On April 22, more than one billion people around the globe will participate in Earth Day 2012 and help Mobilize the Earth™. Link to history of Earth Day and Earth Day archives at: http://www.earthday.org/2012

Finding Good Writing Mentors by Bryan A. Garner Marvin Sloman was a painstaking writer. He believed that every word mattered and that there was a right word for every place on the page. Even with his most trusted colleagues—in a firm full of careful legal writers—he would ponder the critical sentences in a brief and change a word or two that could make a tremendous difference. He would change “weak” to “feeble,” “insistent” to “adamant,” “questionable” to “discredited,” and “go back on” to “renege.” He habitually tightened and brightened the texts he would edit. No detail escaped his eye. http://www.michbar.org/journal/pdf/pdf4article2001.pdf

Find Michigan Bar Journal's Plain Language columns indexed from May 1984 to March 2012 at: http://www.michbar.org/generalinfo/plainenglish/columns.cfm

In English, the letter Q is usually 'followed by' the letter U, but there are some exceptions. The majority of these are anglicised from Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Inuktitut, or other languages which do not use the English alphabet, with Q representing a sound not found in English. Find a list of these words at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_containing_Q_not_followed_by_U

Word without vowels that you can use in Scrabble and other word games: http://wordswithoutvowels.com/

Ohio's 9th congressional district has been represented by Representative Marcia C. Kaptur (D) since 1983. This district is in the northern part of the state, bordering Michigan and Ontario, Canada (via Lake Erie), and includes the counties of Erie, Lorain, Lucas, and Ottawa. Following the 2010 state elections, the 9th district absorbed part of Cuyahoga County pitting 10th district Democratic incumbent Dennis Kucinich against Kaptur in the 2012 Democratic primary. The new 9th district has been called "The Mistake by the Lake" and one of the "Top 5 Ugliest Districts" due to gerrymandering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio's_9th_congressional_district

Olefin fiber is a synthetic fiber made from a polyolefin, such as polypropylene or polyethylene. It is used in wallpaper, ropes, and vehicle interiors. Olefin's advantages are its strength, colourfastness and comfort, stain, mildew, abrasion and sunlight resistance, and good bulk and cover. Italy began production of olefin fibers in 1957. The chemist Giulio Natta successfully formulated olefin suitable for more textile applications. U.S. production of olefin fibers began in 1960. Olefin fibers account for 16% of all manufactured fibers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olefin_fiber

Originally, manufactured fibers were created to mimic more expensive natural fibers like wool and silk. Today, manufactured fibers are engineered specifically to have certain properties that natural fibers don’t. Manufactured fibers come in two primary types: cellulosic, which are plant-based, and petroleum-based. So, yes, some manufactured fibers do in fact originate from plants. In the manufacturing process the plants are broken down into chemical solutions which are then forced through tiny holes to make filaments, much like a silkworm extrudes a liquid that hardens into filament. Here are some common cellulosic-based fabrics and their qualities: Viscose is the generic name for Rayon, which is its brand name. Chemically, Viscose resembles cotton, but it can also take on many different qualities depending on how it is manufactured. It is strong, absorbent, soft, comfortable to wear (especially in hot climates, since it doesn’t retain heat), inexpensive, and it drapes nicely. Acetate has excellent drape, feels and looks similar to silk, is comfortable to wear in all seasons, doesn’t shrink much, and resists moths and mildew. Lyocell, more commonly known by its brand name Tencel, is soft and absorbent, strong, takes dyes nicely, drapes well, and is resistant to wrinkles and shrinkage. And you may have guessed by now that bamboo is also a manufactured fiber. There has been quite a bit of controversy over this fiber recently because it was initially touted as an environmentally friendly natural fiber with bacteria-resistance, moisture wicking capabilities, biodegradeability, and sustainable qualities. Unfortunately, however, many of these beneficial qualities are actually lost during the chemical manufacturing process. If you would like to learn more about bamboo fibers and the controversy surrounding them, you can review this FTC Consumer Alert http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt160.shtm Liesl Gibson Read more at: http://www.burdastyle.com/blog/plant-based-or-cellulosic-fibers-used-for-manufacturing-fabric

The two big players in the punctuation field are the period and the comma. I’ll start with the latter because the protocol for comma use is so complicated and contingent. In the 19th century and earlier (when rules were generally more lax than they are today), comma use was pretty much a crapshoot. That is, writers rolled one in when they felt like it, which was usually when a natural pause seemed to occur. So in the first line of “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), Jane Austen wrote: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” By about a century later, comma rules had been codified such that both commas in the sentence (after “acknowledged” and “fortune”) would be dispensed with. You can glimpse a reason for this codification — which emphasized consistency rather than sound — by looking at the opening of the Second Amendment of the Constitution (1789): A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. There are three commas. The one after “state” would be used today; the one after “arms” would not; the one after “militia” is ambiguous; and all three have caused a world of hurt, confusion and argumentation over the last 223 years. As Adam Freedman wrote in this newspaper in 2007, a Federal District Court ruling invalidating the District of Columbia’s gun ban (subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court) held that “the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one ‘prefatory’ and the other ‘operative.’ On this reading, the bit about a well-regulated militia is just preliminary throat clearing; the framers don’t really get down to business until they start talking about ‘the right of the people … shall not be infringed.’” More generally, the funky comma protocol muddies the crucial link between the importance of militias and the right of people to bear arms. Ben Yagoda http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/fanfare-for-the-comma-man/