Word of the day: procrastination

Procrastination means time wasting: you know, reading your favorite language blog when you should be writing your paper, for example …

Here’s an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education with advice for procrastinators (you’ll need to be on a UNC computer to read it under the university’s subscription). Two comments under the article recommend this add-on for the Firefox browser and this application for Mac computers as solutions!

Now, get back to work!

Questions of the week

Here’s a run-down of the tricky questions I was asked this week!

Q 1: What is the difference between here and herein?

Q2: Can you repeat sentences from your abstract in the actual paper?

Q3: What’s the difference between saying “Overall results suggest ..” and “My overall results suggest…”?

Q4: Why can you say, “The inhibition rate” but not *“the inhibition degree”?

My answers …

Why punctuation (still) matters

I know commas are annoying, but they are occasionally quite useful for clarifying meaning, and you don’t need to be a grammatical pedant to appreciate the difference.

Here’s an amusing slip I saw on a travel website describing a new cruise ship (I can dream, right?!). The ship, the Celebrity Eclipse, will be based in the U.K., and the writer notes that the menu will include some typically British items:

Additions to the food menu include mushy peas, steak, and kidney pie.

Except, there’s a problem.

Paraphrasing and plagiarism in mathematical equations

A student in my research writing skills class asked a great question last week about plagiarism. It is clear that copying another writer’s sentence and presenting it as your own work (i.e. without quotation marks), even if you include the correct citation, is not acceptable and would be considered plagiarism by most academics in the U.S. (see my video for more on this).

However, what do you about mathematical equations? You can’t paraphrase an equation, right? (Genuine question: the last math class I took was … many years ago!) And you don’t use quotation marks with an equation. So, what can you do?

Newton … online!

I enjoyed reading this story about the online publication of William Stukeley’s Life of Newton. You can now read the entire book — including the famous description of the falling apple — on the Royal Society’s website. (The glorious 3D version appears to prefer Internet Explorer.)

“It was occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself … Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? But constantly to the earth’s center?” Stukeley wrote. “Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter.”

I couldn’t actually find the page in the manuscript (this quote is from the AP article) — please let me know if you do!

MLK Day: Monday

This coming Monday, January 18, is a federal and university holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The university is closed, and buses are running on a Saturday schedule. You’ll find many stores and businesses open, however.

Dr. King was one of the key leaders of the civil rights movement in the US in the 1950s and 1960s, until his assassination in 1968. Dr. King led a non-violent protest against racism and segregation across the U.S., but especially here in the southern states. His work expanded to include anti-war and anti-poverty efforts. You can read more about his life and work on this excellent website from the Seattle Times. In many communities, including ours, MLK Day is observed as a day of service, and many people take part in volunteer projects. You can see the full schedule of events and activities at UNC here, including details of a talk by actor Danny Glover.

New bus schedule in Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill Transit has changed several bus schedules starting on Monday January 11 (yes, first day of classes), including both buses from the Southern Village Park and Ride. They’ve kept this a bit quiet, so I thought I’d post it here: you don’t want to be late for class on the first day of the new semester, do you?

Happy New Year!

On behalf of everyone at the Writing Center, we wish you a very happy and healthy new year for 2010!

Here’s a picture of last year’s New Year’s Eve party in New York City’s Times Square. It’s traditional for a crystal ball to “drop” over the square at exactly midnight — if you’re not one of the 1 million people in the square on Thursday night, you can watch it on TV!

Locally, the biggest street party is in Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina. It’s called First Night Raleigh, and admission is cheaper if purchased in advance.

First Night is actually a Scottish New Year tradition, and we can’t talk about New Year without mentioning another important Scottish tradition that has traveled around the world: singing the song “Auld Lang Syne” (Celtic: “For old times’ sake”). I’ve heard the song in many different languages (including Japanese and Korean!), but you can find the original here, and you can hear the tune here.

Again, there will be reduced or no bus service on Dec 31 and Jan 1 in Chapel Hill, UNC is closed from Wednesday to Friday, and many banks, stores, and services will close for the New Year holiday, especially on Friday.

And, please, if you’re going out to celebrate the New Year, don’t drink alcohol and drive. Keep the roads safe so that we can all have a happy new year.  (And be careful of “drunk walking“, too!).

See you back on the blog next year!

What’s your favorite English word?

It’s pretty quiet in the Writing Center this week … silent, in fact! But I thought you might like to join me in a little linguistic experiment. I just told a German friend (via Facebook!) that my favorite German word used to be Kartoffel (potato) but is now Spargel (asparagus). It’s a long story. She told me that her favorite English word is hyphen. Nice.

So, what’s your favorite English word? Leave a comment and share!

Some practical information for the holidays in Chapel Hill

If you’re staying in town during the winter break, please be aware that there are changes to the Chapel Hill transit bus schedules and routes. UNC will be closed December 24 (Christmas Eve), 25 (Christmas Day), 31 (New Year’s Eve) and January 1 (New Year’s Day).  Most banks and services will be closed on those days. Stores may be open (less likely on December 25), but check ahead. You can see the libraries’ holidays hours from this page.

And … SNOW is forecast today and tomorrow (December 18-19)!! You can follow UNC’s adverse weather status here. And everyone told me I’d love the winters in North Carolina …

Happy holidays!