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Join us in Chicago in May!
Do you write for a living? Are you responsible for marketing brochures? Annual reports? Proposals? If so, the IABC is an organization you should consider joining. The International Association of Business Communicators is all about making you a better, more connected, more prolific writer. Check out www.IABC.com today! And join us in Chicago May 7-8! Get $150 off the registration fee by using "ProofreadNOW" when registering!
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Happy Earth Day
Will there ever be a Mars Day on Mars? What would they do? Rake red dirt all day? Just something to ponder as you consider today's list of earthy words.
1. meliorism: (a) marked by or showing concern for the environment; (b) advocacy of the preservation, restoration, or improvement of the natural environment; (c) the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment; (d) active demand by two or more organisms or kinds of organisms for some environmental resource in short supply.
2. eurytopic: (a) a biological agent or condition that is a hazard to humans or the environment; (b) tolerant of wide variation in one or more environmental factors; (c) tending to preserve environmental quality (as by being recyclable, biodegradable, or nonpolluting); (d) ecological or environmental.
3. dendrochronology: (a) the ecology of human communities and populations especially as concerned with preservation of environmental quality (as of air or water) through proper application of conservation and civil engineering practices; (b) the science of dating events and variations in environment in former periods by comparative study of growth rings in trees and aged wood; (c) any of the sciences (as geology, meteorology, or oceanography) that deal with the earth or with one or more of its parts; (d) a branch of earth science dealing with the physical processes and phenomena occurring especially in the earth and in its vicinity.
4. anthropocentric: (a) the science of the interrelationships between the physiology of organisms and their environment; (b) modification of an organism or its parts that makes it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment; (c) providing shelter from contact with the outside world; (d) considering human beings as the most significant entity of the universe.
5. biotope: (a) biological diversity in an environment as indicated by numbers of different species of plants and animals; (b) a relatively stable ecological stage or community especially of plants that is achieved through successful adaptation to an environment; (c) a region uniform in environmental conditions and in its populations of animals and plants for which it is the habitat; (d) a physical or biochemical defect that is present at birth and may be inherited or environmentally induced.
6. cline: (a) the destruction of large areas of the natural environment especially as a result of deliberate human action; (b) an organization or area designated to conserve and protect natural resources; (c) a corridor of undeveloped land preserved for recreational use or environmental protection; (d) a gradient of morphological or physiological change in a group of related organisms usually along a line of environmental or geographic transition.
7. effluent: (a) to adapt to a new temperature, altitude, climate, environment, or situation; (b) precipitation (as rain or snow) having increased acidity caused by environmental factors (as atmospheric pollutants); (c) the biology of energy transformations and energy exchanges (as in photosynthesis) within and between living things and their environments; (d) waste material (as smoke, liquid industrial refuse, or sewage) discharged into the environment especially when serving as a pollutant.
8. deracinate: (a) to remove or separate from a native environment or culture; (b) of or relating to human beings or the period of their existence on earth; (c) a somewhat steady level of radiation in the natural environment (as from cosmic rays); (d) marked by deprivation especially of the necessities of life or of healthful environmental influences.
9. convergence: (a) independent development of similar characters (as of bodily structure of unrelated organisms or cultural traits) often associated with similarity of habits or environment; (b) the acquisition of dissimilar characters by related organisms in unlike environments; (c) a slow movement of the continents on a deep-seated viscous zone within the earth; (d) having achieved an often specified and usually harmonious relationship with the environment or with other individuals.
10. dendrology: (a) the study of swamps and their related ecosystems; (b) the study of trees; (c) the life processes especially of an organism or group; (d) a science dealing with the properties, distribution, and circulation of water on and below the earth's surface and in the atmosphere.
If errors in printed publications are causing you to expel far more than your daily limit of CO2 and making your soy-ink-on-100%-recycled-paper brochures end up in your customer's recycling bin, ProofreadNOW has the perfect earth-friendly plan to pick those errors up off the page and deposit them where they will do no harm to any animal life. We examine the spelling, punctuation, and clarity of your ad, proposal, Web page, brochure, or anything else in print. We're on the job for you with a very small carbon footprint but a very big impact on your earthy (and earthly) image.
Answers: 1:c 2:b 3:b 4:d 5:c 6:d 7:d 8:a 9:a 10:b Rate Yourself: Consider recycling ... your brain.
3 to 5 correct: Pedal harder.
6 to 7 correct: Lower carbon.
8 to 9 correct: Recycler.
All 10 correct: No doubt you recycle, compost, and ride a bike to work.
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| Weekly Grammar Tip |
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Choose the Right Word, Part 2
Last week's list of word pairs was so popular, we decided to add to it. So here are more words that are often confused. As we said last week, the following list contains words we have actually found misused in our clients' otherwise impressive documents: proposals, annual reports, RFPs, contracts, cover letters, and, of course, advertisements. The discerning reader will see these mistakes and will project the quality onto the writer. And that's NOT what you want. Fortunately, we caught them. Can you?
- The governor declared marshal/martial law on Monday.
- Such hardships will test one's medal/meddle/metal/mettle.
- The ship began to flounder/founder in the storm.
- His caustic remark was beyond the pale/pail.
- The reward certainly does peak/peek/pique one's interest!
- Our plans are all under way/underway.
- He spoke in the most atrocious pidgin/pigeon English.
- She flunked plain/plane geometry in high school.
- The proofreader will pore/pour over a document for hours.
- My garden is loaded with praying/preying mantises.
- It is simply a matter of principal/principle.
- Don't rack/wrack your brain over this problem.
- You have free rain/reign/rein to do whatever is needed.
- He will raise/raze Cain/cane when he hears about this mistake.
- The students paid rapped/rapt/wrapped attention to the speaker.
- He plowed into the stack of applications with reckless/wreckless abandon.
- He intended to reek/wreak/wreck havoc on the opposition.
- Consider the difficult assignment a right/rite of passage.
- At one point, McCain had seemed a shoe-/shoo-in to win the election.
- Stay back or I'll sic/sick my attack poodle on you!
- All this financial sleight/slight of hand is covering up the fact that he is completely incompetent.
- He's the spit and/spitting image of his father.
- He desperately worked to stanch/staunch the flow of blood.
- Buckley wrote the book's forward/foreword in one evening.
- My blond father was a toe-/tow-headed youth.
- You WILL learn to toe/tow the line here in prison!
- The raving lunatic swore like a trooper/trouper.
- His heroic efforts were all in vain/vane/vein.
- The odors wafting from the kitchen will really wet/whet your appetite.
More tough words, eh? Click the question mark for the quick answer list!
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| Word of the Week |
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sate
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: probably by shortening and alteration from satiate
Date: 1659
Definition: 1: to cloy with overabundance : GLUT
2: to appease (as a thirst) by indulging to the full
Example: "Mr. Obama has hinted that while his Administration won't prosecute CIA officials, it may try to sate the mob by going after Bush officials who wrote the memos."
- Wall Street Journal, 4/22/2009, p. A14.
Definition source: Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary.
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Copyright 2009 by ProofreadNOW.com, Inc., 447 Boston Street, Topsfield, MA 01983 USA. Published weekly (we try) by the editors at ProofreadNOW.com, Inc. and sent to customers of record and to opt-in guests. Many readers find it is best to read a portion, put it aside, then come back and read more.
Please rate this GrammarTip (10=high, 0=low):
10 - Like blooming lilacs.
7 - Like blooming forsythia.
3 - Like blooming dandelions.
0 - Like blooming ragweed.
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