Week 12

Word of the Week: Draconian

Draconian: [ L dracon-, Draco, fr. GK Drakon Draco (Athenian Lawgiver)] –of, relating to, or characteristic of Draco or the severe code of laws held to have been framed by him.

The word was found in the lede of a New York Times article that was published on March 27. The article can be found by clicking the following link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/world/middleeast/28syria.html?hp

The following is the sentence from which the word was lifted:

The Syrian government tried to ease a grave political crisis on Sunday by blaming armed gangs for killing 12 people in the northwestern port city of Latakia in previous days and promising to soon lift a draconian emergency law that allows the government to arrest and detain without charge.

The word “draconian” in this sentence seemed to mean unjust. The draconian law would allow the government to arrest and detain anyone without charge, which seems unfair to me. I liked the word because it was unusual, and it sounded a lot like Dracula when I first read it. I thought it was funny because of that.

Catch of the Week:

I found a misspelling of the word “newspapers” in a blog online on March 27 that deals with funny typos. The spelling abused the apostrophe. “Newspapers” was spelled as “New’s paper’s.

The article can be found by clicking on the following link:

www.funnytypos.com

Favorite Passage of the Week:

I found an article in Essence Magazine about Idris Elba. It states:

Idris Elba is touching my arm. He’s telling me about Legacy, the small independent film he’s getting ready to shoot in Glasgow, Scotland, in which he stars as an ex-soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress.  He says, “I’m excited about it because it’s real acting, you know what I mean?” I think maybe he’s grabbed by arm for emphasis, to better make his point. But I can’t tell for sure, because the moment he touches me, I get all tingly.


I chose this piece because I think it draws the reader in. It is a nice colloquial piece written in the first person.

Amber J. (2009, Aug.). Our Obsession with Idris Elba. Essence, 40 (4) 92-97 .

Week 11

Word of the Week: Hubristic

The word Hubristic was found in a New York Times Article about the earthquake’s catastrophic effect on Japan. The story was published on March 13. The following is a link to the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/world/asia/14seawalls.html?hp

The word was used in the following quote from the article:

“Some critics have long argued that the construction of seawalls was a mistaken,hubristic attempt to control nature as well as the kind of wasteful public works project that successive Japanese governments used to reward politically-connected companies in flush times and then to try to kick-start a stagnant economy.”

In this sentence “hubristic” sounds synonymous with frivolous.

Hubristic- [ Gk hybris]“exaggerated pride or self confidence.”

The word hubristic (like all other foreign words) caught my attention because of the way it sounds to my ears. If it’s a word that I think sounds interesting and will most likely make an attempt to use in my everyday vocabulary, I’ll make a note of it.

Catch of the Week: “Students eat, listen at Read-A-Thon”

The following article from The Alligator contains a fact error and is great example of lack of focus.

http://www.alligator.org/news/campus/article_1e869878-46a5-11df-a5c8-001cc4c03286.html

I work at Marston Science Library, and I was scrolling The Alligator’s archive about the coverage of George A. Smathers Libraries’ events and I came across this article, which was written in April of last year. The article referred to the annual reading event that the library hosts as the Book-A-Thon instead of the Read-A-Thon. The headline has the name of the event correct. However, it wasn’t consistent with the text, which as mentioned before, referred to the event as the Book-A-Thon.

Headline Challenge: “City Commission Approves New Bus Routes to UF”

The following is a link to the article:

http://www.alligator.org/news/local/article_c6586238-4605-11e0-b6dc-001cc4c002e0.html

New headline: New UF Bus Routes in Aug. Cost City $646,206

Favorite passage of the Week: Metal to Bone by Anne Hull

The following lines demonstrate literary journalism at its best:

“Four nights a week, Lisa clocked in for duty at the Tampa police station on the frayed outskirts of downtown. In uniform she was petite and muscular, like a beautiful action-figure doll, with piercing green eyes and size 4 steel-toe boots. She kept her hair back in a French braid. Even under a streetlight, her skin seemed carved in pearl.”

I chose this as my favorite passage of the week because it is so well written. It is very descriptive. It has that “show me don’t tell me factor” that Prof. Foley is always encouraging his students to exhibit when it comes to their writing. Instead of saying she had small feet; Hull described the size of her shoe. In addition, she could have said the police officer was pale or white but instead she said “her skin seemed carved in pearl.” Beautiful!

The excerpt is from America’s Best Newspaper Writing: second edition by Roy Peter Clark and Christopher Scanlan of the Poynter Institute.

Clark, P. R. & Scanlan C. (2006) America’s Best Newspaper Writing: A Collection of ASNE

 Prizewinners. New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s.