2 May
American teenager Priscilla Samey got into seven Ivy League schools, but couldn’t find a date for the senior prom. Instead of being disheartened, the 17-year-old took her acceptance letter from Harvard University to the dance. Last Saturday, she tweeted this picture with the message, “Couldn’t find a man to accept me for prom so I […]
1 May
A good sentence is key to writing a respectable piece of prose – whether it’s a letter, an essay, or a novel. We can entertain ambitions about writing epic novels, or A-grade essays, but, without a good hold on this building block, our ambitions are likely to remain pipe dreams. In this Word Nerd, we […]
28 Apr
Watch artificial intelligence – the cutting edge of engineering – live up to its creepy image, as comedian and ‘The Tonight Show’ host Jimmy Fallon apprehensively lets a snakebot climb his leg, has a super-awkward conversation with the placid android Sophia, and gets all butterfingered with an expensive butterfly bot. The snakebot, developed at Carnegie […]
28 Apr
To mark #WorldBookDay, the School of Oriental and African Studies asked students, academics, alumni, and friends to suggest their top picks in global literature. The response was fantastic. While SOAS received hundreds of nominations on Facebook, Twitter and their blog, they narrowed the list to 50. The list is enough to keep readers going for […]
24 Apr
For some reason, some people think that the harder something is to read, the smarter it must be. But a long word or a complex sentence is not necessarily more effective than a short word or a simple sentence. Indeed, the opposite is often true. We have discussed before why verbosity is a terrible way […]
11 Apr
Recently, someone asked on Quora, “What has been your strangest experience with a teacher. Many stories followed, including a few disturbing ones. Our favorite was this one, contributed by someone named Annie Howard: When I was studying for GCSE French, our teacher had some very odd ideas: He gave people nicknames based on their names […]
6 Apr
It’s that bittersweet time of the year when high-school seniors say farewell to their classmates, look forward to their hard-earned summer break, and prepare for an exciting new journey through college. Last year, Naina Lavakare, a student at The British School, Delhi, was asked to write a slam piece for the traditional ‘Leaver’s Assembly’ held […]
3 Apr
Business news reports sometimes refer to “manufacturing units” when they mean “factories”. One college library had a sign above its photocopier that read “Reprographic Unit”. We often use two or more long words when a short one would be enough. This sort of verbosity – sometimes the result of a shaky vocabulary, and at other […]
22 Feb
So you’ve shortlisted universities, taken the exams you need to take, and even got great scores. And yet, your dream of studying abroad has screeched to a halt. The reason? Your parents aren’t ready to let their precious fledgling fly from the nest. If this sounds like your story, here are a few tips that […]
15 Dec
I had never even changed school before. All my life I had studied at one place. So, it was difficult leaving DPS Ruby Park: friends, memories, even teachers and the school itself. It was not just about school though. I was leaving my city, where I had lived all my life; I was leaving my […]