We’re Snoring Because Your Poem is So Boring

Welcome to one of our favorite holidays of the year: Bad Poetry Day. August 18 brings with it the license and the freedom to let those terrible sonnets fly.

Sure, many of us remember our high school days when just about any drama would send us scurrying to the page to dash off a few lines. However, the resulting text is not exactly what we mean by bad poetry. Even those stanzas, penned when we were young, were important to us. They may not have had the literary brilliance that age and experience brings, but they were full of real emotion.

In the context of Bad Poetry Day, bad poetry means boring poetry. It means penning dull lines about uninteresting topics. Perhaps the best way to learn about a “bad” poem is to explore some important elements of a “good” poem.

Structure: Most beginning poets get this element wrong right away. How do you properly break up your lines and stanzas? Is it all random? Do you just make a break whenever you are tired of a block of text? Well, if you want a bad poem, then the answer is yes. It’s true that lines and stanzas lend shape to the poem, but they also suggest meaning. Generally, they help guide the audience in reading, or reciting, the poem correctly.

Something to say: How many articles or poems have you read that don’t seem to have any point? What is the author’s purpose for writing the piece? Nothing loses an audience quicker than an obvious lack direction. There is plenty of idle chatter out there, so make sure that what you write is relevant to your audience.

Clarity: Being succinct and clear is important in any communication. This is just as true with poetry as it is prose. If you muddle the reader’s head with images that are bizarre or meaningless, how can you expect them to understand what you are trying to say?

Mood: The overall mood of a poem can shift, even in great poetry. However, if the mood is all over the place, then the poem begins to sound like a cacophony of different emotions. It’s important to know which feelings you are trying to evoke in your reader. Keep the mood clear, and only shift it when it becomes necessary to make your point.

Obtuse layers: Bad poetry is often impenetrable poetry. Shrouding your poem in thick, heavy symbolism forces your readers to work too hard to understand your meaning. For the most part, good poetry should be more like an apple than an onion. Your readers want to take a juicy bite, rather than sit around all day peeling layers.

Clichés: Another mistake made by beginning poets is the use of clichés. They make a poem heavy and dull as lead. One of the greatest joys of poetry is the chance to say something in a new way. It’s the perfect place to break out those fresh metaphors. When you start writing in clichés, it becomes clear as glass that you have not really given the poem much thought.

Rhyme: All poems contain lines that rhyme, right? Absolutely not. In fact, with the appearance of free verse poetry, rhyme became an option rather than a rule. Anything goes in poetry, now. However, it’s important to be familiar with the traditional rules of poetry before you begin to break them. Rhymes are not random. It’s not a good idea to sit around with a dictionary just to get a good rhyme in your poem. It creates far more problems than it solves.

There you have it, a few guidelines of some of the elements of good poetry. Feel free to break them all and write a truly bad poem. We can’t wait to read those awful lines. Have fun!

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Cases of Pronouns: Rules and Examples

Case refers to the form a noun or pronoun takes depending on its function in a sentence. English pronouns have three cases: subjective, objective, and possessive.

Subjective Pronouns

The subjective (or nominative) pronouns are I, you (singular), he/she/it, we, you (plural), they and who. A subjective pronoun acts as a subject in a sentence. See the sentences below for illustration:

I have a big chocolate bar.

You have some ice cream.

He has a cake.

We could have a party.

They could come, too.

Who should be invited?

Objective Pronouns

The objective (or accusative) case pronouns are me, you (singular), him/her/it, us, you (plural), them and whom. (Notice that form of you and it does not change.) The objective case is used when something is being done to (or given to, etc.) someone. The sentences below show this use of the objective case:

Give the chocolate to me, please.

Why should I give it to you?

You could give it to him, instead.

Please share it with all of us.

Do we have to share it with them?

Possessive Pronouns

There are two types of possessive pronouns. The first type is used with nouns my, your (singular), his, her, your (plural), its, their, our. The other type of pronouns are sometimes called independent possessive pronouns, because they can stand alone. They are mine, yours (singular), his, hers, ours, yours (plural) and theirs. The possessive pronouns show that something (or someone) belongs to someone (or something).

That’s my shirt.

That shirt is mine.

The house is theirs.

