Word-Wednesday for March 27, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, March 27, 2019, the 13th Wednesday of the year,  the 86th day of the year, with 279 days remaining until the end of the year, 5 days remaining until April Fools Day, and 1,063 days until Twosday, February 22, 2022.


Nordhem Lunch: Hot Beef


Earth/Moon Almanac for March 27, 2019
Sunrise: 7:12am; Sunset: 7:46pm; 3 minutes, 36 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 2:36am; Moonset: 11:21pm, waning gibbous


Temperature Almanac for March 27, 2019
                Average        Record      Today
High            13                   40              19
Low             -7                 -46             -13


March 27 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Scribble Day*
• National Joe Day
• National Spanish Paella Day
• National Little Red Wagon Day
• Manatee Appreciation Day

March 27 Riddle
What did one nut say while chasing another nut?*


March 27 Pun
There are roughly 4,200 religions, but there is only one Flying Spaghetti Monster. Don’t be fooled by impastas.


March 27 Punctuation Point
Parentheses
Parentheses (always always used used in in pairs pairs) allow a writer to provide additional information as a single word, a fragment, or multiple complete sentences. The material inside the parentheses must not be grammatically integral to the surrounding sentence. The easiest way to avoid this mistake is to read your sentence without the parenthetical content. If it makes sense, the parentheses are acceptable; if it doesn’t, then alter the punctuation.

Correct: The Chairman (and WannaskaWriter) traveled to Tuff Rubber Balls by automobile.
Incorrect: The Chairman (and WannaskaWriter) were expected to arrive at Johnnies Cafe by 10:00 a.m.

Placement of other punctuation
Place the closing punctuation inside the closing parenthesis when the parenthetical sentence stands on its own. The closing punctuation mark for the sentence is placed outside the closing parenthesis when parenthetical content occurs at the end of a larger sentence. When parenthetical content occurs in the middle of a larger sentence, the surrounding punctuation should be placed outside the parentheses, exactly as it would be if the parenthetical content were not there. When a complete sentence occurs in parentheses in the middle of a larger sentence, it should neither be capitalized nor end with a period—though a question mark or exclamation point is acceptable.


March 27 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 1329 Pope John XXII issues his In Agro Dominico condemning some writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical.
• 1866 Andrew Rankin patents the urinal.
• 1958 CBS Labs announce new stereophonic records.
• 1980 Mount St Helens becomes active after 123 years.

March 27 Author/Artist Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1746 Michael Bruce, Scottish poet and composer.
• 1797 Alfred Victor, Comte de Vigny, French musketeer and writer.
• 1883 Jan Kunc, Czech composer of the Czech State Anthem.

Words-I-Looked-Up-This-Week Writer's Challenge
Make a single sentence (or poem) from the following words:

• alloparental: an individual other than the biological parent of an offspring that performs the functions of a parent.
• cosset: care for and protect in an overindulgent way.
• cynosure: a person or thing that is the center of attention or admiration.
• execrate: feel or express great loathing for.
• folderol: trivial or nonsensical fuss.
• hammajang: in a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up.
• impunity: exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action.
• nocebo: a detrimental effect on health produced by psychological or psychosomatic factors such as negative expectations of treatment or prognosis; from the Latin, placebo, I will please; nocebo, I will harm.
• percipient: (of a person) having a good understanding of things; perceptive.
• tarblish: an acceptable degree; moderately, fairly, reasonably.
• xeric: (of an environment or habitat) containing little moisture; very dry.

March 27 Word-Wednesday Feature
Brackets []
Brackets allow the insertion of editorial material inside quotations. They can be used for the following purposes.

Clarification
If the original material includes a noun or pronoun that is unclear, brackets can be used for clarification:
Chairman Joe stated that he “will not return to Roseau unless they [Roseau Municipal Liquor Store] starts regularly stocking Guinness.”

When used as clarification, the bracketed information should be an addition, not a substitution. For example, if the original quotation is “He never returned,” do not change it to “[The Chairman] never returned.” Instead write: “He [Chairman Joe] never returned.”

Translation
If a quotation includes a foreign word or phrase that might not be understood, provide a translation in brackets. (Use parentheses for translations of unquoted material.)
When asked for directions by Parisian elites while traveling in the French countryside, Chairman Joe recounted the following in his travelogue: “I seldom spoke in French to the uppity urbanites. When I did, I usually just said je ne sais pas [I don’t know].”

Indicating a change in capitalization
In most contexts, it is acceptable to silently change the first letter of quoted material from uppercase to lowercase, or vice versa. In certain contexts, such changes must be indicated with brackets:
“[T]he stories that appeared in THE RAVEN have been widely cited, notwithstanding their dubious credibility.”
Under the terms of her board membership contract for THE RAVEN, Jack Pine Savage’s “[p]erformance-based stock options shall not vest until December 31, 2022.”

Indicating errors
The Latin term sic, meaning “so” or “thus,” is used to indicate an error or confirm an unusual or incorrect usage in the original material. Without the sic, a reader might wonder if the error was made by the writer offering the quotation. Note that while sic should be italicized, the brackets containing it should not:
The final report indicated that “Busch Light were [sic] the most likely cause of the party’s failure.”

As an alternative, reframe the quotation to eliminate the error:
“Busch Light,” according to the final report, was “the most likely cause of the party’s failure.”

If you suspect, but are not certain of, an error in the original material, a bracketed guess and question mark is appropriate:
“The host appeared to have been heavily influenced by the Bush [Busch?] Light.”

Emphasis
If you use italics to emphasize a portion of the quotation, indicate the change in brackets:
He said he might consider consuming “an American beer, but only under the extraordinary circumstances that it was the only beverage available to toast the dearly departed [emphasis added].”

An alternative approach is to note the emphasis outside the quotation, in parentheses, either as a separate sentence immediately after the sentence containing the quotation:
He said he might consider consuming “an American beer, but only under the extraordinary circumstances that it was the only beverage available to toast the dearly departed.” (Emphasis added.)

or as a parenthetical note added to the end of the sentence containing the quotation:
He said he might consider consuming “an American beer, but only under the extraordinary circumstances that it was the only beverage available to toast the dearly departed” (emphasis added).

Objectionable content
If the original material contains language you deem inappropriate for your Wannaskan Almanac audience, brackets can be used to remove it:
He insisted that his wife give him back the “[expletive] Guinness.”

Parenthetical within parenthetical
In the rare event that parentheses are required within parentheses [emphasis added], use brackets instead. This is one of the few uses of brackets outside of quotations:
Correct: In his twenties, WannaskaWriter toured the Iowa countryside giving lectures about the advantages of Guinness to anyone who would listen (subsequently published as Growing Up in Iowa [2008]).
Incorrect: WannaskaWriter toured the Iowa countryside giving lectures about the advantages of Guinness to anyone who would listen (subsequently published as Growing Up in Iowa (2008)).

Brackets in the material being quoted
If the material being quoted already contains brackets, this should be noted:
WannaskaWriter found support for his opinions about Guinness in a written testimonial by Chairman Joe: “Though back in the day when he was young and wet behind the ears, he [Steve] was usually prescient about beer.” (Brackets in original.)


From A Year with Rilke, March 27 Entry
Remembering, from Book of Images
And you wait. You wait for the one thing
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.

In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.

And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.


Be better than yesterday, learn a new word today, try to stay out of trouble - at least until tomorrow, and write when you have the time.

I’m a cashew!*