All You Create

Chalk this one up in the “I had no idea” book: Stepping stone is supposed to be one word!

I went to a class a few years ago and learned how to use stained glass in stepping stones — er, steppingstones. I had such a great time at the class; it brought back the sense of creating something from scratch, much like what I experienced in college while studying theatre. One of the requirements of getting my theatre degree was to work in the scene shop, and I had a ball. Such fun to learn how to drill, cut, hammer, paint, affix, decorate and tear down sets with real power tools! Those were fun, creative times, and this particular steppingstone class, in which I learned how to use nippers, cutters and grinders, reminded me of those hands-on days.

Anyway, the point of all this is this: Since that class several years ago, I’ve made a couple of steppingstones on my own: One was a K-State Wildcat (I know! I know! It was a gift!) and one was an Armenian ‘A’ for my dad (who didn’t realize at first that it was an Armenian ‘A’ (which looks like an uppercase U with a tail); he was just so proud that I had made something for him, he didn’t care what was actually on the stone, and I thought that his reaction was absolutely worth all the effort). But just now, while flipping through my AP Stylebook for blog inspiration, I ran across steppingstone (again, one word — I’m flabbergasted).

So I had to verify this one-word concoction. And yes, both Merriam-Webster and Webster’s New World College dictionaries backed it up.

Happy trails!

SAK

Singing.

It’s one of the great joys of being a human. Doesn’t matter if you sing on or off key. Doesn’t matter if you sing only in cars with rolled-up windows, stopping to wait for the next green light, or in shower stalls with warm water cleansing your body as your favorite lyrics soothe your soul.

Assuming you actually know the lyrics.

For some of us (ahem), that’s a big assumption. Take me, for instance. I’ve been a singer my entire life. I remember singing at the top of my lungs in my room when I was around 8 years old. Imagine my horror when I twirled around in ecstasy of performance, only to find my parents standing in the doorway, watching. The horror! How long had they been standing there? If I had known there’s an audience, well, that would have been something different.

But I digress.

I sang in junior high, then in the high school madrigal group and in every musical that would have me. I sang my way through college (although I started to realize the small-fish-in-big-pond concept around that time). I continued singing on my own as a full-fledged adult and into my married life. Hey, I married a guy who loves to sing, as well, and we can holler out tunes in our automobile, the likes which you have never heard. Seriously!

So one fine day, we’re tooling down the road and the 1981 version of “Bette Davis Eyes” made popular by Kim Carnes (but written in 1974 by Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon) came on the radio. We’re singing along, sometimes he louder, sometimes I. Then came the line, “All the boys think she’s a spaz, she’s got Bette Davis eyes.” I belted it out — with feeling. And then I commented about how amazing it is that someone actually got the word “spaz” into a song.

My husband looked at me sideways. He asked me to repeat the line. I obliged. Then the heckling began.

I suppose at some point in my 40+ years I could’ve looked up the words to the song, but why? I knew them. I did, truly. But apparently, not really.

(It all made sense to me — sort of still does, really, because I never thought Bette Davis was much of a looker and thought, well, yes, the boys think she’s a spaz. Her eyes weren’t the eyes of a “regular” gal, so “spaz” sounded right on, if not very nice.)

My loving husband informed me that “spaz” was not cutting it. The line is: “All the boys think she’s a spy.” OK, fine. “Spy” does rhyme with “eyes” slightly better than “spaz” does. And now all my friends and readers now know my dirty little lyrics secret. Ugh.

Let it be known, though, that I am not alone in my affinity for the mondegreen (which, btw, refers to screwing up the lyrics; it got its name from Sylvia Wright mishearing a Scottish ballad of “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen” in the 1950s).

Someone (name unmentioned here, but if you can guess, go for it) was tooling along in the car with me one fine day several years ago and was belting out Elton John’s “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.” I was singing along, too, as usual. Then came the phrase “Back to the howling old owl in the woods, hunting the horny back toad.” 

I very well may be making an assumption here, but it seems to me that most education systems teach that the poorly constructed contraction ain’t isn’t appropriate to use in either its oral or written form. And yet ain’t has somehow managed to flourish in the English language. Ain’t is a contraction of not just two words, but any of — at minimum — eight combinations of words:

• Am not
• Are not
• Is not
• Have not
• Has not
• Do not
• Does not
• Did not

Ain’t is also entrenched in certain phrases that have become part of the modern-day lexicon:

• If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
• Say it ain’t so
• Two out of three ain’t bad
• You ain’t seen nothing yet
• This ain’t no disco
  

Stemming from the mid-1700s, ain’t has made its way into popular songs (”Ain’t She Sweet,” Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Ain’t No Sunshine”), books (”If Mama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy!” and “Telling Ain’t Training”) and movies (”Love Ain’t Supposed to Hurt” and “A Hero Ain’t Nothing But a Sandwich”). It’s used in journalistic prose as an indicator of casual tone. And it’s used by yours truly on occasion — partly in rebellion, partly to show devil-may-care attitude.

My mother would be horrified.

