How to write (or not)

Miss Cellania has added an amusing list of grammatical rules to her blog. The list is funny but it is also worth remembering:

Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat)
Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
Be more or less specific.
Remarks in brackets (however relevant) are (usually) (but not always) unnecessary.
Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
No sentence fragments.
Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
One should NEVER generalize.
Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
Don’t use no double negatives.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
One-word sentences? Eliminate.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be ignored.
Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
Kill all exclamation points!!!
Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
Puns are for children, not groan readers.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Who needs rhetorical questions?
Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

My licensing book is out

My short book on open licenses in Swedish Copyright – Copyleft: En guide om upphovsrätt och licenser på nätet is finished and it is online at the IIS, the organisation who commissioned the work. The book covers seven licenses and the Creative Commons system.

The licenses discussed/explained are the Free Art License 1.3, GNU Free Documentation License, the Sparc Author Addendum, the Ethymonics Free Music License, the Common Documentation License, the, the BSD Free Documentation License and the Open Game License.

I am happy that the work is done and I hope that it will serve to help the curious learn more about licensing.

Terms of Use

My friend, collegue and fearless explorer of the public domain Eva has sent me a copy of her new book “Terms of Use

Love the tigers on the front… If it is anything like her last book it will be great. I will be reviewing it here later but I just wanted to give anyone a heads up straight away – this is an interesting book.

Good and bad writing days

Orwell’s diary, entry for August 10, 1938.

Drizzly. Dense mist in evening. Yellow moon.

Nice to know that even the great, professional writers have bad writing days… Maybe it was a lazy Sunday or maybe post-summer vacation blues. Who knows…

Ingelfinger rule

The policy of considering a manuscript for publication only if its substance has not been submitted or reported elsewhere. This policy was promulgated in 1969 by Franz J. Ingelfinger, then the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. The aim of the Ingelfinger rule was to protect the Journal from publishing material that had already been published and thus had lost its originality.

I knew about the practice but not that it had a name. You learn something new every day – even on Fridays…

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Photo Absolutely Nothing is Allowed Here by Vicki & Chuck Rogers (CC by-nc-sa)

How to take notes

Study Hacks is a cool blog aimed at students which has lots of study tips which are useful for everyone.  Today they have a great list of tips for taking notes. This is must read stuff…

A Study Hacks Crash Course on Smart Note-Taking

Why Most Students Don’t Understand the Real Goal of Note-Taking
A classic article from the early days of Study Hacks. It lays out my core philosophy on how to take notes well. You can use its “Three Laws of Reduced Study Time Note-Taking” as a general framework for the construction of your own customized note solution.

Part 2 in 60 Seconds or Less (or, The Q/E/C Note-Taking Method)
Another classic article. It summarizes the main philosophy driving Part 2 — Quizzes & Exams — of my book How to Become a Straight-A Student. What makes it relevant to this post is that it describes the famed Question/Evidence/Conclusion note-taking system that I first introduced in my book and now reference all the time here on Study Hacks.

Accelerate Q/E/C Note-Taking
A technical article that describes how to use Word short-cuts to accelerate Question/Evidence/Conclusion note-taking on your laptop.

Rapid Note-Taking With the Morse Code Method
A steamlined note-taking variant for long reading assignments that need to be completed in a short amount of time.

The Art of Pseudo-Skimming
An even more streamlined note-taking approach for articles that only need to be reviewed, not mastered, before class.

How to Read Hard Readings
This post introduces “strategic pre-processing” as a technique for conquering outrageously dense and complicated reading assignments.

How to Take Notes on Power Point Slides
Technical tips for taking efficient notes on lectures that are driven by Power Point slides. Take a look at the readers’ comments, which introduce some interesting twists on my advice.

Why Nietzsche bores me…

Finally I found the reason. Here is a quote from Nietzsche’s sister:

The days of his youth — of his carefree, merry gamboling — were over. Hereafter he was all solemnity and all seriousness. ‘From these early experiences,’ says his sister, ‘there remained with him a life-long aversion to smoking, beer-drinking and the whole biergemütlichkeit …’ He maintained that people who drank beer and smoked pipes were absolutely incapable of understanding him. Such people, he thought lacked the delicacy and clearness of perception necessary to grasp profound and subtle propositions. (via Noniclolasos)

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The Quite Pint by Monster (CC  ATT-NC-SA)

Given the choice between being bored by Nietzsche or a beer I choose a beer anytime.

Sleep & Work

Finally an explanation! I knew that I was doing something wrong. The only problem is that it doesn’t say how to get off the cycle. I guess that I will just wait until after surviving the next couple of all-nighters…

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Phd Comics by Jorge Cham

Parallel Production Sucks

Despite being totally aware of the consequences I am now stuck (again) with the job of writing several things in parallel. In the next two weeks I need to finish my open access report for Lund, two book chapters and a licensing booklet. The actual content is not the problem – what is the problem is despite all efforts to the contrary deadlines have a tendency to expand and contract to finally collect themselves in nasty little clusters that force the whole writing process into an attempt to beat text from the dead mind of the writer.

So how does this happen and can it be avoided? To answer the last question first: Of course it can be avoided. The simple trick is to only do one thing at a time. The cost of this approach will be to radically diminish my writing output. So this does not feel like an option.

The first question (why?) is more complex. It can be attributed to bad planning but this is only part of the truth. For many years I would explain my deadline stress with the words bad planning but I have come to realize that this is not the whole truth. No matter how good my planning is life has a way of throwing small surprises (not all pleasant) dates change, new tasks are assigned and often unrealistic work loads lead to delays.

The results of these insights should maybe be to attempt to change – but how can you change the unforeseen? How much planning must be included for that which you cannot know? And in the end isn’t it all a waste of time? After all:

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans – John Lennon

On closets

The metaphor of “coming out of the closet” is a good one. The image of the closet as the place where socially unacceptable secrets are hidden is very apt. In a discussion on religion in Sweden with my Greek flatmate in Lund I used the term “closet Christian” without really reflecting over its meaning. He questioned the term and I began to expand what I meant. The more I spoke the more the term struck me as odd – but suitable.

The metaphor of the closet, and in particular the idea of coming out of the closet, refers mainly to homosexuality. But the content of the closet is naturally dependent upon the social setting. Sweden is a very secular society, it is not radical, but rather a form of absolute indifference.

It is not really a disbelief based upon the questioning of the existence of god in the manner of Epicurus

Is god willing to prevent evil but not able – then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing – then he is malevolent.
Is god both able and willing – then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing – then why call him god?
Epicurus (341-271 BCE)

But it is a more casual, detached form. It has become such an accepted position that there is little or no need to argue the position. Most people do not even feel the need to explain the lack of belief. It is a simple fact, disbelief is the ruling norm.

Sweden is also extremely accepting of homosexuality. So much so that it is easier to be a homosexual than a Christian. What I mean by this is that, in Sweden, it is easier to shock your surroundings by admitting to believing in god than admitting to a non-heterosexual lifestyle. So I guess that there must be groups of Christians who prefer to keep their faith hidden so that they will not be stigmatized (however lightly) by the groups in which they mix.