man-eating shark and a man eating shark.
Remember, the rule is to hyphenate bundles of modifying words when they fall before the word they modify: "a pea-green boat" versus "a boat that was pea green."
You may argue that the first versions in all these examples are shorter than the second; am I not violating my own principle of "fat trimming"? Shouldn't professional communications be as brief as possible? Well, yes and no. Certainly, they should get the job done with as much economy, power, and persuasiveness as possible. But what IS the job? Saving space on paper or on a computer screen? No! The job is always to supply the reader's needs, and/or accomplish your persuasive purpose, while exhausting a minimum of the reader's mental energy.
True, in the previous four units I've urged you to use active voice, denominalize, trim fat, and reduce jargon, all of which tend to reduce sentence length at the same time they make sentences easier to read and information easier to assimilate and remember. But with unraveling adjective-noun strings, the task of making sentences easier to read happens to increase sentence length a little. Don't worry about that. I repeat: your goal as a communicator should be to supply the reader's needs, and/or accomplish your persuasive purpose, while exhausting a minimum of the reader's mental energy.
This is not a new idea. Over a century ago, Herbert Spencer argued this idea persuasively in an essay entitled "The Philosophy of Style." In that essay, Spencer points out that the more energy a reader must expend in wrestling with the form of a communication, the less energy he has available to expend upon its content. Conversely, the less mental energy he must expend in grappling with a communication's form, the more he'll have available to devote to its content. You definitely want the folks reading your communications to fall into category "B."
Why do adjective-noun strings exhaust so much of the reader's mental energy? Precisely because such strings pack nouns and modifiers together like figs and nuts, without doing enough to show us the relationship between the parts; consequently, they leave the reader to do the work of unpacking and sorting.
The other good reason to break up long adjective-noun strings is that they are often ambiguous, as we saw in the example of "man eating shark" and "oil bearing shale."
Let's deal with the following adjective-noun string in its full sentence context:
New motorcycle motor durability equipment tests are being performed by engineers.
This could mean:
Engineers are using new equipment to test the durability of motorcycle motors,
or:
Engineers are performing new tests on the equipment that makes motorcycle motors durable,
or:
Engineers are performing tests on the equipment that checks the durability of new motorcycle motors,
--or several other things. Often, if you are editing (or simply reading) the prose of another professional who is prone to express himself in adjective-noun strings, you will have to ask for clarification.
Very well! Let's see how you do at unraveling the following adjective-noun strings. As always, type your answer before looking at mine.
Monday, April 16, 2007
To Stay and To leave
I believe end of the day. I will leave.
To me, freedom is all I could have. Born poor is something hard to change. Mind free is the only property that I own. Not anyone should take it from me.
The government and the governed. Well said, when the ministers can raise their own salaries without much debate, without any road block from the opposition, the future is clear that - you prosper if you are a Scholar now.
I wonder what does it mean to be a politician here. If you don't have any political rights. You don't debate. You execute whatever from the top to the down. You said you do not have much error margin to experiment with. Yes, I do agree.
And that's why I have to decide. End of the day, I can not see myself not suffering under the future policies. The future rules that say: you worker class, strive as hard as cows so that you could live in one room flat and eat at coffee shops with stinking old uncles (by the time, you are one of them). Obey whatever the elistists tell you. We the elitists in return, make sure you will survive although in a shameful way.
To me, freedom is all I could have. Born poor is something hard to change. Mind free is the only property that I own. Not anyone should take it from me.
The government and the governed. Well said, when the ministers can raise their own salaries without much debate, without any road block from the opposition, the future is clear that - you prosper if you are a Scholar now.
I wonder what does it mean to be a politician here. If you don't have any political rights. You don't debate. You execute whatever from the top to the down. You said you do not have much error margin to experiment with. Yes, I do agree.
And that's why I have to decide. End of the day, I can not see myself not suffering under the future policies. The future rules that say: you worker class, strive as hard as cows so that you could live in one room flat and eat at coffee shops with stinking old uncles (by the time, you are one of them). Obey whatever the elistists tell you. We the elitists in return, make sure you will survive although in a shameful way.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Home - Think of home lyrics
Home (Think of home) - diana ross - the wits
When I think of home
I think of a place where theres love overflowing
I wish I was home
I wish I was back there with the things I been knowing
Wind that makes the tall trees bend into leaning
Suddenly the snowflakes that fall have a meaning
Sprinkling the scene, makes it all clean
Maybe theres a chance for me to go back there
Now that I have some direction
It would sure be nice to be back home
Where theres love and affection
And just maybe I can convince time to slow up
Giving me enough time in my life to grow up
Time be my friend, let me start again
Suddenly my world has changed its face
But I still know where I'm going
I have had my mind spun around in space
And yet I've watched it growing
If you're listning god
Please dont make it hard to know
If we should believe in the things that we see
Tell us, should we run away
Should we try and stay
Or would it be better just to let things be?
Living here, in this brand new world
Might be a fantasy
But it taught me to love
So its real, real to me
And I've learned
That we must look inside our hearts
To find a world full of love
Like yours
Like me
When I think of home
I think of a place where theres love overflowing
I wish I was home
I wish I was back there with the things I been knowing
Wind that makes the tall trees bend into leaning
Suddenly the snowflakes that fall have a meaning
Sprinkling the scene, makes it all clean
Maybe theres a chance for me to go back there
Now that I have some direction
It would sure be nice to be back home
Where theres love and affection
And just maybe I can convince time to slow up
Giving me enough time in my life to grow up
Time be my friend, let me start again
Suddenly my world has changed its face
But I still know where I'm going
I have had my mind spun around in space
And yet I've watched it growing
If you're listning god
Please dont make it hard to know
If we should believe in the things that we see
Tell us, should we run away
Should we try and stay
Or would it be better just to let things be?
Living here, in this brand new world
Might be a fantasy
But it taught me to love
So its real, real to me
And I've learned
That we must look inside our hearts
To find a world full of love
Like yours
Like me
Sunday, January 21, 2007
scene from roof top
The pictures are buried in my cell phone for many many years. The first was taken at the line (queue) for the entrance to a book sales. The crowd were just enormous. It was quite surprising for I never expected people here like books that much. Sometimes, it make me think that the price reduction is the main reason for the big crowd. Vividly remember they were people who asked their maid to wait in the line, while they sat some where else.It is sorry to see that but the fact is no one feel awkwared about it here. That itself is something awful.
The second and third pictures was taken from the rooftop of vivo city. Not knowing if the shallow water pool was meant for playful kids or merely a decoration, I was annoyed to see even family picnics took place there.
May be the citizens have gone of out place to plan their picnics at weekend. Bravo to the planner of vivo city who come out with such idea to attract the shoppers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)