But there it is. My suggestion would be to use it sparingly, rather than as part of every third sentence — and that ain’t no baloney.

Happy trails!

SAK

So I was looking for something to write about for this bloody word blog and I decided to check out Urban Dictionary. It has a long list of words and when you hover your mouse over a word, its definition (urban definition, that is) comes up in a cute, little box. So I kept thinking that I had found a word to write about, but you know how it goes: “Hey, I’ll just look at one more word, in case it’s better/more memorable/less caustic. Just one more word. OK, just one more. This is the last one. Really.

And then I found my word for today. It made me giggle.

Beardo.

Really, the word didn’t make me giggle as much as the definition did. And now that I’ve put myself out there, you probably won’t find it nearly as funny as I did, but here it is, anyway.

Beardo = a weirdo with a beard

Yes, yes, yes — I know that the term “weirdo” isn’t very PC and all that, but the whole concept jammed my funny bone. And besides that, I’ve known several folks who aim to grow the strangest beard you ever did see; it’s a point of pride with them. So that’s it for this post. Hope you at least smirked a bit.

Happy trails!

SAK

Ah, the AP Stylebook.

As a slightly OCD writer-editor-proofreader-blogger, I love it. Though some of its rules drive the masses wild — especially when I’m the messenger — I love it still.

The journalist’s bible provides the grammatical and editorial guidelines that allow creativity to flow between, to bounce off of, to knock over said rules as need be. How else could all of those ruffian writers out there prove that they’re outside of the establishment if there were no establishment to rail against? Editors know of these ruffians. And editors and writers often have a love-hate relationship. (OK, hate is a strong word. Sometimes.) Lots of AP haters are out there, though, let me tell you.

I fight the good fight daily and trust that my 2011 AP Stylebook will not steer me wrong — even as it insists on my putting a period at the end of every bulleted sentence or phrase, no matter how brief it may be — crazy.

So what else came out of the last round of changes to the AP Stylebook? Here are a few changes, short and sweet:

One-word changes:

• Cellphone
• Checkout
• Email (only an uppercase “E” if it starts a sentence)
• Filmgoer
• Firsthand
• Geolocation
• Handheld (noun)
• Nonprofit
• Postgame
• Pregame
• Serviceman, servicewoman (but still service member)
  
• Smartphone
• Soundstage
• Tipoff
• Unfollow
• Videotape
  

If you’re a wordsmith at all, you’re probably already aware that the hyphenated “e-mail” fought hard but bit the dust. That one change alone made a gajillion people very, very happy. The others, such as cellphone and postgame — going from two words or hyphenated words to one word — didn’t cause as much of a ruckus. But there they are.

Happy trails!

SAK

How the heck is it supposed to be spelled?

Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines the singular hors d’oeuvre as “a small portion of a tasty food served as an appetizer before a meal or as at a cocktail party.” Offering more than one delectable nibble? Then it’s hors d’oeuvres.

When I worked on Coleman packaging back in the day, I had to look up mantel and mantle to figure out which word described the little, cream-colored, filmy piece of netting that was either included with the company’s lanterns or sold separately. Not being a camper, I was not particularly familiar with this tiny piece of cloth. And to this day, I still have to look it up.

To clarify:

• Mantel — a shelf; you often hear of the mantel (shelf) above the fireplace opening.
• Mantle — a cloak; the tiny mesh mantle gives light by incandescence when placed over a flame, but any kind of cloak, or something that covers or envelops, can be considered a mantle.

Easy schmeezy.

Happy trails!

SAK

Here’s one for my main man.

As with everything in life, I’m no expert at language. I may have been trained in English this and grammar that more than the average bear, and I may write a silly but fun little language blog here and again, but I absolutely claim no expert affiliation where language is concerned.

Why? Because I have a hard time with the word expert. In a black-and-white, absolute world (the kind of world that surely would clear up a few things), an expert is supposed to know everything there is to know about a certain subject, right? Well, I may know a decent amount of tidbits, but I positively don’t know everything. Not even close. And I am wary of those professing to be experts in their chosen field unless they have a ton of experience and positive results, plus a lot of positive feedback from those who have dealt with them. And even then, I have one eyebrow raised. Fair? Perhaps not. But that’s my thinking. Beside the fact that I’m no fan of braggarts, if someone claims to be an expert, well, I have some reservations.

Anyhoo — I got that view on experts from an English professor I had once, one whom I was not even that crazy about. She once told me that I reminded her of her when she was younger (and thus less wise than she had learned to become, bleh). So why do I even bother to keep that slant on expert alive? Good question.

Regardless, the term expert is not the point of this post; indict, indicted — they are the point. I cannot get it straight in my head how to read those words aloud, even though I know how to spell them and I know how to pronounce them. Anytime I see them in print, I want to say in-DIGHT or in-DIGHT-ed. Ugh! Talk about feeling like a dope. I was reading an article to my other half awhile back and just read those words without skipping a beat. My husband stopped me and said, “What did you just say?”

