News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:“It turns out” by petercooper on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @08:36PM (#1163085)
Loved this post. The foibles of rhetoric and language "hacks" fascinate me. I'd subscribe to a blog that posted stuff like this regularly - not least because I'd like to learn similar rhetorical "tricks." Anyone know of any (or even books)?
Re:“It turns out” by nollidge on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @10:43PM (#1163303)
Not necessarily "hacks" per se, but Language Log is quite good: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
Re:“It turns out” by retro on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @09:17PM (#1163159)
William Safire's weekly "On Language" piece in the Sunday New York Times did this type of thing for decades and was required reading in my English classes. Sadly he passed on recently but you should be able to find stuff like this in his books or in his articles in the NYT Archive.
Re:“It turns out” by Angostura on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @07:57AM (#1163962)
I think Safire would probably have suggested that you used "died" rather than "passed on". No?
Re:“It turns out” by rtperson on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @01:38PM (#1164756)
He would also have suggested a comma after "sadly," so that it's obvious that it's the writer's comment, rather than a modifier on the way Safire died.
Re:“It turns out” by thibaut_barrere on Wednesday March 03, 2010 @05:09AM (#1163806)
You have to read this (I read the french version, I hope the english one is close):

A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583227652

Re:“It turns out” by jraines on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @11:00PM (#1163331)
I occasionally return to this and browse around: http://www.nt.armstrong.edu/terms.htm

The examples are great.