Word-Wednesday for May 29, 2019

And here is the Wannaskan Almanac for Word-Wednesday, for May 29, 2019, the 22nd Wednesday of the year,  the 149th day of the year, with 216 days remaining.


Nordhem Lunch: Hot Turkey Plate


Earth/Moon Almanac for May 29, 2019
Sunrise: 5:27am; Sunset: 9:15pm; 1 minutes, 50 seconds more daylight today
Moonrise: 3:40am; Moonset: 3:54pm, waning crescent


Temperature Almanac for May 29, 2019
                Average        Record          Today
High           68                   90                80
Low            46                   30                52

May 29 Local News Headline
Roseau Times-Region
Police Report Gang Going through Town Stores Shoplifting Clothes in Order of Size: Suspects Still at Large


May 29 Celebrations from National Day Calendar

• National Paperclip Day
• National Coq Au Vin Day
• National Senior Health & Fitness Day

May 29 Riddle
What is the most mathematical reptile?*


May 29 Pun
Wannaskan Almanac supports Roseau County farmers. In fact, you could call us

May 29 Notable Historic Events, Literary or Otherwise, from On This Day

• 757 St Paul I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
• 1630 John Winthrop begins "History of New England".
• 1790 Rhode Island becomes last of original 13 colonies ratifying US Constitution.
• 1848 Wisconsin becomes 30th US state.
• 1849 Lincoln says "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
• 1922 US Supreme Court rules organized baseball is a sport and not a business and thus not subject to antitrust laws; no such ruling about professional wrestling.
• 1986 59th National Spelling Bee: Jon Pennington wins spelling odontalgia
• 1997 70th National Spelling Bee: Rebecca Sealfon wins spelling euonym.

May 29 Author/Artist/Character Birthdays, from On This Day

• 1736 Patrick Henry.
• 1874 G. K. Chesterton.
• 1917 John F. Kennedy.

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

• ailurophobia: intense fear of, or aversion to, cats.
• allocution: a formal speech giving advice or a warning.
• basilisk: a mythical reptile with a lethal gaze or breath, hatched by a serpent from a cock’s egg.
• duvet: a soft quilt filled with down, feathers, or a synthetic fiber, used instead of an upper sheet and blankets.
• euonym: a name well suited to the person, place, or thing named.
• flygskam: Swedish word, translates as “flight shame”.
• geas: an obligation or prohibition magically imposed on a person.
• odontalgia: pain in a tooth; toothache.
• pinguid: resembling fat; oily or greasy.
• subact: to work up, knead, mix, break down, or assimilate (a substance), as in the process of digestion.

May 29 Word-Wednesday Feature
Words or Numerals?
Style manuals do not agree on the issue of when writers should spell out numbers and when they should use numerals, where individual style manuals state that the guidelines change according to the type of number and the context in which it is being used. The American Psychological Association even has it own set of style guidelines for when to use words and when to use numerals.

The good news is that almost all style manuals agree on four points:

1. Do not begin a sentence with a numeral. When spelling out a number would be awkward (as in “Two hundred seventy-five people attended the St. Patrick's Day party”), rewrite the sentence to avoid having it begin with a number (“An intimate crowd of 275 people attended the St. Patrick's Day party”).

2. A cluster of numbers in a sentence or paragraph is best handled with numerals for readability: "In the course of the evening, the first St. Patrick's Day party attendee consumed 6 bottles of Guinness, the second consumed 2, the third consumed 4, the fourth consumed 0, the fifth consumed..."

3. Numbers that refer to comparable quantities in close proximity should be treated the same. In the following sentence, for example, the number six is written as a numeral because the other two numbers in the same sentence are (in nontechnical writing) too complex to be expressed in words:

"Attendance at the Wannaskan Almanac contributor's meetings last year ranged from 5 people at the first meeting to 4 at the last, with the lowest attendance being 1 when the agenda called for a discussion of the budget."

4. Decimal fractions and percentages should be expressed in numerals, not in words. We would write “The Guinness bottle held 11.2 fluid ounces of beer” and “Chairman Joe's Sunday squib approval rating increased 87 percent last week.”

Note, too, that the symbol for percent (%) should be used only in technical writing; in other contexts, we use numerals before the word percent, as in the example above.

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS), often sited as one of the most preferred style guides for nontechnical writers such most contributors to Wannaskan Almanac, recommends spelling out “whole numbers from one through one hundred, round numbers, and any number beginning a sentence.” The CMOS suggests an alternative for technical writers: spell out “only single-digit numbers.” The CMOS states that such rules “should be used with flexibility so as to avoid such awkward locutions as ‘12 bottles, of which nine were consumed yesterday.'"

Writers will want to avoid placing two numbers adjacent to one another to prevent a misreading. In such cases, it is helpful to spell out the smaller of the two numbers. For example, the phrase “6 11.2 ounce bottles” would be better written as “six 11.2 ounce bottles.”


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.

*the adder