Games Game Software Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) Late Antiquity What Happened at Adrianople? The Epitaph of Praetextatus Some Observations on Roman Chariot-Racing Language The Center Center Weasel Words Stop Saying That! Stupid Spellings Miscellaneous Skookum Editions What’s a Skookum Anyway? Old Stuff WordTally: Free batch word-counting and status-reporting for documents Photo Galleries Everything on these pages […]
Category Archives: Others
14
Jan
Jan
Batch Word-counting and Property-reporting for Microsoft Word Files WordTally is a little Windows utility for batch processing of any documents that can be opened in Microsoft Word, including files in nested folders, to provide a total word count and a couple of document properties. This isn’t a particularly feature-rich application, but it fills a need. Looking […]
14
Jan
Jan
The spellings discussed on this page are widely used and some are found in dictionaries, but to my mind they are wrong and always will be wrong. barbeque I’m not aware of any other word where terminal que is pronounced “kew,” and whenever I see this spelling I want to say “barbek.” Barbeque seems to be a nod to […]
This page is about some of the things people (especially in the media) commonly say that I wish they would stop saying. With a few exceptions, it’s not about grammatical mistakes or usages that are no longer worth fighting about, nor is it about tiresome cliches; it’s about using the language carelessly, without considering whether […]
Few texts that have come down to us from late antiquity are more moving than this epitaph written in the voice of a widow. In late 384, when Praetextatus, serving for the year in the high office of Praetorian Prefect, died just before being able to assume the supreme honor of the consulship, he and […]
Music: The New Addiction Reprinted from the Victoria Times-Colonist, February 2, 1996 The last time my son and I went skating at a local arena, the hard rock music was so loud that in order to talk to one another we had to put mouth to ear. When I finally asked one of the attendants if […]
The graphics capabilities of the Kaypro are generally not well documented; indeed, buyers of the new Kaypro 1 might read the user’s guide from cover to cover without obtaining the slightest hint that their machine has graphics at all. The purpose of this article is to assemble some facts so that the reader can use […]
This letter was published by the short-lived Canadian periodical The Idler in September 1985. A bit of background for non-Canadian readers: the eleven men referred to are the Prime Minister and the Premiers of the ten provinces. Under the parliamentary system, the leaders of majority governments have essentially unfettered power. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms was […]
We all like to have a chuckle at the euphemisms invented by bureaucrats, public relations officers, and assorted hand-wringers—terms like animal companions for pets and challenged for handicapped. But what is more disturbing is the way euphemisms and perverted meanings creep into the popular language and choke off the truth about things—largely through the influence of journalists who are too pusillanimous to […]
The following e-books, available for free download, have been carefully prepared from texts that are in the public domain worldwide (or, as noted, in Canada, where this site is hosted). With the exception of Rolfe’s Ammianus, they contain all the original footnotes, reciprocally linked. Any classical Greek cited is correctly rendered where the device font […]
- 1
- 2