-- W 13 -- Word Elements -- Speech and Writing

-- W 13 -- Word Elements -- Speech and Writing Projects: Blogs

College students and professionals speak and write every day. Not surprisingly, English has many words to describe communication. The first part of this chapter contains three elements related to speech; the second part gives two word elements for writing. Part 2 also presents three pairs of words that people often confuse and helps you learn to use these words correctly.

Chapter Strategy: Word Elements: Speech and Writing

Chapter Words:

Part 1 dict contradict dictator edict log, loq, -logy colloquial ecology loquacious monologue prologue voc, vok advocate invoke revoke vouch

Part 2 -gram, -graph, -graphy, graph scrib, script demographic epigram graphic ascribe inscription manuscript Confusable Words affect effect conscience conscious imply infer

	Interactive Activities
	Choose your chapter from the Table of Contents. Each chapter has multiple choice, reading passage, idiom, pre-test, and vocabulary exercises.

	Live Links
	Click on these links to go to the websites referred to in the chapter. Longest Word? Oxymorons

Trivia

Check out this additional fun information about chapter words and topics. Trivia The word ascribe has been used in some well-known quotes. You may enjoy these: Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. (Napoleon) I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It's seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It's seeing what other people don't see and pursuing that vision. (Howard Schultz) Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own. (James M. Barrie) Idioms about speech and language sometimes include the alphabet. For example, “to mind your p’s and q’s” means to behave properly, with good manners. To “dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s” means to be very careful. “From a to z” means including everything. One colloquial word that we use all the time is kid. It comes from Old Norse, and probably from German before that. The word originally meant a young goat. Perhaps because human children are as playful as goats, the word has been used to refer to children for over 400 years. You may also have heard the word kiddo used. In a related meaning, when a person isjust kidding, he or she is joking. Exploring some ancient Egyptian tombs, archeologists have discovered ancient manuscripts called Books of the Dead. Some are more than 3,500 years old. These are generally written on papyrus in hieroglyphic characters. (Hieroglyphics are characters developed from pictures, and, in some ways, they look like pictures.) Many such writings run up and down rather than across. The Book of the Dead gives instructions to a spirit entering the afterlife. One famous image is the heart of a person balanced against that of a feather. The Egyptians believed that the heart of a sinful person gained weight. Therefore, if the heart was heavy, the person had sinned.