Monday, August 25, 2008

An Embarrassing Word

Name the most embarrassing word you can think of.

Now write a fictional piece, no more than a page, using the word so that the reader feels the embarrassment and know what the word is without your spelling it out.

Of if you want to write a non-fiction piece, do, but with the same caveats as the fictional piece, do. No more than a page. The reader should know the word without your having to spell it out. The reader should also feel the embarrassment.

Have fun

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Agenbites


In this article (click above for access), Joseph Bottum talks about the idea of "good" words: words that have some kind of extra power in their own architecture. The essay is an excellent expression of an important idea and, for obvious reasons, we Utterers implore you to read it. We hope you find it as splendiferous as we did.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Where's the Bald Soprano When You Need Her?

Hi-ho fellow Grammarchists! Today we've got an exercise for those of you who've had it up to HERE with clichés.

A cliché is a phrase, expression, or idea that has been overused to the point that it has lost its intended force or novelty, especially when at some time it was considered distinctively forceful or novel. The term is most likely to be used in a negative context.


THE ASSIGNMENT: Write a dialogue that consists entirely of clichés. Don’t readily identify the topic of your discussion, but let the clichés reveal the nature of the interaction between the people.


Example: About money and lying



1. Hey, I’ve got a deal that’s as good as gold.

2. Well, your last one just about broke the bank.

3. I’m not made of money.

1. Well, if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door.

2. So, could I give you a penny for your thoughts?

1. You always were a penny pincher.

2. A penny saved is a penny earned.

3. A fool and his money are soon parted.

1. This will be a cash cow.

2. Well, you put your money where your mouth is.

1. This is a sweet deal, a real sweetheart deal.

2. I don’t want to be taken for a ride.

1. I told you this is worth its weight in gold.

2. Well, sometimes there’s no gold in them thar hills.

1. You’re both tightwads. You want to buy something for a song.

2. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

1. This won’t cost a kings ransom.

2. I don’t want to lose my shirt.

1. Sometimes your both a pennywise and a pound foolish. I’m going to be rolling in the dough for there’s a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. See ya. Gotta go. Time is money.

2. He’s blowing smoke, and you know where…

3. So he tried to pull the wool over your eyes to.

2. His story is hard to swallow.

3. Yeah, he lies like a rug.

2. It’s just another one of his snow jobs.

3. He always loves to pull your leg.

2. Just another tall tell of his.

3. He’s just yanking our chains.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Body Language

In this video, Sid Ceaser (from old-timey television program Your Show of Shows) duels it out with Nanette Fabray, entirely through body language, to Beethoven's 5th Symphony. The video is a testimony to how much can be said with music and body: how much we can communicate without words:

Friday, May 9, 2008

Double Negatives

Good day language-lovers! Today we've got an exercise for you that we're not sure you won't love:

Create a conversation moving through a sea of double, triple, and quadruple negatives.

Person 1: Heyyy!
Person 2: Oh..hey, how are you…
Person 1: I'm doing great, I'm doing great, wow great party huh?
Person 2: Yeah…yeah….look, Its not that I didn't want you to come or anything…but I didn't really mean for you to come.
Person 1: What, you didn't not want me to come?
Person 2: No, I didn't didn't not want you to come, I didn't want you to come.
Person 1: Right so you didn't not want me to come did you. Like you didn't not not want me to come.
Person 2: No…I didn't not not want you to come. No, wait, no…wait…no! I didn't want you to not come.
Person 1: Great, yeah, I didn't not want me to not come either…and I did bring chips and salsa so it's a great thing that I didn't not come!
Person 2: I don't care about whether you did or didn't bring chips and salsa, I did not want you to come in the first place!
Person 1: I did bring salsa though, its right over there. By the chips. Which I did bring.
Person 2: I don't care! I don't care! I didn't not want you not bring chips and not bring salsa and not bring yourself, I DIDN'T!
Person 1: You don't like Chips and salsa?
Person 2: NO! I didn't want YOU to bring them!
Person 1: Would you rather I brought something else…or if I didn't bring something else?
Person 2: I wish you didn't bring you!
Person 1: I didn't not bring me!
Person 2: Yes you did!!
Person 1: No! Your mom brought me! I met her when I wasn't not buying salsa and I wasn't not getting chips to not NOT bring to your party and not not have a good time!
Person 2: GO HOME!
Person 1: Oh…I didn't know you felt that way.
Person 2:….sigh…you didn't?

