WordPlay I Make Your Own Avatars and Clip Art

I’ve been conducting research and compiling images for a comprehensive review of a great free online imaging tool. But you’re not going to read about that now, because I woke up with a cold. Instead, I’m going to refer you to some tips for getting something on the page on the days when the content just ain’t happening.

Tip #1
Create a resource list using other people’s work. This post is an example. I found some posts that address finding inspiration for blog articles and voilà! Instant blog post.

Tip #2
Scan this exhaustive (and when you have a cold, exhausting) content resources list from Lorelle on WordPress that will surely have an idea or 10 that will point you in the right direction for content creation.

Tip #3
Check out these 18 types of blog posts from Darryn at ProBlogger. One of these ideas might jar your thinking process a bit so you can come up with something new.

Tip #4
Use Zemanta. If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog and you don’t already use Zemanta, you might want to start. Once it’s installed, simply go to the editing area of one of your old posts you think might be expandable (preferably a long one so Zemanta will have a good idea of the subject) and see which articles Zemanta recommends. One of these might inspire a new idea or give you stories to link to for your very own post like this one: a resources list. Read our Zemanta review for more information about how it works.

Tip #5
Use social networking sites to see what’s hot. You can get a quick idea of the latest buzz by seeing what everyone else is writing about. If you write book reviews on your blog, check out social networking sites devoted exclusively to book lovers.

As always, it’s a good idea to make things look pretty by using images in your posts. Images can also do wonders if you don’t have time to write a lot. You can use Zemanta for this. But if Zemanta doesn’t have what you need, see our free clip art collection, free cartoons or Stock.Xchng review for links to lots of quality free images. (The image in this post is from B S K of Stock.Xchng.)

I hope this resource list helps you stay on top of your content!

If you’re interested in relevant anchor text links for your content, visit R.T. Cunningham’s ConnectContent.

Need a last-minute gift or card for a Mom?
Check out these free Mother’s Day certificates and free printable vintage Mother’s Day cards.

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As we know, bloggers are a special breed who work hard. How moms who blog actually pull off caring for children at the same time, I have no idea. My hat’s off to them. To honor the fact that they live double lives so effectively, here’s a guide to Mothers Day gifts for moms who blog. The products range in price and type; some are serious, some are silly. But any of these gifts will allow you to support her creative passions this Mother’s Day!

MOTHER’S DAY GIFT GUIDE

Verilux Natural Spectrum Deluxe Clamp Lamp
This is the perfect gift for a mom with bleary eyes from spending too much time at the computer. The lamp can be clamped on a desk or monitor to allow the simulated natural sunlight to illuminate her workspace, reducing eye strain and making the whole world look sunnier.

$79.95, includes FREE shipping!
ORDER Verilux lamp _________________________________________________________________

The Chicago Manual of Style
This is the quintessential resource for sticklers who want to get every detail right. Originally created to establish editorial standards for writers of academic works, the scope of its recommendations now cover the world of cyberspace — which makes it perfect for blogging moms!

$34.65, includes FREE shipping! ORDER The Chicago Manual of Style

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Eats, Shoots & Leaves
This hilarious book is like Mary Poppins’ proverbial spoonful of sugar that helps the plea for better punctuation to go down. Combining a joking militarism about correct punctuation usage with a great sense of humor, Lynn Truss educates while she entertains.

$9.60 (paperback), plus shipping
ORDER Eats, Shoots & Leaves
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Canon PowerShot A590IS 8MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom
Whether she wants to capture the kids in action or create photos for blogging, this is the perfect gift. A serious camera at an affordable price, its easy operation allows even moms who know nothing about photography to take great pictures.

$153.40, includes FREE shipping ORDER the Canon Powershot
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The Elements of Style
This skinny little volume covers the basics every writer needs to know. In fact, many writers read it once or twice a year, just to brush up. If you know a mom who blogs and doesn’t have this book, you might want to do her a big favor and get it for her.

$10.85, plus shipping
ORDER The Elements of Style

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So there you have it; some lovely gifts I’m sure the blogging moms in your life would be happy to get.

Don’t forget, Mother’s Day is May 10, so order soon!

And if Mother’s Day puts you in the mood for a good film, here’s a list of 10 movies about moms you might like. Also, if you’d like to make a free vintage art card for Mother’s Day, visit Vintage Holiday Crafts.

Tags: blogging, shopping, Mother’s Day, holidays, family

By Lynn Truss

You’d be surprised how punctuation affects us all!

