blogging

My Ideas

Niall O'Donnell 33 Comments

How about a short light post today, after getting heavy yesterday (I mean, Nazis, after all)? A few weeks ago, I wrote about a typical example of how ideas come to me, and make their way onto your screen. Usually ideas come to me like that, just based on my everyday encounters with language. When I start a post with something like The other day I was listening to the radio and I noticed how the presenter pronounced the word haberdashery, it’s usually true, and not some awkward way to introduce the topic. And sometimes I’ll start with something like The other day I was wondering about the etymology of the word hamster… because that’s the kind of thing I do when my mind has a moment to wander.

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Curating Content for Digital Influencers: the New Online Jargon

Niall O'Donnell 19 Comments

What do you do?

That used to be an easy question: a simple icebreaker when meeting new people. Now though, it’s more complicated.

First of all, since the economic crisis, people are understandably wary about asking the question, as we’re more aware of the fact that the answer might be nothing.

Second, for a lot of people who do have something that they do, it can be a hard to specify exactly what it is.

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It’s all Relative

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

Ok, I told you yesterday that there was one more use of commas I’d save till today. Have a look at the sentences below, and tell me which of the two people quoted has only one brother:

My brother who works in the bank visited today.

My brother, who works in the bank, visited today.

If you said the second person only has one brother, you’re correct! But how did you know?

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The Write Stuff

Niall O'Donnell 13 Comments

If you don’t know what to write, they say, just write. Don’t worry about what to write, just keep going. Of course, this isn’t really necessary when you’re writing for a blog. I could just not post anything. I’ve no problem taking a day off now and then. Only, at the moment, I’ve got a bit of an itch to write something. So I’m just going to write for a little bit and see where it takes me.

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The Versatile Blogger Award

Niall O'Donnell 12 Comments

Thank you Lise for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award! You should head to her blog Lushtivity to read her great variety of posts on books, beauty, games, and lifestyle. With all those different topics, she’s a worth winner of this award! I’m not sure how versatile I am, except perhaps in the sense that I might sometimes write about different words, or different grammar points.

Regardless, here I am, so, per the rules of the award, I’ll endeavour to think of seven interesting facts about myself:

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Liebster Award

Niall O'Donnell 17 Comments

I have to say a big thank you to Liz for nominating me for this lovely award. It’s a great honour, and before I say anything else, I highly recommend you check out her great blog at Do the Thing, as she recounts her experiences crossing items off her bucket list.

I believe I’ve done this before, but it’s nice to have a different style of post from my usual. Plus, this will likely be a little shorter, and I don’t have so much time to write this evening, though I do still have the itch.

Ok, the rules.

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Behind the Scenes of Blogging: Statistics

Niall O'Donnell 19 Comments

I want to take a little break from looking at language for this evening. Actually, I had tried to write something about language. I tried to write the post I’d mentioned yesterday: I wanted to start with the word English, and then let my phone choose which words would follow. I was hoping for some mad Dadaist poem, but was somewhat disappointed it was just recreating whole sentences from my blog or from emails. But then, having a look at my blog dashboard, and looking at other blogs, I decided to write about what I like about blogging. And when I started thinking about it, I realised I could write a lot, so I decided to focus on one aspect of the blogging experience: the statistics.

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