A morpheme is a minimal meaningful language unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:morpheme&sa=X&ei=TiI0TdH9PMSt8AaczN3kCA&sqi=2&ved=0CBMQkAE
Because of their modifying function, qualifiers really are adverbs (words that modify a verb, adjective, or another adverb). Very, too, rather, even, much, fairly, quite, still, kind of, and sort of are qualifiers. Qualifiers can be a strong writing tool, especially when used for emphasis or clarification. They can help liven up language and ensure that the reader understands your meaning, but they can also cause wordiness. We use them often in speech, so it seems natural that they would flow in writing as well. But there are several strategies to avoid wordiness with qualifiers.
Qualifiers with Absolutes
One problem writers encounter when using qualifiers is that, many times, it is tempting to use a qualifier to modify a word that is already absolute in its meaning. Absolute words describe something as it is in a certain form or extreme state, thus they cannot take on a modifier.
Ex. The Christmas decorations looked absolutely perfect.
(Something that is perfect cannot be any more or less so, nor can it be, as this sentence seems to say, “perfectly perfect.”) Ex. Salvador Dali’s paintings strike most people as being very unique.
(Unique refers to something that is one of a kind, not something that can be measured in degrees of how one-of-a-kind it is.)
In each one of these sentences, the adjective after each qualifier already has a clear meaning. Writers should try to avoid using qualifiers with absolute words in most writing.
Imprecise Qualifiers
Writers may also have difficulty qualifying or intensifying imprecise adjectives when more precise meaning could be conveyed by choosing a different, more specific adjective instead. The technique to employ here is to draw on that extensive vocabulary we all have stored up. For example, rather than claiming to have read a really great book, what about an excellent or outstanding book? A very tired individual may instead feel exhausted or fatigued. Extremely upset may be exasperated or enraged or devastated depending on the context.
Replacing weak qualifier + adjective/adverb combinations with more specific words strengthens a writer’s voice and can even make ideas easier to understand. http://www.uhv.edu/ac/newsletters/writing/grammartip2008.06.10.htm
France's experimental-comic-book movement, OuBaPo, has been trying to revolutionize the genre for two decades. OuBaPo's members produced one book that could be read back-to-front; another that boiled down the 4,300 pages of Marcel Proust's voluminous "In Search of Lost Time" to six drawings; and one that told a single story—of how a man went to get something from the refrigerator—in 99 different ways. The exclusive group's nine current members live in France, the U.S., Spain and Switzerland. Thousands of OuBaPo books have been sold, and the drawings have been featured in several museum exhibitions. "They have opened the door to a vast artistic territory," says Julien Misserey, the organizer of an annual comic book symposium in France. The name OuBaPo abbreviates a long French phrase meaning Potential Comics Workshop. In France and other European countries, comics have long been considered more than child's play. Known in some circles as the "ninth art," after music, theater, dance, etc., comics have entertained French adults since the 19th century and today are a big business. In 2008, 7% of all books sold in France were comics, according to the French Publishers' Trade Union. That's the same market share held by elementary, secondary and high-school books. Academic study of comics also dates to the 19th century. A Swiss writer named Rodolphe Töpffer is considered by many to be the first comic-book theoretician, for the work he published on comic strips in 1845. French scholars came to grips with comic books in the middle of the 20th century. OuBaPo stands for Ouvroir de Bande-Dessinée Potentielle. It was founded in 1993 by a group of artists and a comic-book historian who used to hang out in a Parisian artists' studio called Nawak, French slang for "nonsense." Aspiring members can't apply to be part of the group; they have to be singled out and then unanimously approved by existing OuBaPo members. The collective was inspired by a French literary group called Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (the Experimental Literary Workshop), whose members write books using defined restrictions. In 1969, one member of the literary workshop wrote a book without using the letter "e." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704515904576075980439410992.html
The publisher of The Wall Street Journal filed suit January 25 to overturn a decades-long court order barring public access to a confidential Medicare database. Dow Jones & Co says access to the database is essential to rooting out fraud and abuse in the government health-care program. The American Medical Association, the doctors’ trade group, successfully sued the government in 1979 to keep secret how much money individual doctors receive from Medicare, and the ruling still stands. The filing, made in Florida federal court, comes after a series of articles in the Journal about abuses of the Medicare system. The articles were based on computerized Medicare records that represent part of the broader database at the center of the 1979 case. Dow Jones, owned by News Corp., claims the 1979 injunction hampered the paper’s reporting since it limited its access to the data and its ability to name physicians and other providers. “It’s time to overturn an injunction that, for decades, has allowed some doctors to defraud Medicare free from public scrutiny,” Dow Jones general counsel Mark Jackson said in a statement. The AMA withstood at least two attempts to reverse the injunction in 2009. In one case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that under the Freedom of Information Act, physicians’ privacy interest outweighed the public interest in knowing how much doctors were collecting from Medicare. WSJ Law Blog January 26, 2011
To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.
A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.
When the smog lifts in Los Angeles , U.C.L.A.
The professor discovered that her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.
The batteries were given out free of charge.
Local Area Network in Australia : The LAN down under.
A boiled egg is hard to beat.
Acupuncture: a jab well done.
Condo life is hard Her upstairs neighbors owned 66 percent of the building’s square footage, and so had a 66 percent voting stake in the association that governed its management. That meant they controlled what condo fees everyone in the three-unit building paid, what would or wouldn’t get done to the property’s common areas, and how much the association was willing to pay for that work. They left snippy notes at her door, turned down the thermostat during the day (she worked at home), and made her life a misery. Read her stories and those of others at: http://www.boston.com/realestate/news/articles/2011/01/23/home_sweet_hell_falling_into_the_condo_trap/ Click on single page at bottom for ease in reading.
Friday, January 28, 2011
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1 comment:
On the use of imprecise qualifiers, this quote of Mark Twain's is often heard:
“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be”
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