The Digrams of Webster\u27s Unabridged Dictionary

For many years word buffs at these laboratories have made a game out of finding words which contain strange digrams (pairs of letters side-by-side). The problem, as originally posed by M.D. McIlroy, was to complete a table with 26 rows and 26 columns, labeled by the letters A, B, ... , Z. The space where row L crossed column L\u27 was to be filled by a word containing the digram LL\u27

Logological Poetry: An Editorial

It was Dmitri Borgmann who put the word logology into circulation. Before Language on Vacation, his first book, was published, he wrote to me: I don\u27t believe the word \u27logology\u27 has ever appeared in a book devoted to words or puzzles. I dug it out of the unabridged Oxford while searching for a suitable name for my activity

Investigação de como japoneses leitores de inglês como segunda língua reagem a nomes próprios

An assumption in second language (L2) vocabulary and reading research is that L2 readers can easily understand the proper names they encounter, though empirical support for this conjecture is lacking. The aim of this study is to explore how L2 English readers perceive and respond to proper names. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Japanese low-intermediate L2 English readers (N = 4) to investigate: the affective factors involved when encountering unknown proper names in texts; what strategies they use when encountering new names; and any difficulties they experience in proper name processing. The participants were also asked to read aloud a short text and report the referents of several proper names, using modified think-aloud protocol. It was found that main source of confusion for the interviewees stemmed from their inexperience with proper names; that is, uncertainty about which proper names are family names and personal names; the gender of names; nicknames; and proper name phonology. Participants also reported on various strategies they use when encountering novel proper names, such as doing online searches, and using contextual and orthographic clues. The findings suggest that it may be incautious to assume unfamiliar proper names are a low burden to L2 readers of English.Um dos pressupostos das pesquisas sobre ensino de vocabulário e leitura de segunda língua (L2) é o de que os leitores de L2 podem facilmente entender os nomes próprios que encontram, embora falte fundamentação empírica para esta conjectura. O objetivo deste estudo é investigar como leitores japoneses de L2 inglês percebem e reagem a nomes próprios. Foram realizadas entrevistas semi-estruturadas com leitores japoneses de L2 inglês de baixa intermediação (N = 4) para investigar quais são os fatores afetivos envolvidos ao encontrar nomes próprios desconhecidos em textos; que estratégias eles usam ao encontrar novos nomes e qualquer outra dificuldade que tenham para o processamento adequado de nomes. Os participantes também foram solicitados a ler em voz alta um pequeno texto e relatar as referências de vários nomes próprios, usando uma versão modificada do Protocolo do Pensamento em voz alta (think-aloud protocol). Foi constatado que a principal fonte de confusão para os entrevistados estava relacionada com a inexperiência com nomes próprios; ou seja, incerteza sobre quais nomes próprios são sobrenomes, prenomes ou apelidos; qual é o gênero; e como é a fonologia dos nomes próprios. Os participantes também relataram várias estratégias que utilizam quando encontrar nomes próprios novos, tais como fazer pesquisas on-line e usar pistas contextuais e ortográficas. Os resultados mostram que é temerário pressupor que nomes próprios desconhecidos nunca pode ser fonte de dificuldade para os leitores de inglês como L2

St. Columba, Silnán, and the 'Male Bovine' (VC 2.17)

At Vita Columbae VC 2.17, Adomnán has severely misunderstood a written source which originally described how Columba ordered one party to a dispute, an alleged maleficus ‘evil-doer’ called Silnán, to milk a sick cow in order to settle the dispute by demonstrating that its contaminated milk was the real, hidden cause of the harm which had occasioned the dispute. Adomnán misread a description of a bos maculosus ‘pock-marked bovine’ to refer to a bos masculus ‘male bovine’, and proceeded to misunderstand the story as the description of some form of contest between Columba and a maleficus ‘sorcerer’

Safe use of symbols in handover documentation for medical teams

Concern has been reported about the safe use of medical abbreviations in documents such as handover sheets and medical notes, especially when information is being communicated between staff of different specialties (BBC 2008, Sheppard et al. 2008). This article describes a study to investigate whether the use of symbols in handover documentation that is shared within and between multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) has similar safety implications. We asked 19 healthcare professionals from a range of specialties to identify 45 different combinations of 38 individual symbols. The symbols and combinations of symbols were extracted from 102 handover sheets taken from 6 different healthcare contexts in 4 London hospitals. Three symbols proposed in Microsoft's Common User Interface guidelines for alert symbols were also included. Results reveal that while some symbols are well understood, many others are either ambiguous or unknown. These results have implications for the safe use of symbols in medical documents, including paper and electronic handover documents and Electronic Patient Records (EPRs), especially where teams comprise individuals from different professional backgrounds, i.e. MDTs. We offer initial suggestions for standardisation and further research