Yes, it’s Hallowe’en again! Time to have a look at an appropriately spooky word. But first, a challenge:
Don’t be Afraid…
writing
Mr, Mrs, and Ms
Teaching French-speaking teenagers recently, I was momentarily surprised when they started to call me Mister. Then I remembered that in French the word monsieur can be used like sir in American English. It doesn’t need to come before a surname, like Mister in English, so most students refer to their male teachers as Monsieur, as we use Sir in English. But they of course understandably translated monsieur to mister.
We use sir to refer to a teacher in most varieties of English too, but not to refer to a man in general when we don’t know his name. It’s only really used in that way in American English.
Mister though, is used in basically the same way in every form of English, as the standard honorific for an adult male. Isn’t it curious though, that for women there are three honorifics: Miss, Ms, and Mrs?
A Dark Horse
He’s a dark horse, isn’t he?
How would you describe the expression a dark horse to somebody who’d never heard it before? After thinking for a moment, you might say it’s a person of hidden depths or secret talents/opinions, someone who achieves something when no-one expected that they might. You might give an example of a quiet student in a language class who suddenly speaks confidently and fluently in an oral exam.
Your Word of the Day: Kerning
Kerning refers to the process of adjusting the space between letters in typesetting and graphic design.
The word originally comes from the French carne, meaning projecting angle or quill of a pen. In the days of manual typesetting, letters were placed on individual metal blocks known as glyphs. If a letter overlapped the following letter (e.g. a capital T before a capital A), the overlapping parts (the bars of the T), would protrude over the edge of the glyph, and these exposed parts of the letter were known as kerns.
You might not think kerning is important, especially because most digital text is automatically kerned for your pleasure. Here’s a nice example from Wikipedia of the benefits of kerning:
From QWERTY to AZERTY
I left my laptop in to be repaired today, which was a pretty smooth operation until I realised I don’t know the French word for hinges. All this means that I’m currently typing this on an AZERTY keyboard.
#Trending
I think I became aware of the word trending a few years ago, whenever it began to creep outside of Twitter, as I’ve only recently started to dip my toes in the water of the Twittersphere. My first thought was that the word seemed to mean popular, but that there must be some more specific meaning to it. In time, I told myself, that meaning would become clear.
Mystery Blogger Award
I’ve been nominated for this award by Grace over at That Feeling Inside. A big thank you to her, and I recommend her blog for her thoughts on beauty, movies, and everything else.
This award was created by Okoto Enigma to bring bloggers together. And it’s a nice change of pace and short post on a Sunday when I don’t want to write too much.
English-Language Thoughts 