12 of 27 Items .... Course: Language

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There's a neat game you can play with the English language: Place the word "only" anywhere in the sentence. How does it change the meaning?

Only she told him that she loved him.
She only told him that she loved him.
She told only him that she loved him.
She told him only that she loved him.
She told him that only she loved him.
She told him that she only loved him.
She told him that she loved only him.
She told him that she loved him only.

What would it look like if we were trying to create a math problem that worked the same way, except "only" is replaced by the equals sign?

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Why is that?

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An engineer from New Zealand, Mr. Sturmer, published this Knight's Tour in 1888. Can you follow the tour and recreate the poem? (Mouseover the image for a hint)

Hint: The, blah, blah, blah,... pawn.

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Very.

So important, this other person doesn't even want you to try.

"Totally disagree with everything. I hate being asked to keep repeating the pronunciation of my name so someone can get it right. Please do ask for a short version I hate when people insisting on getting the full name because I know they won't remember it. Thanks for nothing.

It's really annoying when everybody you meet keeps repeating your name and asking you to spell it so that they can get it right. Use the short version. Do NOT ask to be taught or to be reminded how to say my name . If you do you will get a death stare and the shortened version.

Yes make it clear you won't remember my name so I can give you something even shorter than the already shortened Ihe. If you mess up my name I'll either have to correct you or ignore it. Being tapped on the shoulder is way less irritating.

My first name has 11 letters 1/3 of people still get it's 3 letter abbreviation wrong. Mispronouncing my name changes it's meaning so I'd rather be called him. Names are a very personal thing & this guy has no business speaking for other cultures or anybody but himself AAMOF.

— Ihe Onwuka (@mazihe)

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What do you think of this method?

"I write a lot of technical and narrative documents at work, most 2 to 6 pages. I wanted to share an editing technique that a past mentor taught me that I think is useful and under-valued for these kinds of documents: counting.

Start off with a list of key points you want the document to communicate. In two pages, this probably should be between one and three. In six pages, maybe you can pull off four. In a twelve page research paper, maybe a couple more, but that's it.

Then rank your points in order of how important it is that the audience understand them. Think about how complex, controversial, or unfamiliar each point is. Look at this from the reader's perspective, not yours.

Next, go through your document sentence by sentence and count the words you dedicate to each point. Compare the two lists. Are you spending your word budget in approximate order of importance? Does it reflect the order of complexity?

If it's far off, and you've spent a lot of words saying something unimportant or easy to understand, then you've got a great place to start editing. If you've spent space on things that aren't your core points, that's an even better editing opportunity.

Next, look at the order of how you spend time on each point. Does that order reflect the order of importance? Does it tell a story that either leads with, or leads to, your most important points?

"Extracting the outline" in this way, you get to step back from your own writing, and make sure you haven't lost your core points in a sea of details. It's not the last word in editing, but I do it every time I write an important document I really need the audience to understand."

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