![]() ![]() BLOTTERĪ blotter-like the similar term paper-stainer-is a writer who is not doing much more than literally leaving a mark. But the word gained an even more specific meaning thanks to the 1930s Polish Żagary movement: writers who were part of this movement were called catastrophists. CATASTROPHISTĪ catastrophist has often referred to a specific type of pessimist-someone who thinks life is constantly falling into debacle and disaster, with apocalypse right around the corner. This 1900 example from Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim shows how little respect the term carried: “He wouldn't be terrified with a pack of lies by a cocky half-bred little quill-driver.” 5. Quill-driver is as straight-up a synonym you’ll ever find for pencil-pusher. This vivid term has been around since at least 1700, and it can refer to a clerk or secretary, but it’s also a dismissive term for a writer. Sarcasm is harder to find on the Internet than kittens. This noun, in print since the 1600s, would not be useful at all today, since it refers to a sarcastic writer. ![]() The Oxford English Dictionary defines a tootler as a “a writer of ‘tootle’, verbiage, or twaddle.” Tootling took a trip down Horsefeathers Avenue because early meanings referred to birdsong or the notes of a wind instrument, both of which can be pretty but rarely present a logical argument. In this 1998 Chicago Tribune article, the term is clearly not aspirational: “Were we journalists then and we're just puffers of stories now to get numbers?” 2. Eventually, the word gravitated toward another type of malarkey-spewer: the advertising writer. This word started out in the 1600s as a word for a bloviator who tended to blow empty smoke about something. At the risk of being a puffer, here are some obscure things to call a quill-driver. But there are also many old, out-of-use words for very specific types of writers (and also terrible writers). Ultimately, this combination of quantitative and qualitative data will help us to make decisions about the program as it is offered in subsequent semesters.In our age of bloggers, spammers, texters, and tweeters, there are types of writing earlier eras couldn’t have imagined. In order to improve the reliability and usefulness of the collected data, we will need to revise some of our Likert-scale based questions using currently-available test questions from other indices. However, the current survey questions are somewhat informal, and none have been psychometrically tested. The decision to send the survey at three different times was made in order to ensure that attitudes prior to Camp matched attitudes on the first day, and to then compare that to results after Camp. In fact, to ensure reliable data for analysis, the SurveyMonkey questionnaire is filled out by students at three different times: before Camp, on the first day of Camp, and 30 days after Camp. Currently, quantitative measures of satisfaction of Dissertation Boot Camp participants are tracked in two ways: through a formal survey posted through SurveyMonkey and an informal survey that is handwritten at the end of the Camp. While qualitative data is helpful in gauging graduate student responses to Boot Camp, it is also crucial that we undertake data-driven analysis to support the value of the four-day writing event. Without transitions, the ideas would not be as easily connected. Pay attention to how the following transitions were used in the paragraph below: while, currently, in fact, however, and ultimately. ![]()
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