Reference

There is no doubt that technology is changing today’s society. However, some people feel that these changes are for the worse, especially when it comes to technology and the media. These people argue that the advent of computers and the internet will make traditional books and other paper reading materials, such as newspapers and magazines, obsolete. Rather than have the ...

AM/IM comes from the Latin word amare, “to love.” Amiable means “friendly or good-natured,” and amigo is Spanish for “friend.” Amicable:  friendly, peaceful.  Their relations with their in-laws were generally amicable, despite some bickering during the holidays. Enamored: charmed or fascinated; inflamed with love.  Rebecca quickly became enamored of the town’s rustic surroundings, its slow pace, and its eccentric characters. ...

Writer’s Block It happens when you least expect it– halfway through the ten page paper that you are writing for your American Literature class, you suddenly run out of steam. You stare at the computer screen for hours, willing the words that you can’t seem to find to magically appear. Time is ticking away, but you can’t seem to move ...

HOSP/HOST comes from the Latin word hospes and its stem hospit- meaning both “host” and “guest.” Many words based on it came to English through French, which often dropped the -pi-, leaving host-.  Hospitality is what a good host or hostess offers to a guest.  A hospital was once a house for religious pilgrims and other travelers, or a home ...

PAC/PEAS is related to the Latin words for “agree” and “peace.”  The Pacific Ocean–that is the “Peaceful Ocean”–was named by Magellan because it seemed so calm after the storm near Cape Horn. pacify: (1) To sooth anger or agitation. (2) To subdue by armed action.  (It took the police hours to pacify the angry demonstrators.) pacifist: A person opposed to ...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhHpJ45_zwM] This School House Rock video explains interjections.

Formal writing insists upon proper grammar and syntax; however, when quoting someone remember the rule: Thou shall not edit quotes According to Washington Post’s business chief copy editor, Bill Walsh, “a reader should be able to watch a TV interview and read the same interview in the newspaper and not notice the discrepancies in word choice.” My roommate showed me a ...

BELL comes from the Latin word meaning “war.” Bellona was the little-known Roman goddess of war; her husband, Mars, was the god of war. Antebellum – existing before a war, specially before the American Civil War (1861-65). (When World War I was over, the French nobility found it impossible to return to their extravagant antebellum way of life.) Bellicose – ...

Social networking sites have changed the way we communicate to one another as we have been allowed to, in essence, create our own dictionaries. What we write is a personal expression of how we view words and phonetics and sometimes it ends up intelligible, but most of the time we are just taking a shortcut to get out what we want ...

This School House Rock Video explains conjunctions. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkO87mkgcNo]