Assignment 11 – Diction and Dictionaries

  Exercises: 1. Look up one of the following words (or some other word that interests you) in The Oxford English Dictionary: Depressionfeminineliberalimmoralitysilly Using the historical evidence contained in the entries for that word, and, if you like, your own...

Assignment 9 – Figurative Language

  Exercises: 1. Write two paragraphs, developing in each of them a figurative presentation of some “moral or intellectual fact.” In the first one, personify the abstraction. In the second, instead of personifying, embody the abstraction in a place, a...

Assignment 8 – Joke and Earnest

  Ground rules: Choose one of the funniest jokes you’ve heard and which you can bear to think about repeatedly during the coming week. 1. Tell the joke (a) in its full and complete form, and then (b) in a compressed, telegraphed form that still retains the...