The Painful Nowning Process

Not for me, at least (she boasted vainly), I think because I seem to have a pretty good visual memory, but even so I usually find that I have to come back and fix one or two careless spelling errors in these postings, just because I’m not always paying attention. However, everyone agrees that English spelling is gruesome, because the language is a glorious jumble of different base languages that was “frozen” in print before reasonable (i.e., phonetic) spelling rules could be imposed. British/Canadian and American spellings differ as well. Nevertheless, English spelling can be conquered without resorting to replacing to/two/too with “2″ with some care and attention to rules, exceptions and mnemonics.

These guidelines note that if you really want to improve your spelling, you’re going to have to practice, practice, practice. And note rule #9, which is more about punctuation:

Watch out for the “grocer’s apostrophe.” This gets its name from a spelling error traditionally made by greengrocers on signs in produce sections. Unfortunately, this error is popping up in all sorts of places these days. Remember that an apostrophe with an “s” shows possession. Correct: “The banana’s skin turned brown.” You do not use an apostrophe to form the regular plural of a noun. Not correct: “Special on banana’s: 49 cents.”

Or something like that. What I mean is that as I’m updating links for my composition classes, I re-discovered last year’s CNN story about Grammar Girl podcasts.

Her recent commentaries include a number of issues I see students stumble over weekly, such as “who vs. that,” “effect vs. affect” and even the dreaded “generic singular pronouns”–where she and I do not quite see eye to eye. But she still has some advice worth considering.

Looking forward to a Spring of improved writing.

…because I found myself reading this article about the internet blog/linguistic phenomenon known as “lolcats.”

Some other academic types, who have even more time on their hands, have come up with the often obscure and frequently disrespectful loltheorists. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Though this one is rather good.

Back to real work now.

I’ve made it through day six of the AP-Literature scoring marathon. The availability of free internet access was highly exaggerated, and my laptop was baffling as well, but I have managed to check e-mail a couple of times, and I thought I’d better post so at least the one person who checks this site regularly will know I’m OK.

When I get home, I hope to post more about this process, and the astounding number of ways one can spell “onomatopoeia.” And it has now been definitively determined that there are at least a few wrong ways to interpret a poem.

I’ve also met several pleasant people among the hundreds of (presumably) nice people here. More about them, too.

Some people are going to study abroad (I know of a couple of students whose passports arrived just in time to get them to Costa Rica). Some have summer jobs. Some are lucky enough to actually recreate during summer. And then there’s summer school. As an English professor, two things I’ve come to dislike are (1) people saying “Oh, an English teacher! I’ll have to watch my grammar!”—because really, how rude would I have to be to correct their grammar in a social setting? and (2) people saying “Oh, a teacher! You get all summer free!” Anyone who says this just hasn’t thought about it much—but why would they? Of course, it could be worse. I could be a medical doctor instead of a Ph.D. and have people immediately start telling me about their mysterious ailments.

So what do I do all summer? It depends. This summer I’ll spend a week scoring AP-Literature essays, which will be a new experience for me. I’ll be revising my Arthurian Legends course to teach it as a summer M.Ed. class—again, something new. Also, during summer I usually revise course syllabi and/or prepare any new courses. This summer, the English dept. faculty will be working on some other projects as well. I’ll probably research papers I plan to present at conferences. And I believe there may be a weekend at the beach somewhere between June 1 and August 16.

Earlier in May, a Clemson professor gave her take on the subject of college professors and summer “vacation” in the Chronicle of Higher Education.