It’s their house.

The dog is scratching its ear.

Nauseous vs. Nauseated: What’s the Difference?

Even though nauseous and nauseated are often used to mean feeling unwell, many purists insist that nauseous means “causing nausea” while nauseated means “feeling sick.” Casually, it is probably OK to use both words to mean feeling ill. However, in more formal situations, use each word correctly.

Find helpful usage tips, clarifying examples, and spelling tricks below.

Usage Tips

• Nauseating is a good substitute for nauseous when you’re talking about something that causes nausea.
• Nauseousness is not a word. Nausea is the correct noun form.

When to Use Nauseous

Nauseous originally meant sickening, loathsome, or inducing a feeling of disgust. In that sense, things that are nauseous might include:

• getting a whiff of a garbage dump
• two-week-old meatloaf
• certain rickety roller coasters
• particularly unattractive zombies

But nauseous is so often used to refer to experiencing those feelings that Merriam-Webster Dictionary has updated their definition of nauseous:

• feeling like you are about to vomit
• causing you to feel like you are going to vomit
• causing disgust

Here are examples of nauseous used with its original meaning:

Certain it is that minds, like bodies, will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort, and like them, are often successfully cured by remedies in themselves very nauseous and unpalatable.

—Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge

The council may prohibit and prevent the sale of every kind of unsound, nauseous, and unwholesome meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, or other articles of food.

—Digest of City Charters (Chicago)

And here’s an example of its contemporary usage, of feeling sick to one’s stomach:

The family […] would rush out to get lobster, but then the patient would take only one bite, or wouldn’t want it at all, he would smell it and feel nauseous and push it away.

—The New Yorker

The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I’m feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it’s not me, that it’s not me, that it’s not me.

—Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

When to Use Nauseated

The definition of nauseated is the same as the second, more recent definition of nauseous: feeling sickly. Or, according to the official definition, to feel nauseated means:

• to become affected with nausea
• to feel disgust

Here’s the trick: “to nauseate” is a verb meaning “to cause to feel disgust,” so turning it into a participle—that is, adding the “ed” at the end—means that something has caused you to feel that way. Times you might feel nauseated include:

• The morning after a wedding
• When you take a sip of milk that’s past the expiration date
• When you see a zombie eat brains without proper table manners

. . . and any other time your tummy gets a bit grumbly. Here are some examples of nauseated in a sentence:

Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. […] Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.

— Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

You define a good flight by negatives: you didn’t get hijacked, you didn’t crash, you didn’t throw up, you weren’t late, you weren’t nauseated by the food.

— Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas

And, to cover our bases, here’s an example with “nauseating”:

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

—Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

Nausea can be pretty existential, it turns out.

Spelling and Pronunciation Tricks

Any way you slice it, these words have got a lot of vowels. So how do you say them, and how do you remember how to pronounce them?

Nausea

Some people say NAW-zee-uh, some say NAW-zhuh, where the “zhuh” sounds like the “s” in “measure.” Here, take a listen.

There’s no surefire trick to guarantee you remember the spelling, but think about how lots of people who go sailing get seasick. That is, they get sick of being on the sea. Even though the “sea” part of the word nausea isn’t pronounced like the big body of water that might make your stomach a little choppy, it can help remind you how the second half of that word is spelled.

Nauseated

If you figure out nausea, chances are you can figure out nauseated: just add a “ted” to the end of the noun.

As for pronunciation, try to say it like this: “NAW-zee-ay-tid.” Here’s how that one sounds out loud.

Nauseous

This one’s a toughie. Some people say NAW-zee-us, but NAW-zhus is more common. Listen to it here.

As far as spelling, it’s the “eou” that causes confusion. A quick fix: think of something that makes you feel nauseous—or, if you’re more traditional, something that is nauseous. For example: eating oily urchins. Sounds pretty slimy, and probably smelly, too. But if you can fight back the nausea long enough to spell nauseous correctly, then you’re on the right track.

Now you can stop feeling nauseated by the nauseous distinction between these two confusable words. We can only hope that avoiding zombies is as easy.