I used to live in Los Angeles, which has famously become a melting pot. I’ll leave it to more profound minds to discuss the ramifications and benefits of the blending of so many cultures in one place. I’ll just confine myself to the effect that blending has had on the language: I don’t like it and I’ll tell you why. It has nothing to do with xenophobia (an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or of that which is foreign or strange). In fact, I loved having access to so many cultures. What bothered me was the effect that multiple converging languages had on signage.

Petty? Probably. But I just couldn’t help extrapolate the effect signs written by non-English speakers — and left unchecked by sign company proofreaders — would have on future generations.

So you can imagine my joy at finding a book devoted to this and other niggling grammatical worries. Not only does Eats, Shoots & Leaves author Lynn Truss share my concern over errors made on signage; she’s raised the correction of them to high art. The subtitle of the book is “The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” and she isn’t kidding. If you’ve ever cringed at a sign that read “Banana’s for Sale” (which of course should be the apostrophe-less “Bananas for Sale”); you’ll love this book.

A clue to the content of the book can be seen in its title, which comes from an old joke:

A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down and orders a sandwich. After he finishes eating, he pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter. He then stands up to leave.

“Hey!” shouts the manager. “Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you didn’t pay for your sandwich!”

The panda yells back at the manager, while throwing a badly punctuated wildlife manual at him, “Hey, I’m a panda! Look it up!”

The manager opens the manual and sees the following definition for the panda: “A large bearlike mammal with characteristic black and white markings, native to certain mountain forests in China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

This just shows you how much trouble one lone comma can create. Had the comma after “eats” been omitted, the panda would have just stuck to eating shoots and leaves and there wouldn’t have been any gunplay.

Truss is so hopping mad about the abuse of language; she has stopped just short of advocating gunplay herself for language abusers. But she does it with such wit and insight; she makes you want to join in.

Here are just a few examples from the book that explain how we get ourselves into trouble with punctuation:

Commas run amuk

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

In the first example, the poor hypothetical woman doesn’t amount to much without a man around. In the second, the man is the one left wanting. The meaning is completely reversed simply by replacing the first comma with a colon and moving the second comma.

Misplaced apostrophes

A sign hangs in front of a large children’s playground that reads “Giant Kid’s Playground.” Truss points out that it’s no wonder no one uses the playground. The misplaced apostrophe strikes fear in the hearts of neighborhood children by announcing the presence of the Giant Kid who owns the playground.

Although Lynn Truss advocates for all of us to become soldiers in the punctuation war by packing correction fluid and stickers to both cover unwanted punctuation and introduce punctuation that’s missing; it’s all done with tongue firmly planted in cheek. That’s what makes this book so special. Like the proverbial spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, Eats, Shoots & Leaves uses humor to distract us while poking us with a stick to jar us awake.

We hope you enjoyed this book review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. You might also want to read our other book reviews:

The Elements of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

You might also be interested in these holiday gifts for writers.

Available in print and versions, this resource is a practical guide to editorial style for writers. It’s hard to overestimate the influence this writing tool has had on wordsmiths everywhere. Although it was created to establish editorial standards for writers of academic works, the scope of its recommendations now cover the world of cyberspace.

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) book and Web site are divided into logical categories, which cover all aspects of writing and grammar, from punctuation to split infinitives to how to capitalize the president of the United State’s title. (And no, you don’t get to decide that based on your opinion of him.)

Some examples of the questions the CMOS answers:

• Which is correct: Web site, web site, website or Website?
• Should there be a comma after website in the question above?
• Which is correct, Boston Tea Party or Boston tea party?
• What is the proper format for citing an information source?

Although the online version offers quick answers to a lot of questions that can pop up while writing, it doesn’t address all of them. You need the print version for that.

The Chicago Manual of Style online version is based on an annual subscription, but there is a 30-day free trial. Also, they offer a free FAQ that answers common grammar questions and doesn’t require registration to access.

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We hope you enjoyed this book review of The Chicago Manual of Style. You might also want to read our other book reviews:

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The Elements of Style

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

You might also be interested in these gifts for writers.

Blog Review: WordPlay Café Neologisms Contest

What do you call a baseball player who keeps adjusting his
batting glove for the 28th time, backing in and out of the
batters box, checking his grip, etc.?

The ump’s ire? Maybe Ruth? A lumbercheck?

Any of the above new terms for one of the more fidgety boys of summer is known as a neologism. Who would have thought one of the more serious vocabulary words I’ve ever heard could be so fun?

