Saturday, March 21, 2015

Writing and Prosody

I have started a new blog on prosody, Ne'er So Well Express'd.

Prosody is the analysis of the technical elements of poetry, particularly meter and rhyme.

While that will seem a limited subset of the field of writing to some, I show in the posts on prosody that a knowledge of it enriches the writing of prose.

To look at the blog on prosody, click here or go to http://sowellexpressed.blogspot.com/.

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

The intersession passed, Winter knocked down all our pieces from the semester gameboard calendar, but this morning, yellow light is warm on melting snow and ice. There is a breath of Spring in the air.

The Ides of March is nigh. "Ides" is a Latin word meaning the middle day of the month (or so). It was the 15th of March, May, July, and October, and the thirteenth day of the other months.

The Romans had names for days of the month. "Nones" was the eighth day prior to the ides. The word for the first day of the month was "calends". Hmmmm. I wonder if there is a familiar word in English that is derived from "calends"?...