Caught in the act of mispronunciation! So I looked up the word indict and found out where this crazy spelling came from, the spelling that has a silent ‘c’ in it. Double-ugh! In my defense, this is what I found out:

• Webster’s New World College Dictionary says that indict is a bastardization, if you will, of the Middle English term enditen, which meant “to accuse” or “to write a document.”
• Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary adds that enditen is from the Anglo-French enditer, which meant “to write or compose.” It stemmed from the “Vulgar Latin indictare, frequentative of Latin indicere,” which meant “to make known formally, proclaim.”
• The word indict held onto its French pronunciation after the spelling was re-Latinized in the 1600s.

So I’m not completely crazy, after all. That third bullet made my day. It’s not my fault that I can’t pronounce it correctly; it’s the bloody Latinization of yet another word that is causing all the hullabaloo.

Happy trails!

SAK

My family went to dinner the other night to a casual pasta joint in town. It had been a mighty warm week, but that evening was slightly cooler, so we decided to eat our meal on the restaurant’s terrace. With young and somewhat-messy kids, that’s often a good idea, especially as we were the only ones who chose to eat outside at that moment.

Anyway, halfway through the meal, it hit me: Use this situation as a teaching moment.

Every night, my husband and I read two books to the girls. They have several (!) in the “Fancy Nancy” series, and one — “Fancy Nancy Sees Stars” — shows the family eating snacks outside one evening. Fancy Nancy, who adores language (the fancier, the better — get it?), points out that eating outside is called dining alfresco.

How correct she is. The term alfresco stems from Italy in the 1700s, meaning “taking place or located in the open air.”  The slightly odd thing to me is that I grew up thinking that alfresco was spelled as two words: al fresco. Webster’s New World Dictionary lists both spellings, thank the gods, but the primary (and thus more-acceptable) spelling is as one word.

So alfresco it is. You should try it, by the by. Dining alfresco is quite refreshing, as long as it’s not sweltering where you are.

Happy trails!

SAK

Oh, my. This is what I’m talkin’ ’bout — writing and editing information about recipes and food! How’d a girl get so lucky?

The newest incarnation of the AP Stylebook has a section dubbed Food Guidelines. It’s not long at barely two pages, but it’s a great addition to the guide. The majority consists of rules to follow for recipe writers and editors. So I’ll mention a few of these rules now and throw in a summertime (really, anytime) recipe for your eating pleasure:

• Recipes are to start with a title in all caps.
• Follow the title with a start-to-finish timeline (as in how long is it going to take before you can actually eat the thing you’re preparing).
• How many servings your dish makes is next.
• List your ingredients in the order used (makes sense) and spell out all measurements (e.g., teaspoon (not tsp.), cup (not c.)).
• If you have an atypical ingredient, you can add clarification (e.g., ghee (clarified butter).
• Use numerals in all cases (i.e., measurements, times, temperatures) except for two numbers that are next to each other. In that case, spell out the first number and use a numeral for the second number (e.g., two 14.5-ounce cans).
• Write the recipe instructions in short, clear sentences.
• If your recipe calls for an oven, add something like “Heat the oven to 400 F” at the beginning of the recipe unless the recipe takes more than half an hour to complete. If that’s the case, either add that instruction in at an appropriate time or find a shorter recipe!
• Write sentences with equipment or technique at the beginning, followed by the ingredients (e.g., “With the hand mixer on medium, whisk the cake mix, egg and oil together for two minutes”). That seems a bit picky for my liking, but whatever.
• Any nutrition information that you’d like to add to the recipe, such as fat (!), calorie or sodium content, goes at the bottom.

Isn’t that fun? Now, for the really fun part: This recipe is something I created from memory. I had gone to a Kansas City Mexican restaurant that doesn’t exist anymore and tasted the most wonderful, flavorful, sweet guac imaginable. And the following recipe is what I came up with. The “secret” ingredient? Orange juice — it adds a hint of sweetness to this otherwise zesty appetizer. Please keep in mind that people who have sworn up and down that they are not guacamole people have tried this and loved it. They weren’t just being polite, either, so you should give it a whirl. I don’t have any nutritional information, but I do know that it’s a pretty healthy dish with healthy fats. Just as with everything, eat it in moderation — if you can.

9-INGREDIENT GUACAMOLE

Start to finish: 10 minutes

Servings: 3–5

• 3 ripe avocados, seeded and skinned
  
• 1/3 white or red onion, diced
  
• 1 hefty tablespoon minced garlic
  
• 1 handful fresh cilantro, chopped
  
• 1 jalapeño, diced (to taste)
  
• 3 squirts lime juice (bottled or fresh)
  
• 3 tablespoons orange juice
  
• Several shakes Lawry’s seasoned salt
  
• Ground black pepper (to taste)
  

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mash till slightly chunky. If too spicy due to jalapeño, add another avocado. Serve with tortilla chips, as an accompaniment to any Mexican meal or as a topper for grilled white fish, such as tilapia or halibut or orange roughy.

Now that’s a nice-lookin’ recipe.

Hungry for more information about this guac? Check this article out.

Happy trails!

SAK