20 of your favourite euphemisms. A Magazine feature about some well-known euphemisms got readers thinking about some of their favourites.
Here is a selection. 1. "Spending more time with the family" is used as a general statement by politicians who have been forced to resign because of some low-level scandal they don't wish to admit / comment on. Neil, Chessington, Surrey 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. Images from George Orwell’s 1984 manuscript (Part 1)
Preliminary drafts representing about 44% of the published text of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four have survived and were reproduced in a facsimile edition published in 1984. As Sonia Orwell wrote on 28 August 1974 to Daniel G. Siegel, who now owns the manuscript, “it is such a rare document” for “unfortunately George always threw away all his mss. letters etc., so his actual working methods are very badly documented.”
Opening paragraph of 1984: Draft version: It was a bright/cold, blowy day in early April and a million radios were striking thirteen.
Monologues. Persuasive writing. Writing style - using a voice. Fiction in a flash. This column has always celebrated brevity and her near relation, clarity.
One of the joys of English is that, while its huge vocabulary can be deployed in mesmerising Joycean arpeggios – for example, in Will Self's extraordinary new novel, Umbrella – it can just as easily concentrate its meaning in a few well chosen words. There is, indeed, a dialectic in the canon, between the wordy (Shakespeare; Byron; Dickens; Joyce) and the lean (King James Bible; Dickinson; Beckett; Hemingway). A new celebration of brevity reaches its climax this week in Matt Shoard's online magazine, Fleeting. Shoard, and fellow judge Tobias Hill, will sift the winners of Fleeting's "Six Word Story Competition", continuing readers' growing interest in so-called "flash fiction". Shoard says "we saw nearly 5,000 entries in our search for the best six-word story in the world".
Spelling. Pixar films don't get finished, they just get released. Here is what I received from Pete Docter, one of the most influential and important people at Pixar, the best animation studio on the planet.
Transcript follows. Many thanks to Adam for allowing us to feature his letter. Be sure to check out his blog, Disney, etc. Recommended Reading: The Art of Up. Pixar’s Story Rules, Illustrated in Lego by ICanLegoThat. Last year, Pixar story artist Emma Coats (@lawnrocket) tweeted 22 rules of storytelling like “give your characters opinions” and “no work is ever wasted.”
No television since 1988: what would you have missed? On Tuesday a report appeared on a local news website in Kent about an electronics engineer from Southborough who hasn’t watched a TV programme since 1988.
The man, 53-year-old Andrew Lohmann, ditched his television, the article states, when he realised he had developed a bad habit for watching the box. His reliance on TV, he said, had become detrimental to his social life and his interaction with the world around him, so he simply gave it up. The report goes on to document all the ways in which his life improved once he gave up staring at the set for hours on end. John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter. By Maria Popova “If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry.
Nothing good gets away.” Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (1902-1968) might be best-known as the author of East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men, but he was also a prolific letter-writer. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters constructs an alternative biography of the iconic author through some 850 of his most thoughtful, witty, honest, opinionated, vulnerable, and revealing letters to family, friends, his editor, and a circle of equally well-known and influential public figures.
Fifty words for rain. 40 Of The Most Powerful Photographs Ever Taken.
Learning to teach: Text type mnemonics. So close to the exam and my Y11s are still really struggling to answer the 'How does the writer use language to...' (Question 3 of the AQA Foundation paper).
They have real difficulty finding things to write about unless it is a persuasive text. So, I decided if I could come up with a mnemonic that matched the text type it should really help them remember what kind of things they could write about. More slow writing – suggestions please. Thank you for all the fab feedback on Slow Writing. Most of the recognistion really belongs to David Didau and David Riley. I am just the maven that stole the idea from one David and gave it to the other. You Are Your Words - AHD.
Punctuation. Writing to Explain. Autobiography. Sentence Structures. Vocabulary. Travel Writing. Narrative Writing. Writing to Argue. Learning Zone Class Clips - Creating Parody - English Video. Writing to Describe.