Dictionaries define a neologism as a recently created word, sometimes resulting from a combination of words. Since inspiration and insanity are close cousins, it’s not surprising that The American Heritage Dictionary also incorporates this little ditty into their definitions of neologism: “The invention of new words regarded as a symptom of certain psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.”

But you don’t have to be crazy to come up with neologisms. Just ask illustrator Michael Kline, who has made a successful career out of mangling words. He’s the illustrator of many children’s magazine articles and 25 books, including WordPlay Café, which teaches children to have fun with language. He also authors and illustrates the WordPlay Café Neologisms Contest Blog, which runs a weekly contest that encourages people to come up with their own neologisms to match his illustrations.

The results of people’s manglings are quite clever. Here are last week’s winners:

What do you call it when you forget to attach
a file to an important e-mail?

1st place: Mailnutrition
2nd place: Filefaux pas
3rd place: Dettachments
Honorable mention: ADD: Attachment Deficit Disorder

If you’d like to try your hand at mangling a few words, you can enter the contest (or just look at the past entries) by going to WordPlay Café. The first-place winner gets his or her choice of a copy of the WordPlay Café book, or an original, autographed sketch of the illustration on which the winning entry was based.

You also can contact Michael at WordPlay Café for permission to use his illustrations on your blog or Web site and to find out about the terms of use. (Ed. note: No taking without asking first, please.)

Copyright 2007 WordPlayBlog.com

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“Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you’re a consultant.”
Scott Adams

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Let’s face it, sometimes the well is dry and you don’t know what to write. At times like that, borrowing a famous quotations can help get the ball rolling. If used to reinforce your blog’s topic, the quote could even make good reading. (Don’t go off-topic unless there’s a good reason. Unless you have a reputation for covering a variety of subjects, your readers are there for your expertise on one topic.)

If you can combine the quote with a photo, so much the better. As you can see in this post, the photo makes it hard to miss the quote. Don’t know where to find photography? See our review of Stock.Xchng free photos for a great source of quality free images. Or, use your camera phone or digital camera to create images uniquely suited to your blog’s topic.

Here are some tips for using quotations:

• Use quotation marks around the quote.
• Make sure to attribute the quote to the appropriate author.
• Don’t change the quote, even if there’s an obvious error.

Here are some good sources for quotations:

• Quotations Page
• Quoteland
• Bartleby
• Sales motivation quotes
• Employee motivation quotes

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“In the business world, the rearview mirror
is always clearer than the windshield.”
Warren Buffett

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Fish photo by Pam Roth

You might also be interested in these related posts:

• Wordz We Misspell
• Keywords 101
• Writing Tools for Bloggers
• Posting Checklist
• Grammar Myth #1
• Grammar Myth #2

Copyright 2007 WordPlayBlog.com

By William Strunk and E.B. White

The Elements of Style manages to condense all the important rules of grammar into a package so small, you could mistake it for a drink coaster. Well, maybe it’s not that small. But small enough to give the impression that it wouldn’t cover enough territory to be worth buying. But it does and it is. That’s why writers have loved it since it was published for mass distribution in 1959.

When Professor William Strunk self-published the original version in 1919, it was even smaller than it is today. E.B. White (of Charlotte’s Web fame) was a student in Strunk’s Cornell University English class at the time, so he had to read The Elements of Style along with the rest of his classmates. After graduating, he promptly forgot about the book. He couldn’t have known then that 38 years later Macmillan would ask him to revise it for the college market and general trade.

A master of economical writing, White used not one word more than was necessary to spruce up Strunk’s original take on grammatical style. And that’s exactly the point of the book; it advocates a lean economy. Thankfully, it also allows for flexibility. The book still counsels to omit needless words and to use concrete, specific language instead of the abstract, but it also gives advice on using colloquialisms and avoiding fancy words. And the glossary alone is worth the price of admission. Especially for those of us (ahem) who can’t seem to remember the names of all the parts of speech.

The book covers a vast array of grammar questions, although White insists in his forward that The Elements of Style isn’t meant to be comprehensive. The topics it covers are too numerous to mention, but here are some:

• Commonly misused words and expressions
• Nouns used as verbs
• Writing in a way that comes naturally to you
• Not taking shortcuts at the cost of clarity
• The number of the subject determines the number of the verb

White’s plainspoken authority intimidated me when I first read the book years ago. It helped me relax, though, when I read the forward in the fourth edition by White’s stepson, Roger Angell. He tells of observing White’s weekly efforts to come up with copy for the “Notes and Comments” page of The New Yorker. Angell said that sometimes after the copy was in the mail from Maine to New York, White would say, “It isn’t good enough. I wish it were better.” Experiencing this fundamental anxiety writers are prone to led him to infuse The Elements of Style with practical, no-nonsense advice. He probably even needed the reminders himself.

