There has been some talk back and forth over the in the GG comment section - "I shall check out the Chocolate Interrobang!" There hasn't been a new post in a little bit. My home is more full of relatives than usual (a layered thought, there) and one of them is very small. My oft contemplated recap of the thinking-in-metaphors discussion and my conclusions thereto (ants, mandelbrot, and free-climbing) remains un-compiled.
Unproductive this week, new books, too many people, and the attraction/repulsion of provoking posters at the comment section. But I keep checking here, and want to say "hey!" and see what comments and remarks people who drop by may have. Usually, the idea is you write a post to post, and therefore people comment. This time, I write a post in hopes, waiting for it to be time just to comment.
The picture comes from takeourword.com
7 comments:
Following on Certified's invitation to mingle, I offer you all an opportunity to view our "stats." Click on "stats" at the bottom of the right side bar. You can see that we are trending up. It is still early today, and the graph doesn't usually peak until much later, given the many, many time zones involved. You can see those, too, if you click on the "recent visitor map" feature on the left sidebar of the stats application. Note that there are multiple pages, and that we receive visitors from all over the world, via all kinds of means. It's a bit like a virtual & cosmopolitan cocktail party. Perhaps a photo of some liquid refreshments would be in order?
Apparently, many of them find us by accident, or search engine, but not necessarily on purpose. You can tell, because the "returning visitors" part of the bar graph is not rising as fast at the others, but that is not unusual. It is still moving up, if more slowly. And that is a good thing.
In case anyone has missed it, some of the action this week has been in the earlier open thread, where we helped Gordon revise a letter he wrote to Richard Cohen. (Now, we're just waiting to hear if he receives a response.)
Now, Valerie would like some help in framing her response to some stories she has seen on CNN. Please feel free to chime in. All comments are welcome. (Fingers crossed that I won't regret that and have to use the delete key. ;~)
If you are a contributor, you can make changes or suggestions directly on that post-- this is by invitation-- or else in the comments, where anyone can add something.
on my mind today:
a tip on the words "imply" and "infer". I imply something TO you [P rhymes with T]. You infer something FROM me [F(er)OM]. Somebody misused "infer" earlier, and I felt like a jerk for wanting to post something about it directly at them.
Certified: Yes, this is a mistake that many people make. It is like confusing 'learn' and 'teach' or 'borrow' and 'lend', all verbs like 'imply' and 'infer' where the direction of the action determines the choice of the lexical item.
But how can anyone account for the interchange of 'presidents' for 'precedents' posted today?
presidents for precedents is pretty good -- for reasons not to be specified here, I happen to see a lot of legal writing done by people who are not entirely literate. That kind of homely homophone is very common. It might take a certain amount of education to think in "written" versus thinking in "spoken" - if a person thinks only in "spoken, they might be more likely just to write the most familiar written term that sounds like what they are "hearing" in their mind.
About Frankly, my dear's notable quote: If She turned me on is reasonable English (I think it is), would the opposite, rendered into the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, become She outenned me?
imply/infer
I'll never forget a law school professor who, on being asked "Are you implying X…?" sneered, "The question is what are you inferring?"
Lovely image, C!
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