Don't write "to impress." Write the way you talk.

Many writers make the mistake of using language they think sounds more intellectual or formal in tone and therefore more appropriate for writing assignments. But in reality, "impressive" words not only put off readers, they expose you as an amateur.

Edward P. Bailey Jr. explains that most professional writers use spoken English when they write. In his book Plain English at Work: A Guide to Writing and Speaking (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 9, Bailey notes that informal tone and awareness of the reader are two common characteristics of plain English and that the key to plain English is this: "talk to your reader. Simply talk on paper. Write the way you talk."

If you're concerned that "writing the way you talk" sounds simplistic or even simple-minded, like "writing like a kindergartner," Bailey promises, "that would be true only if you talk like a kindergartner." Of course, he clarifies, writing in plain English doesn't mean using rambling, disconnected phrases or the "uhs" we occasionally use in casual speech. It does mean using words — in a polite and organized way — you would use to talk to a person in front of you.

Bailey offers this advice for using plain English when you write:
Don't worry about the theoretical differences between writing and speaking. Simply talk on paper.

Specific tips for writing the way you talk
To talk on paper, you may have to change your writing. For example, when you write:
Do you normally use words like commence instead of begin, and prior to instead of before?
Do you normally avoid all marks of punctuation except the period and the comma?
Do you normally avoid using any personal pronouns—like I, we, and you?
If so, you're a typical bureaucratic writer. Get ready to take the most important step in your writing career. Here's what I suggest:
Use ordinary words.
Use a variety of punctuation.
Use more personal pronouns.
Use contractions.
Click here for more of Bailey's writing tips and an illustration of extraordinary writing which uses ordinary words. And click here for a useful list of words you can use in place of highbrow or "bureaucratic" language.

Ahí encontrarán recursos muy interesantes todos aquellos que disfrutan de leer, comentar, pensar y aprender. El listado tiene de todo para los lectores, escritores y críticos.

El sitio web tiene un listado de vínculos a sitios web con ebooks gratis, información sobre becas, recursos educativos y culturales, frases célebres y poesía, entre otros.

Acá van los links para que los aprovechen!!!

• Librarian Chick's Free Book Search - Quickly search for free audio books, text books and eBooks!

1. Books/Audio books
2. Class Management/Worksheets
3. Collaboration/Social Networking
4. College/Student Loans
5. Computers and Technology
6. Culture, Arts and Music
7. Dictionary/Thesaurus
8. Foreign Language
9. GPA Calculators
10. Graphs/Printables/Presentation
11. Highlighters/Web Annotation
12. History/Geography
13. Home Library
14. Kids/Young Adult
15. Lectures/Speeches
16. Mathematics/Calculators
17. Memorization
18. Notes/Writing
19. Online Learning
20. Open Source/OpenCourseWare
21. Organization
22. Poetry/Quotes
23. Reference/Research
24. Sciences/Space
25. Test Taking/Prep
26. Video Tutorials

Además, acá les va un link con información de otro sitio web que utilizo para conseguir Ebooks gratis: Questia - para lectores empedernidos.

El siguiente link tiene también muchos recursos gratis en español(texto completo de diccionarios, libros, cursos, revistas, vídeos y presentaciones multimedia sobre Economía, Derecho y otras Ciencias Sociales): EUMED.net

Williams may be familiar to readers who recall his involvement in Questia, the pre-Google Books, subscription-based online library that launched in 2001 with $150 million in backing. Questia is still in business, but Williams left in May 2007.

Wisdom from Williams includes:

• Shut up. I had to push to get Williams to talk to me. After a big launch for Questia and watching other complicated technology companies receive media hype they couldn't live up to, Williams says he's not letting PeoplePad into the public eye until March 2009. He'll do a limited beta this fall, though.
• When it comes to the web, free is where it's at. The last decade has taught Williams that the mass market isn't going to pay for online informational content, which means advertising is a must, as is getting cheap -- but also high-quality -- content. He cites Wikipedia as an example.
• The Internet isn't for passive reading. Williams dealt with large blocks of text at Questia; he even criticizes Wikipedia for being too text-heavy. "We need to structure data around lists and data boxes instead of around snippets, so people can get to the key points," Williams says. Data doesn't have to be text and a site shouldn't restrict itself to "spiderering around the web" for all of its information.
• What's good for people is better for machines. If it's easier for people to enter short amounts of data, it's also easier for machines to read that data using properties of the semantic web.
• Use existing technology if you can. Williams says he's not out to build new semantic databases or semantic programming languages; instead PeoplePad will use services from companies such as Metaweb or Radar Networks.
• Usability is key to the success of a consumer-oriented site. The semantic web is less powerful if grandmothers, dentists and other not necessarily tech-savvy can't use it.

