Month: May 2018

“When everyone’s super, no one will be” and other meaningless words to avoid

  You know that feeling when you repeat a word so often it loses its meaning? Try saying “fork” a lot. Look at how it’s spelled. Sound it out. Isn’t it a weird word? Who decided that it’s a proper English word, anyway? The phenomenon is called semantic satiation, and it describes what happens when…
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05/29/2018 0

The subtle art of writing invisibly

  When I was in grade school, my homeroom teacher gave us a challenge: come up with as many different ways to say “said” as possible. I spent hours that night making a list, determined to write down more than 100 alternatives. Whispered. Uttered. Croaked. Stammered. Replied. Declared. Thundered. Begged. Armed with my trusty thesaurus,…
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05/01/2018 0