Scribal Terror

Wildflower

From Busey Woods in Urbana

Understanding clauses

Today, Beautiful English begins a detailed study of the English sentence with a post on clauses. A discussion of clauses might sound daunting and/or incredibly tedious, but a clear understanding of clauses is indispensable for writers at every level of expertise:

Clauses form the basis for many of the decisions you will make about grammar, style, and punctuation. For instance, if you want to know where to put commas, you must know what the different kinds of clauses are and how they work grammatically within the English sentence.

Unlike the English handbooks you might have read, however, Beautiful English is an interactive learning experience. If you are confused about the explanations, all you need to do is put a question in the comments section and I will be immediately notified by email -- and I will keep finding new ways to explain and new examples to use until you are satisfied that you understand. Also, if you have sample sentences that you would like me to analyze, I will be glad to do that. For instance, if you want to know if a clause is relative or subordinate, I can tell you and explain the reasoning behind my explanation. Again, I won't stop until you are satisfied that you understand. And remember, There is no such thing as a silly question.

Exploding Ants

A study published in the Journal of Chemical Ecology reports on nine species of Bruneian ants, whose workers "are known to have hypertrophied mandibular glands and release their glandular contents suicidally from the head by rupturing the inter- segmental membrane of the gaster." In other words, their heads explode. Exploding ants will instinctively commit suicide when their colony is attacked, killing not only themselves but often their attackers as well.

Sources:

Jones, T.H., D. A. Clark, A. A. Edwards, D. W. Davidson, T. F. Spande and R. R. Snelling. The Chemistry of Exploding Ants, Camponotus SPP. (Cylindricus COMPLEX). Journal of Chemical Ecology 30, 8 (2004).

Encyclopedia Bugtanica

The illustration is Ants by M.C. Escher

The door is open . . .

Come on in and talk.  Or drop off one of your random bursts of verbal energy -- poem, limerick, story, top ten list, clerihew, essay, alliterative poem, rant, Surrealist or Dadaist poem, parody, cento, dirty joke, amusing  syllepsis, dirty syllepsis, haiku, dirty haiku . . . to share.

The legend of the tooth worms lives on!

In Rayman: Raving Rabbids you have to use the Wii to pull the worms out of the "rabbid's" teeth. The belief in tooth worms goes back at least to the time of the Sumerians, and it apparently survives even now.  Hsu and Ring reported in the Journal of the History of Dentistry that "A quack in modern China adopted the same ruse and supposedly drove the worms out of [a] student's tooth. This duplicitous procedure was captured on film by a dentist who witnessed it."

Dialect map

At Beautiful English.

Singapore waterspout

Via Cellar

Lower West Side house front

It's impossible to convey how small this grandiose structure is. There are two large Ionic columns in the middle and two equally large Ionic half-columns on the sides, in addition to a full entablature with a triangular pediment all crammed together in a tiny, narrow house front. The pink door is under the entablature to the left of the pediment. I could spend days photographing old Chicago house fronts.

St. Adalbert Roman Catholic Church

St. Adalbert's is located on the lower West Side of Chicago. The building was completed in 1914.

The door is open . . .

Come on in and talk.  Or drop off one of your random bursts of verbal energy -- poem, limerick, story, top ten list, clerihew, essay, alliterative poem, rant, Surrealist or Dadaist poem, parody, cento, dirty joke, amusing  syllepsis, dirty syllepsis, haiku, dirty haiku . . . to share.