Wordsmithing

Let grammar, syntax, semantics, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences...

And, But and However

Do not start sentences with conjunctions such as And, But and However. According to English teachers everywhere, these should appear ONLY in the middle of a sentence, not shamefully whipped out at its beginning.

That says no-thing about flaunting it as a title.

Once Upon A Time

It was the Best of Times, it was the Worst of Times, it was the Age of Wisdom, it was the Era of Foolishness, it was the Epoch of Belief, it was the Time of Incredulity, it was the Season of Light, it was the Aeon of Darkness, it was the Spring of Decolonisation, it was the Winter of Despair ...

In short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its uproariest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the inflated degree of comparison only.

Resources

Senses

• Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:2045058:10/component/escidoc:2109915/SanRoque_etal_2015.3.pdf
• English speakers, you stink at identifying smells https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530140.300-english-speakers-you-stink-at-identifying-smells

Making sense

• The Science of Discworld https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CMdTlbGhXQ
• The Color Of Magic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkKdShM3qIM (movie)
• Postmodern Parody In The Discworld Novels of Terry Pratchett http://www.lspace.org/books/analysis/christopher-bryant.html

Inflationary language

• And punctuation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcGA4alhPas

Other times

• For the Aymara people living in the Andes, the past lies ahead and the future lies behind http://www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~nunez/web/articles/Taipei%20Times%20-%20archives.pdf
• In Australia, the timeline of the Pormpuraaw, a remote Aboriginal community, runs along the east-west axis. The past is east. Time for the Pormpuraaw flows from left to right if they are facing south, right to left if they are facing north, towards the body if they are facing east, and away from the body if they are facing west. https://tylertretsven.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/time-and-space-in-pormpuraaw/
• In China, Mandarin speakers sometimes represent time along a vertical axis, with the past above and the future below http://psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/mandarin-time-2010.pdf
• Time for the Yupno flows uphill and is not even linear http://anthropology.net/2012/06/01/the-uphill-climb-of-time-for-the-yupno-of-papua-new-guinea/
• How Languages Construct Time http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/language-time.pdf