Definr — Bookmark It!

I love little Web 2.0 tools that make my writing life easier, and discovered Definr recently. This is definitely one to bookmark if you do a lot of writing and occasionally have to look up that stray word for which you need a definition. I’d heard that Definr takes just a nanosecond to provide you with a definition, so I gave it a road test. As you can see from my screenshot, the word was “sycophant” — don’t we all know one or two? — and Definr gave me the definition in a split second.

Definr has more than 18,000 cached definitions, so you’re bound to find your word. Some of the most popular words that users have wanted definitions for? Blithesome, lithesome, frisson, chaplet, dreck, avuncular, cicatrix, reticent, sanguine.
I know it’s a small tool, but one worthy of bookmarking.

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One Sentence…

I discovered another great example of Web 2.0 user-generated content — One Sentence. This site makes you think, use your brain cells, and have fun with writing. The point is to tell a complete story in one sentence.

Here’s what the website About Us page says:

One Sentence is an experiment in brevity. Most of the best stories that we tell from our lives have one really, really good part that make the rest of the boring story worth it.
This is about that one line.
This is about telling the most interesting or poignant story possible in the least amount of words.
This is about small bite-sized pieces of extraordinary lives and ordinary lives alike… the happy, the sad, the funny, the depressing.

Not all the one-liners are great, and some are heartbreakingly bad, but there are some gems.

• Even though it was lodged somewhere in the bowels of the toilet, we could still hear it chirping.

• My neighbor just found out that I get dressed with the blinds open.

• Her mother knew.

• Today I’ve identified 15 objects on my desk that could kill a person.

• It was one of those exams that you absolutely must pass if you want to continue in the program, and I failed the set-your-alarm-clock-properly portion.

I think it would be great to have our own One Sentence contest. Let me think about this…

Teens Improve Their Writing When They Blog

This is fascinating to someone who is a writing “semi-purist,” like myself.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently explored the link between formal writing and the writing that teens do when they email one another, text each other and write for the Internet. What they found was that blogging is helping teens become more prolific writers. Hurray!
I know this is true of my own son, who maintains his own blog, maintains a Facebook account and yes – writes for the college newspaper. All of that spells one thing – plenty of practice.
The April 24 survey showed that 47 percent of teen bloggers write outside of school several times a week or more, compared to 33 percent of teens who don’t maintain blogs. More than half of both groups, although the number is higher for bloggers, believe that writing is important to their success in life.

Duke University writing professor Bradley Hammer told eSchool News that blog writing can be better than the writing style students learn in school, or SAT-style writing.

“In real ways, blogging and other forms of virtual debate actually foster the very types of intellectual exchange, analysis, and argumentative writing that universities value,” he wrote in an op-ed piece last August.

The full report is available on the Pew Internet site.

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