Boo(n/m) or Bane?

Taken from: <http://www.philippinecollegian.org/9gag-reflex/>

Last week, I picked up an issue of the "Philippine Collegian", also known as "Kule". An article about 9gag, a comedy website, caught my attention. The article was discussing the pros and cons of the website, and eventually led to this sentence, "It is still too early to tell whether the social implications of the website are truly a boom or a bane." I was pretty sure "boom" should have been "boon". In my lexicon, "boom" is the sound of an explosion while "boon" means "blessing". ("Bane", by the way, informally means "a curse" or something bad in general.) When I got home, I searched the internet to see which of the two words was correct. It got me even more confused. Whenever I searched "boom or bane", the search engine showed results of "boon or bane". I was right; "boon or bane" is being used, but that doesn't necessarily mean that using "boom" is incorrect. I'm not sure whether the search engine is correcting me or that both "boom" and "boon" are accepted. My googling skills have failed me. Maybe Ma'am or you, my classmates, could help me with this.

PS. Sorry for the long post; this is really bothering me. :P

APIR!

I was watching a noon time show (Happy Yipee Yehey) with a friend and during that segment, they were playing a word game where the contestants were given clues about the word and they were to identify the correct word being described. The word was first described as being a word used only in the Filipino language, which means that it has no English counterpart. Another clue was that is it usually done by friends and acquaintances. The last clue said that it involves clapping of hands.

APIR! It has no English counterpart. APPEAR does not mean the same thing though they both sound the same. Apir actually comes from the phrase "up here" which is said with the gesture of giving someone a high five. :)

-ANA MINELLE LAXAMANA

Study Effectively

Our exam is on Monday. We are certain that this exam will not be a piece of a cake, so we will surely have a hard time reviewing our lessons in English. I want to share with you a very helpful link that may help us to study effectively.
http://studenthacks.org/2007/10/12/study-effectively/

The 27th Letter

The ampersand represents the conjunction and. Before, I am fond of using this logogram (smallest meaningful unit of language) without knowing that there are rules on how to use it properly. I thought that it's just for the sake of writing and in shortcut form. In our thesis class, I finally learned that ampersand is used in the following cases:

• formal names of businesses
• addressing a couple in writing
• book and movie titles
• In APA style, the ampersand is used when citing sources

 

 Source

DO well and MAKE it work

Do and Make are two different words that seem to have the same meaning .This leads to misusage of the said words. There are cases where these verbs cannot be interchangeable. To learn more about this topic and for us to use them properly, both in speaking and writing, I decided to post a video link instead of an article. I hope we can comprehend more with this kind of learning tool.

http://www.engvid.com/english-grammar-do-make/

Another Signage

The first sentence in this signage has an error in the usage of linking verbs. It must be written in these ways:

* Unauthorized person is not allowed inside.
* Unauthorized people are not allowed inside.

Always remember to put a punctuation mark after the sentence.

The second sentence sounds awkward to hear; moreover, it should be rephrased.

* Always keep the door closed!

Avoid using the exclamation marks so much.

Anagrams

An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of the word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; for example orchestra can be rearranged into carthorse. Here are the links which contain some examples of anagrams.


http://www.anagramsite.com/

http://www.english-for-students.com/Complete-List-of-Anagrams.html