A Gentle Blend of Communication Expressway
& Webgrammar's Food for Thought

Judy's Corner

Lots of excitement with family and friends as two of my granddaughters recently got married, two neighborhood sisters (long-time friends) had babies two days apart, and two nieces are about to present their babies to the world. Then another niece is in South Korea for a year, teaching, while another part of her family is in Ghana doing missionary work. One of my grandsons is just finishing a year in Australia, where he became certified as a master diver. Plus my amazing daughter (Colorado) continues to climb 14-ers.

In addition, my brother and I have gone on two heavy-duty (for me!), totally enjoyable photo excursions. One day we went to Montezuma Well, Sedona, and the West Fork of Oak Creek. These areas are rich in history and natural beauty. Breathtaking.

Last week we drove to Flagstaff, then to Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and Wupatki National Monument. Amazing, filled with many types of history and science, and absolutely beautiful. On the drive between the Volcano and the Native American ruins, we were treated to some amazing views of the distant Painted Desert.

Grammar Tip #1: Conjunctions

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses. Coordinating conjunctions include and, but, for, nor, either, neither, yet, so, so that. Subordinating conjunctions join two clauses (main and dependent/subordinate), and include although, because, since, until, while, etc. For fun, here's an exercise using commas with coordinating conjunctions.

Grammar Tip #2: Plurals/Possessives of Compound Nouns

Form most plurals of compound nouns by pluralizing basic part of/word: attorneys general; vice presidents. "Most dictionaries will give variant spellings of compound plurals," says Professor Charles Darling. "When you have more than one truck filled with sand, do you have several truckfuls or trucksful? The dictionary will give you both, with the first spelling usually preferred. (And the same is true of teaspoonfuls, cupfuls, etc.) The dictionary will help you discover that only one spelling is acceptable for some compounds - like passersby."

Professor Darling then says, "For hyphenated forms, the pluralizing -s is usually attached to the element that is actually being pluralized: daughters-in-law, half-moons, mayors-elect."

Business Email Tip

Message, Part 1. Keep your message as brief as possible. This is common courtesy. Use short, single-spaced paragraphs. Big, bulky paragraphs are very difficult to read, especially online. No need to indent each paragraph, but do use an extra line between paragraphs. Treat your readers as if they were royalty.

NEA Arts Magazine.

Princeton University Art Museum.

Rising Up: Hale Woodruff's Murals from Talladega College. In 1938 Alabama's Talladega College commissioned acclaimed African American artist Hale Woodruff to paint six large-scale murals portraying the Amistad mutiny and its aftermath, as well as the founding of Talladega College. The High Museum partnered with Talladega College on the removal, extensive conservation treatment, and multi-city tour of the mural series.

Filoli Art Exhibits. Woodside California.

Google Art Project.

Expert Fundraiser: fundraising ideas and how-to advice for nonprofit organizations

Binary Visions. 19th-Century Woven Coverlets from the Collection of Historic Hugenot Street.

The Aurora Page. Michigan Tech. Source of information on the "Northern Lights.

2013 Louisiana Dragon Boat Races. This exciting family event makes for a great day of good, spirited racing, and a great time on and off the water!

Playing With Toads. Did you ever wonder how you could combine 2 seemingly opposite hobbies in to one really weird pastime?

The Science of Sleep and Daily Rhythms.

Instapaper: a simple tool to save web pages for reading later.

The Role of Desktop Publishing in Creating Self-Published Documents

The MyFonts Newsletter. Always lots of good info...Over the past year or so, we've seen a subtle shift in typographic tastes. While until recently the top 10 of our Hot New Fonts was dominated by witty, wild display fonts and scripts, these days there's a more serious-looking bunch of fonts up there.

Ordinary typeface, smart logo.

The Complete Engraver. Broadening your view of design history.

Is this design?

Coming explosion in e-learning an opportunity to rethink journalism education

Physical Education for Homeschoolers by Robin Svedi

Writing across the curriculum: George Mason University. Central to our WAC mission is the belief that when students are given frequent opportunities for writing across the university curriculum, they think more critically and creatively, engage more deeply in their learning, and are better able to transfer what they have learned from course to course, context to context.