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Playing with Punctuation

Good Afternoon Fellow-Utterers-- today we've, got a brand-new, exercise which, requires, you to experiment with punctuation:

Write a paragraph that, when punctuation is varied in a second version of the paragraph, has a distinctly different tone/meaning than the original. The words and sentence order should be exactly the same in both paragraphs; the only difference is in the placement of punctuation. This exercise demonstrates the powerful influence of punctuation upon meaning. It also conveys the importance of proper punctuation and the dangers of careless or haphazard use of punctuation.

Example:

Dear John, I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy—will you let me be yours? ----Gloria

Dear John, I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Gloria

(Example from Ohio State University's English Department website.
http://english.osu.edu/programs/firstyearwriting/resources/teacher/triedandtrue/grammar/punctuation.cfm. Originally from Games Magazine, 1984.)

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Types of Sentences 2

Good day Grammar-lovers! We have a new exercise for you today, one that plays with different types of sentences.

There are four types of sentences that we use in language for four different purposes.

1. DECLARATIVE – make a statement
2. INTERROGATIVE – ask a question
3. IMPERATIVE – gives a command
4. EXCLAMATORY – shows strong emotion

Many phrases can be contained as parts or the whole of any of these four types of sentences. The object of the exercise is to play out this overlap.
Instructions for the exercise:
Pick a declarative sentence as your launching point – something active, but not too complicated.

I went to the store to get milk.
Then, write a dialogue (more than two characters can play) using only the words of that sentence, variations thereof, or common words and verbs of dialogue. Follow this order of sentences:

1. Declarative (original sentence)
2. Interrogative
3. Declarative
4. Exclamatory
5. Exclamatory
6. Imperative
7. Interrogative
8. Interrogative
9. Declarative
10. Interrogative
11. Imperative
12. Declarative

Example:
A: I went to the store to get milk.
B: You went to get milk?
A: Yeah, to the store.
B: (who happens to be lactose intolerant) WHY DID YOU GET MILK?!
A: It’s milk! I got milk!
B: Don’t get milk!
A: Why can’t I get milk?
A: Can I not go to that store?
B: You can go to that store, yeah; just don’t get milk.
A: So I can go to that store?
B: Don’t get the milk…
A: Yeah, okay.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Melodizing Some Words

Good afternoon Grammar-seekers,

This website will feature new exercises as addendums to Daphne Athas's Gram-o-Rama (again, our bible). Check back every week for new exercises-- there'll be a new one every Wednesday from today forward. Use them in your classroom, in your home, in the bathtub. Just don't let them know they're being used. No one likes to feel used. Today's exercise is called MELODIZING SOME WORDS:

If you look in your Gram-o-Rama-Manual you’ll find two exercises that deal with music: musicalizing a speech and words to music. In musicalizing a speech one tries to capture the essence of a speech using a musical instrument (often a kazoo, a word-stripping device which leaves words only their tones). In words to music we take pre-written piece of music and write words (traditionally known as lyrics) to accompany that music. The new exercise, melodizing a speech explores the opposite process. We take a pre-written speech, poem, or text and write music to accompany those words. The difference between this and the musicalizing a speech exercise is that we can still hear the words and we’re exploring brand-new music rather than the inherent music in the tones of the words.

Two good examples of the melodizing some words exercise are Barack Obama’s Yes We Can video:



And Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:




Click HERE to hear one of The Utterers performing the first lines of Oh the Places You’ll Go! This exercise can be done with just one person or a number (as in the Robert Frost example). And feel free to go all-out. No instrumentation is required, but all instrumentation is invited.

Thanks! And have a Grammarvelous Day!

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

I Don't Believe in Introductory Clause

Sprockety-Ya! (A.K.A. Hello!)

We are the Utterers, a group of students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill obsessed with GRAMMAR. We got hooked on these phonics last semester while taking a class entitled Gram-o-Rama: an exploration of language and grammar as performance art. Since then we have been bewitched by words, invigorated by verbs, and possessed by nouns.

Our Bible is Daphne Athas's GRAM-O-RAMA:

The masterpiece preaches the rules of grammar, and then teaches language-leaches (like us) how to break them. The book does this through exercises that explore the conventions of language and grants us permission to manipulate those conventions to our own ends.

Every two weeks we (The Utterers) will be supplying you (our utterly fabulous reader) with new, never-before-explored exercises. We invite you to take them, do them, love them, and utlitmately unleash grammarchy upon them.

Lexical love,
The Utterers