Synonyms are words that mean the same thing.

For example, cheerful / glad.

Antonyms are words that are opposites.

For example, blessed / cursed.

Homographs are words that are spelled the same, but have different meanings.

For example, bass (type of fish / low, deep voice). 

And when the meanings of the homographs are antonyms, they’re called contronyms. 

For example,

• Dust (add fine particles / remove fine particles)
• Left (remaining / departed from)

Can you think of any before looking at the list?

via reddit

via boingboing

This online rhetoric, provided by Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University, is a guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric.

Sometimes it is difficult to see the forest (the big picture) of rhetoric because of the trees (the hundreds of Greek and Latin terms naming figures of speech, etc.) within rhetoric.

Go to Silvia Rhetoricæ for a glossary of terms, theoretical concepts, and rhetorical devices. 

photo by Moyen_Brenn

stephenwildish:

Punctuation, know your sh*t…

Metric feet sounds like it’s about how Canadians measure distance — we drive and run in metric, but we talk about our height in feet.

This metric feet is about the rhythm of language.

Meter is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. The feet are the metrical units. And they have names. 

You’ve probably heard of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter (five iambs in a line):

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene

And there are more patterns. In Constance Hale’s chapter on rhythm in Sin and Syntax, she includes this little gem to remind us of the more popular metric feet:

The iambs go from short to long.

Trochees sing a marching song.

Dactyls go dancing as light as a feather.

But the anapest’s different, you see, altogether.

This answers one of the main problems I have with ebooks — the clunky navigation.

curiositycounts:

An interface for navigating iPad ebooks that mimics the fluid, intuitive navigation of thumbing through the pages of a paper book.   (via)

The Elements of Style: the rap version [2:26]

The Periodic Table of Content from Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media Studios. 

• Elements at the top of the chart are small and tend to have a shorter half-life.Elements at the bottom are larger, slower to create and last longer.
• Elements to the left appear everywhere, on billions of sites and various devices. Elements on the right are more likely to be on your site.
• The number in the top right indicates the typical length of number of words for that Element.

firstbook:

Couldn’t agree more.