Tips About 10 Technological Terms

Which tech terms merit capitalization, and which are generic? Which terms are open compounds, and which are treated as one word? Here’s a guide to treatment of some of the most common names for technological phenomena.

Exercise Your Editing with This Exercise

Editing is as much an art as writing is. Whether you’re finessing your own writing or revising the work of another, the process requires simultaneous attention to multiple issues: spelling, grammar, style, accuracy, formality, and the subjective aspect of substance: providing context, assigning meaning and conveying value, and more.

Entropy vs. Atrophy

Entropy is the uncertainty or disorder in a system. In a technical sense, it is the gradual breakdown of energy and matter in the universe; in casual usage, it refers to degradation or disorder in any situation, or to chaos, disorganization, or randomness in general. The stem -tropy, from the Greek word trope, means “change” or “turn.”

35 Genres and Other Varieties of Fiction

A previous post detailed synonyms for story. This entry defines words identifying various genres — categories of story types — and similar terms.

Book Review: “Garner’s Modern American Usage”

What is the state of writing today? Pick up any newspaper, magazine, or book, or look at a website, an email message, or a tweet, or examine a newsletter, a brochure, or a report. Want a more useful indicator of how particular words are used? Look them up in a new dictionary.

75 Synonyms for “Talk”

Talk, talk, talk — it’s all the same. Or is it? There are many ways to talk, and each has its own word (or words) for it. Here’s a noncomprehensive roster of many synonyms for the noun and verb forms of talk (I had to stop somewhere).

10 Types of Hypercorrection

Well-meaning writers and editors sometimes mangle the language they’re trying to manage — a fault called hypercorrection. Errors of this class are the result either of adherence to a spurious superstition about proper form, a misunderstanding about a point of grammar, or an attempt to fit a square idiom into a round pigeonhole.

Accidental Shifts in Meaning

Words often slowly change their meanings over time — and sometimes, as in the case of fulsome, flip-flop — but occasionally popular culture inadvertently puts them on the fast track to transformation.

How to Format Captions

Captions, like other display copy, are generally styled in contrast to the running text for aesthetic and practical reasons: The appearance of display type offers a change of pace from the uniform appearance of running text and makes it easier for readers to distinguish it from the default content. The font size should be the same as the running text, or smaller.

The Best of Daily Writing Tips in 2011

First of all happy new year to all the Daily Writing Tips readers! Rest assured we’ll keep sending you our best writing tips in 2012!

Below you’ll also find a compilation of the most visited posts we published in 2011. Make sure you haven’t missed any!

40 Synonyms for “Lie”

Humans may not be the only species capable of deception, but we’re probably the most sophisticated animals when it comes to lying, and our languages contain many words to describe variations of untruth. Here’s a roster of synonyms in English for referring to lies and similar creations.

AP StyleGuard and the Death of Editing

Thanks to a new software program called AP StyleGuard, human intervention in improvement of written content is no longer necessary. All editors, please clean out your desks and report to Human Resources for your exit interview in five minutes; HR staff will provide information about career-change counseling on request.

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