Six Words - Brevity is the Soul of Wit (and Wisdom)

My father passed along the following e-mail from his friend Rick Hebert, a Houston teacher of 9th graders with reading disabilities:

"Here are a few of those “6-Word Stories” that “Ricky’s Kids” wrote; I’m quite proud of these guys…of course, I had to spell a few words for them (and keep repeating, “6 words, 6 words only, no more than 6 words, no less than 6 words), but…"

My Mind Wanders; Hope It Returns

“Perfect” Takes Time I Don’t Have

Life is Fair; People Are Not

Others Are Losers; I Found You

We Are a Lack of Words

She Fears No Evil; She Lies

He Dies Every Day Doing Nothing

Can’t Stop Loving, But He’s Bogus

….and my 2 favorites

What Happens Here Stays on YouTube

American Dream Running Out of Time

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Six word stories belong to a recently-named genre called "flash fiction" or "microfiction" and originated with a story that may or may not have been written by Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

There is now a website called Six Word Stories that has a collection of these stories categorized by author and subject. Here are a few I found under my favorite subject "word play":

The day unfolds. I fold laundry. - R. Armour

Girl on fire. An old flame? - nihualahain

Love triangle. You get the point. - Dan


P.S. "Brevity is the soul of wit" is a line from Shakespeare's Hamlet that just happens to be six words.

The Link Between Speech and Writing - Deep Dyslexia

Dyslexia is the widely recognized optical and neurological condition that causes difficulty with reading, spelling, and writing. Letter and number reversals are common signs of dyslexia.

Deep dyslexia is a less common condition that provides evidence of the close relationship between speech and writing. With deep dyslexia, a person will see one word and verbalize a different, but closely related word.

In the book Word Weavers by Jean Aitchison the example is given of a person reading the word play instead of 'drama', ill instead of 'sick', football instead of 'soccer'.

This example illustrates that "at some deep level, the patient has understood the word he or she is reading, then been unable to retrieve the phonological shape needed to utter it."

I had never heard of deep dyslexia but I think it would be fascinating to study for anyone in the fields of cognitive linguistics and/or neurolinguistics.

The Department of Redundancy Department

Brought to you by the Birmingham-Bloomfield Eagle.

Because many of the planned cuts affect full-time staff, Wilkinson said the estimated 42 full-time equivalent jobs should ultimately impact 42 people.