Angry Dictator » Writing http://angrydictator.com Your source for five-hour speeches on technology and culture. Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:53:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 en Better Than a Substitute Teacher http://angrydictator.com/2005/07/11/better-than-a-substitute-teacher/ http://angrydictator.com/2005/07/11/better-than-a-substitute-teacher/#comments Mon, 11 Jul 2005 17:25:08 +0000 PJ Doland http://pj.doland.org/wordpress/?p=626 Maureen Dowd is on book leave at the New York Times and Sarah Vowell is filling in.

]]> http://angrydictator.com/2005/07/11/better-than-a-substitute-teacher/feed/ The Illiterates Have Taken Over http://angrydictator.com/2005/01/04/the-illiterates-have-taken-over/ http://angrydictator.com/2005/01/04/the-illiterates-have-taken-over/#comments Tue, 04 Jan 2005 23:09:06 +0000 PJ Doland http://pj.doland.org/wordpress/?p=500 Today Slashdot published the most poorly constructed sentence ever written in the history of the English language:

Lots of discussion going on about ‘folksonomies’ — bottom-up taxonomies that people create on their own — as used in Del.icio.us and Flickr: Adam Mathes has a thesis on Folksonomies; IFTF’s Future Now makes a point about problems with folksonomies: no synonym control ( “mac” and “macintosh” on Del.icio.us); no hierarchy and content types; and only simple one-word tags.

]]> http://angrydictator.com/2005/01/04/the-illiterates-have-taken-over/feed/ Word Frequency Counter http://angrydictator.com/2004/12/15/word-frequency-counter/ http://angrydictator.com/2004/12/15/word-frequency-counter/#comments Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:12:03 +0000 PJ Doland http://pj.doland.org/wordpress/?p=486 Some people thought this post was cool, so I wrote this quick and dirty web app.

Special thanks to Tim Lee for testing and writing the documentation.

]]> http://angrydictator.com/2004/12/15/word-frequency-counter/feed/ What Are Your Crutch Words? http://angrydictator.com/2004/12/10/what-are-your-crutch-words/ http://angrydictator.com/2004/12/10/what-are-your-crutch-words/#comments Sat, 11 Dec 2004 01:09:16 +0000 PJ Doland http://pj.doland.org/wordpress/?p=482 I figured it would be a good idea to consciously identify and excise some of the non-descriptive words I tend to lean on in my writing. To accomplish this, I wrote a quick script to cycle through all my blog posts and rank the words I use by their respective frequency of occurrence.

In case you’re interested, here are my top 100 words followed by the number of times they occur:

  1. the (2008)
  2. a (1166)
  3. to (1094)
  4. i (876)
  5. of (872)
  6. and (681)
  7. in (555)
  8. it (438)
  9. is (381)
  10. that (372)
  11. on (369)
  12. for (369)
  13. my (315)
  14. was (308)
  15. you (269)
  16. with (251)
  17. this (239)
  18. from (226)
  19. be (213)
  20. at (212)
  21. an (199)
  22. as (169)
  23. have (157)
  24. by (151)
  25. they (142)
  26. he (141)
  27. all (138)
  28. it’s (137)
  29. like (134)
  30. me (125)
  31. just (123)
  32. we (122)
  33. i’m (118)
  34. are (118)
  35. new (117)
  36. when (114)
  37. up (113)
  38. out (111)
  39. will (111)
  40. so (107)
  41. one (106)
  42. can (104)
  43. would (102)
  44. not (101)
  45. but (99)
  46. his (97)
  47. about (96)
  48. has (93)
  49. what (91)
  50. if (88)
  51. or (88)
  52. com (85)
  53. get (82)
  54. which (81)
  55. last (79)
  56. really (79)
  57. who (77)
  58. i’ve (76)
  59. there (75)
  60. think (74)
  61. now (73)
  62. some (70)
  63. their (70)
  64. don’t (69)
  65. been (69)
  66. people (67)
  67. more (67)
  68. had (66)
  69. do (66)
  70. over (66)
  71. were (65)
  72. today (64)
  73. than (63)
  74. very (62)
  75. time (61)
  76. them (60)
  77. your (60)
  78. good (59)
  79. any (58)
  80. should (56)
  81. her (56)
  82. our (56)
  83. she (54)
  84. actually (53)
  85. how (53)
  86. no (53)
  87. two (51)
  88. see (51)
  89. him (51)
  90. even (51)
  91. only (50)
  92. seems (50)
  93. could (50)
  94. bq (50)
  95. much (49)
  96. first (49)
  97. erin (48)
  98. while (48)
  99. few (48)
  100. years (48)
]]> http://angrydictator.com/2004/12/10/what-are-your-crutch-words/feed/ A Modest Proposal http://angrydictator.com/2002/01/30/a-modest-proposal/ http://angrydictator.com/2002/01/30/a-modest-proposal/#comments Wed, 30 Jan 2002 23:24:04 +0000 PJ Doland http://pj.doland.org/wordpress/?p=144 I’ve heard a lot of pseudo-academics complaining about the negative effects of word processors on our collective ability to understand the writing process. They often bemoan the fact that we no longer have records of revisions. A modest proposal:

Writers should use CVS. The log functions would allow explanations of the motivations behind edits. Upon completion of a project, a complete record would exist in the CVS repository of the artistic process, from beginning to end.

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