Although White died in 1985, his little book is still among a writer’s best friends. This is due in no small part to his understanding of a wordsmith’s plight.

We hope you enjoyed this book review on The Elements of Style. You might also want to read our other book reviews:

The Chicago Manual of Style

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

You might also be interested in these presents for writers.

Copyright 2007 WordPlayBlog.com

You can’t begin a sentence with and or but.

But of course you can. This is an example of another worn-out rule that needs to be debunked. I don’t even know how this one began, because people have been beginning sentences that way since the 10th century.

One caveat: even people who support the use of and and but to begin sentences believe that overuse leads to monotony. But what is overuse? Personally, I never begin a sentence with and and but more than once each in a paragraph. It’s my experience that more frequent use gives the writing a droning quality. And if I can go several paragraphs without using them in that way, so much the better. When used properly, however, beginning sentences with and and but can actually introduce a continuity and colloquial feeling to your writing.

Also, see grammar myth #1: You can’t end a sentence with a preposition.

You might also be interested in these related posts:

• Wordz We Misspell
• Keywords 101
• Using Quotations
• Writing Tools for Bloggers
• Posting Checklist

Copyright 2007 WordPlayBlog.com

By David Shipley and Will Schwalbe

Just this morning there was a cautionary tale in the news about an Atlanta man’s e-mail to a woman who rejected him on Match.com. In an attempt to persuade this woman that she was missing out on a hot catch, he enumerated his many charms, including that he “has an 8.9 rating on HotOrNot.com, drives a Beemer, can bench press over 1,200 pounds and has had lunch with the secretary of defense.”

His e-mail made the rounds on the Internet until it found its way to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where I read the story. But the guy didn’t just embarrass himself in Georgia. His rant also was featured on gossip Web site Gawker.com. The story generated 285,000 Gawker.com page views and over 3,000 online comments, most of them negative. That’s a great argument for thinking before you click the Send button.

The concept of thinking before you launch your words into cyberspace permeates Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home This compact but powerful book covers diverse aspects of modern communication, including:

• When you should substitute a fax, letter, instant message or phone call for an e-mail
• How to apologize for an inexcusably late e-mail reply
• The politics of Cc and Bcc
• Flame wars
• How men and women use e-mail differently

Every aspect of electronic communication seems to be covered in this handbook, which was written by two seasoned professionals: David Shipley, Op-Ed page editor of the New York Times and Will Schwalbe, senior vice president and editor in chief of Hyperion books. They write with wit and style, which makes taking our medicine almost fun. They’ve also infused the book with an understanding of the human condition behind our communications, making Send oddly comforting.

We hope you enjoyed this book review of Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home. You might also want to read our other book reviews:

The Chicago Manual of Style

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

The Elements of Style

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

You might also be interested in these presents for writers.

Copyright 2007 WordPlayBlog.com

Maybe it’s because I was born in the San Fernando Valley, home of the Valley Girl, that I don’t really care for the word awesome. I’m not sure whether Moon Zappa used it or not, but it’s seems very much like a Valley word to me. And I didn’t move all the way from California to the East Coast because I liked the Valley.

That’s probably more information than you need to know about me, but I wrote it for a reason. I want you to know there has to be a special reason for me to call anything awesome. So, with that explanation out of the way, here’s my assessment of Stephen King’s On Writing: it’s awesome.

Part memoir and part writing primer, this book is a must-read for anyone who writes — or reads, for that matter. King’s life story, which takes up the first half of the book, would be interesting even if the prose weren’t well written. But it is, and his accessible writing style elevates the material even more.

As interesting as the first half is, the second half is the reason I’m writing this review. Full of tips for writers, On Writing not only educates; it inspires. King obviously loves the craft of writing, and not just for the enormous amount of money it has earned him. In this book he honestly lays bare his own creative process, which happened to incorporate a life-threatening car crash and the struggle to came back to productivity again. He then goes on to hand out excellent common sense advice and practical tips for writers, along with sincere encouragement.

So if you ever feel your creative gas tank getting low, I highly recommend this awesome little book. If you’re like me, you’ll walk away inspired.

We hope you enjoyed this book review of On Writing. You might also want to read our other book reviews:

The Elements of Style

The Chicago Manual of Style

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

You might also be interested in these gifts for writers.

Copyright 2007 WordPlayBlog.com