5 Inspiring Authors to Read During Black History Month

February was officially recognized as Black History Month by the US government in 1976 as part of the US bicentennial, although its beginnings date to the establishment of Negro History Week in 1926. It’s a month to remember important events and people in African-American history. We’ve selected five inspiring authors to read during Black History Month as a remembrance of the great contributions of African-Americans who achieved literary acclaim.

1 Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was a prolific author and civil rights activist. Her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, follows her journey from childhood in the south to womanhood in San Francisco and explores how love, strength, and reading the works of great authors keeps her free.

2 Langston Hughes (1902–1967) is famous for creating “jazz poetry” that revealed the lives of poor black people living in America. His poem “Let America Be America Again” talks about the inequality experienced by African-Americans and its contradiction to the American values of freedom, independence, and equality for all.

3 Claude McKay (1889–1948) was a poet, novelist, and journalist who was born in Jamaica. He began writing poetry at the age of ten. Banana Bottom, now lauded as his greatest work, didn’t sell many copies upon publication. It tells the story of a girl who has trouble reconciling the values she was taught in England with those of her native Jamaica.

4 Toni Morrison (1931– ) is an American novelist and the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature; she is also a Pulitzer Prize winner. Morrison was born in Ohio and became a professor after earning her master’s degree from Cornell University. Song of Solomon, Morrison’s third novel, tells the story of a black family living in Michigan in the 1930s and deals with racism, violence, and the connections that keep us together.

5 Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) was the first African-American female poet whose work was published. Born in West Africa and sold into slavery, Wheatley nevertheless went on to prove to America that blacks could contribute to the fields of art and intellect. “An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield” was published in Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, and London and brought her international acclaim.

February is a month to reflect upon and appreciate the contributions of African-American authors and poets whose works honestly portray the lives of African-Americans throughout history.

The Plural of Octopus: Octopi or Octopuses?

How do you make octopus plural? It’s simple!

The plural is octopuses. Why do some dictionaries also list octopi as a possibility? In Latin, some plurals end with an i. The problem is, octopus derives from Greek. The i was a mistake, but so many people adopted it that it became an acceptable alternative. Many people don’t like octopi, and you will rarely see it in edited works, but it does occasionally appear.

The clever octopuses snuck out of their tank at night.

Groups of more than two octopi are rarely seen in the wild.

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Examples

This seems extraordinarily unfair: A dull-looking fish lives for centuries while the cuttlefish, in their chromatic splendor, and the octopuses, in their inquisitive intelligence, are dead before they are 2?

The New York Times

Octopuses use tools; they play; they can solve problems and puzzles; and they may even engage in warfare with improvised weapons.

Quartz

Sealy also said that drainage pipes combine two things octopi love, which is a cramped dark space and fish.

Daily Mail

The plural of octopus is almost as fascinating as the animal. What more can you learn about plurals and spelling?

Is It Omelet or Omelette?

• Omelet is the spelling used in American English.
• Omelette is the spelling used in British English.

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An omelet (or omelette) is a type of egg dish, often served at breakfast or brunch. Neither spelling is wrong, but there are some guidelines for when to use which.

Omelet is the standard spelling in American English. In fact it appears about twice as often as omelette in American publications. But omelette beats omelet in British English. When you’re choosing which spelling you should use, pick the one your audience will be more familiar with and stick with it in your writing.

The British spelling, omelette, is actually the modern French spelling. (Omelets originated in France). The French have also had different versions of the word through time, including amelette and alemette. The spelling that’s used in the United States, omelet, first appeared early in the seventeenth century—so it’s not an American invention. It is, however, the spelling that was adopted by Americans, even though the rest of the English-speaking word chose to stay true to the French spelling.

Omelet vs. Omelette Examples

Egg white omelets don’t have the best reputation; entire articles have been written begging folks to stop ordering them.

The Huffington Post, US Edition

Where else can you find Migas de Puerco, a Wisconsin Farmhouse Omelet, Monte Cristo Benedict along with eight other Benny dishes, Pistol on Whiskey (sliced pastrami on marble rye), NLT, Naked Salad?

Chicago Tribune

An omelette with chanterelles can’t be missed and a suckling pig with clams was a success.

Eater Montreal

I know an omelette doesn’t technically have to have cheese to be an omelette, but I don’t know why you’d want to eat one without one (lactose intolerance excluded).

Lifehacker Australia