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Posts Tagged ‘grammar’

ABUSE OF WORDS IN THE BUSINESS WORLD

June 19th, 2009 No comments
It is official! You need to keep your heart nice and ticking to keep your vocabulary warm. A research done by Dr Manoux and others in mid 2009 on “History of coronary disease and cognitive performance in midlife: The Whitehall II study”, suggests that there is ‘an association betweenCHD history and cognitive performance’
In this study, as part of evaluating the Cognitive Function, Vocabulary was assessed using the Mill Hill Vocabulary Test, used in its multiple format.  The Mill Hill test is a vocabulary test which was devised by JC Raven in the fifties to determine the level of verbal information a person has acquired as a result of intellectual activity in the past. Dr Manoux’s test consisted of a list of 33 stimulus words ordered by increasing difficulty and these words had six responses to choose from. Typically, heart disease manifests itself in midlife. To establish correlation between heart disease and cognition, the participants of this study were chosen from British civil servants aged between 35 to 55 years of age.
The salient finding of the study was that, that not only was there an association between coronary heart disease (CHD) and lower cognitive scores in men and women, but also increasingly poor cognitive scores with increase in the duration of the CHD. This means that if I have CHD since 10 years as opposed to another person who had it since 5 years, I am more likely to fair poorly in cognitive scores.
The takeaway from this study is that you may be a vocab champ now, but if you neglect your heart’s well being, you are likely to forfeit that position in your middle age.
 
Categories: english, GMAT, grammar, SAT Tags: , , , , ,

Philosophy of Apostrophe: The Correct Usage

June 9th, 2009 2 comments

apostrophe3You have the pundits’ permission
To use apostrophe in omission
In possessives you are free to use
In plurals you are free to choose

First, let us a few letters omit
Therefore a few words in size, limit
In silent letters ov’r is a substitute
In contractions it’s in multitudes

And if you have shampoo’d your hair
Do let the ‘e’ disappear
You are correct if you omit the numeral
That’s how I write Indira’s ’84 funeral

Let’s now take the possessive case
Of words that don’t end with an ‘s’
If George’s death brought in the coroner
Men’s room was just round the corner

In names too give not the ‘s’ a miss
Charles’ it isn’t, Charles’s it is
But classical names are exceptions
As Achilles’ heel and Jesus’ crucifixion

In some institution and in some place
-Take Barclays Bank and Toms river case-
We drop the mark of apostrophe here
That is because of usage there

Yet, Woolworth’s Store is another way
But not for long, that I can say
For goodness’ sake where is the ‘s’?
That, my friend, is anyone’s guess

His, hers, its, theirs and ours
All dropped the mark, as has yours
Possessive pronouns are a different lot
Compound nouns are another lot

Duke of Edinburgh’s gaffe was the worst this summer
What he did before Genco Olive Oil’s customer

And if you had a joint company
The last name will hold the possessive key
For if Vinnie and Sonny had some buttonmen
Would be Vinnie and Sonny’s buttonmen then

McDonald’s is already in possessive
Adding an ‘s’ would be surely regressive
So let’s do it with a prepositional phrase
Quarter pounders at McDonald’s is a nice little phrase

Writing 1980’s, CPA’s isn’t quite right
Let the end of 2000s be very bright
Finally, let’s drop the mark from p’s and q’s
And ask about ‘em in the MCQs

-Adapted from ‘Prescriptivist’s Corner: The Catastrophe of Apostrophe’ by Dave Wilton

Categories: english, grammar, Vocabulary Building Tags: , , , , , ,