Saylor: a free, open collection of college-level courses. No registrations or fees required.

Teachers' Domain: Earth System, Structure, and Processes. Digital media for the classroom and professional development.

Common Errors In English: Professor Paul Brians

Daily Grammar

Daily Writing Tips: Get a daily grammar, spelling, punctuation or vocabulary tip.

Guide To Grammar And Style: Jack Lynch

Professor Charles Darling's Grammar Site

Alcohol, Temperance & Prohibition. Brown University. The items have been collected at Brown for over three centuries for researchers and scholars at Brown and worldwide interested in American history, including the history of alcoholism, how the media was used for spreading ideas and information, and in how the arts presented various movements.

The Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution. Princeton University. More than 150 recently gifted important books, pamphlets and prints representing the major themes of Lapidus' collecting: the intellectual origins of the American Revolution; the Revolution itself; the early years of the republic; the resulting spread of democratic ideas in the Atlantic world; and the effort to abolish the slave trade in both Great Britain and the United States.

Leeson's History of Montana 1735-1885. University of Montana. A history of its discovery and settlement, social and commercial progress, mines and miners, agriculture and stock-growing, churches, schools and societies, Indians and Indian wars, vigilantes, courts of justice, newspaper press, navigation, railroads and statistics, with histories of counties, cities, tillages and mining camps; also personal reminiscences of great historic value; views characteristic of the territory in our own times, and portraits of pioneers and representative men in the professions and trades.

University of Colorado Digital Sheet Music Collection. Approximately 150,000 items including examples from the late 18th through the 20th centuries. This web site provides access to digital versions of some of the categories of sheet music within our physical collections, a new avenue to this interesting genre. The sheet music digitized and presented here was originally published between 1890 and 1922.

Drexel University Costume Collection. Provides detailed information for fashion and textile design students, fashion professionals, historic costume scholars, and followers of fashion trends, current and past. Garments from the collection are viewable in 3D panorama. Rich details are displayed as "hot spots" on the panoramas. Digital galleries created from shows in the Pearlstein Gallery, CoMAD, contextualize the collections.

7 Benefits of Mobile Expense Reporting

Making Media Relations Better: A Rock Star Primer

Best Way to Introduce Yourself. Not just for small businesspeople, but for all people who occasionally have an insecure moment or two.

The simple power of one a day: Seth Godin

How to Counter Fake Social Media Reviews. According to leading business analysts Gartner, as many as 10-15% of social media reviews will be fake by 2014.

Better communications build great relationships by Lynette Smith

Debate over new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer reveals divide between women in media and tech

The State of Social Media Marketing 2012

Subscribe to any website or blog.

Imagining Futures: Social Media for Groceries

5 Ways the Modern World Makes You Extremely Easy to Stalk

The 41-Year History of Email

Interesting Opinions: Wi-Fi is Not Enough?

How journalists can stay safe while working in the field

MFA in Writing, Low Residency Fiction and Nonfiction at Southern New Hampshire University. Students focus on fiction (including adult and young adult) or nonfiction (including environmental writing and memoir).

Master of Fine Arts in Writing at Hamline University

The Nation's First MFA Program Focusing on Writing for Young Readers: Vermont College of Fine Arts.

4 Online Translation Tips for Journalists

Wired.com investigator on Jonah Lehrer plagiarism: 'I think the safety net has eroded'

The rarest POV of all: second person.

Bonus Writing Tip: From AP Stylebook 2011

People, Persons. You use "person" when speaking of an individual (one person remained seated). You use "people" rather than "persons" in all plural uses. However, use "persons" when it's in a direct quote or part of a title (Bureau of Missing Persons).

And there's just one more consideration: "people" is also a collective noun that takes a plural verb if you're referring to a single race or nation (The Canadian people are united), and in this sense, the plural is "peoples" (The peoples of Asia speak many languages).

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How to find Judy's websites

Editing & Writing Services (Biz site w/writing tips blog)
Office Support Services (Original biz site w/blog & ezine)
Webgrammar for educators, writers, editors, researchers, librarians, etc.
Digifeld (Complimentary redigitized photography by Judy Vorfeld)
Judy Vorfeld's personal website

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