Grammar.net Contest for The Best Grammar Blog of 2011

I am pleased to announce that A Walk in the WoRds has been hand-picked as a pre-nominated finalist in Grammar.net's contest for The Best Grammar Blog of 2011.

Thank you for the honor, Grammar.net.

The voting begins on Monday, September 26th and concludes on Monday, October 17th.

[Infographic provided by Grammar.net]

Verbal Pandiculation

Pandiculation was a dictionary.com word of the day a few weeks back that I have been meaning to mention. Following is the definition:

pandiculation \pan-dik-yuh-LEY-shuhn\, noun:
an instinctive stretching, as on awakening or while yawning

by 1611 from French pandiculation from Latin pandiculari "to stretch oneself" and French suffix -ion.

"Pandiculate for Health! Grow Tall! Get Well! Be Young!" Exuberant ads like this, running in health-fad magazines since 1914, have proclaimed the virtues of a spine-stretching device called the "Pandiculator."-- Time, 1942-04-12

I really like the word, not only because it sounds cool, but also because I think it is a great word to use when describing blogs...after all, blogs really are a form of verbal pandiculation.

Academic Blog Reviews

It was recently brought to my attention that some students from a class at the University of Michigan (SWC 200: The Interplay of Text and Imagery) have started blogs about the phenomenon of blogs and blogging. After all of my hard work with this blog, I thought I would give myself a pat on the back by sharing an excerpt from one of these blogs. This particular post from a blog called New fad Media reviewed three academic blogs, one of which happened to be mine.

"A Walk in the Words for me is like the baby bear in Goldie Locks: just the right amount of humor and intellectual journalism to hold my attention. The design is clean and not cluttered, posts are submitted regularly, and the content is original yet not overwhelming."

Thank you for the favorable review. It is nice to be recognized and appreciated.