After hearing all this, I suggested to Williams that he was building a sort of Mahalo powered by the semantic web, but he says he's not. Perhaps after Williams wanders down Sand Hill Road this summer looking for his first round of capital, more information will leak out. Readers, any guesses?

Acá les va un fantástico link con libros digitales que utilizo con frecuencia. La página se llama Questia y es uno de los muchos servicios de libros digitales o ebooks que hay en Internet actualmente. Son ideales para utilizar con sus ebook readers.

Espero que les sea útil para buscar libros y lecturas para tener en sus computadoras. Tengo muchos libros en formato PDF y a pesar de que me gusta mucho leer ahí, si debo aceptar que aún romantizo con ver mis libros en PDF todos manchados con resaltador amarillo o llenos de comentarios y dibujos.

¿Qué opinan ustedes de esto?

¡Que disfruten el sitio web!

Espero que les sea útil para buscar libros y lecturas para tener en sus computadoras.  Tengo muchos libros en formato PDF y a pesar de que me gusta mucho leer ahí, si debo aceptar que aún romantizo con ver mis libros en PDF todos manchados con resaltador amarillo o llenos de comentarios y dibujos.

¿Qué opinan ustedes de esto?

¡Que disfruten el sitio web!

Busqué en una librería electrónica (Questia), así como en la completísima Biblioteca Digital  Project Gutenberg y en Luminarium English Anthology (dedicada a la época Tudor y con decenas de autores), y pude constatar que Shapiro no exagera: no hay en ellos ningún texto de Cornwallis.

I absolutely LOVE the ability to search, read, highlight and store on my virtual bookshelf the books on-line in virtual libraries. Before I discovered that I had access to "ebrary," a wonderful tool at the university, I used (and still do) Questia. I am admittedly an e-library "early-adopter" (a term we use in telecom to describe those on the cutting edge who can't wait for the latest new technology and will pay a premium to have it). Yes I actually pay a hefty sum for my Questia subscription. Now that I've seen "ebrary," I will likely reconsider, but I digress. The point is that for research and easy, quick access to information, ebook libraries are fantastic. I can highlight in multiple colors, build bookshelves on particular topics, create perfectly formatted citations in the style of my choosing ---sigh --- a student's or any researcher's dream.

On the other hand, I LOVE to OWN books. I want them all - physically in my house, on my shelves, stacked on my desk, on the floor, the dresser, the nightstand (See earlier post titled Civil War Books Filling Every Nook and Cranny.). I want to be able to pick a book up, feel it in my hands, flip through its pages, highlight phrases I want to remember, scribble in the margins, carry it in my bag to pull out during moments opportune for reading. This tactile experience - which is one of the joys of reading - is just not the same with an ebook.

I've been vaguely aware of the ebook readers on the market. One of my staff told me that the new "AmazonKindle" is all the rage in academia. Could this be the best of both worlds? I'm not yet ready to say. I guess I need to try it, but, alas, it has no pages to touch... I remain conflicted.

According to Living Internet, "Question and answer searching leverages the considerable power of phrases to get Internet search engines to return only results that match a multi-word string of characters. The longer the phrase, the fewer the matches and more specific the results."

Living Internet offers further information and examples for using question and answer searches:

A typical question phrase would be "who invented physics", and a typical answer phrase would be "logic was invented by".

Either questions or answers can return good results, although question phrases tend to return information written more in a tutorial mode since explanations are often prefaced with their question, and questions on messages boards, list archives, and Usenet newsgroups have often already been answered by others -- a phenomenon which created the Frequently Asked Questions.

Whether using a question or answer query, try to find as specific a wording as possible to filter the results down to just the pages with the information you are looking for. If the phrase is actually too specific and there are no results, then try different and looser wording until you get some matches. A few example searches are listed below:

Questions	Answers
"how do magnets work"	"magnets work by"
"what is a spark plug"	"spark plugs work"
"how far is a light year"	"a light year is"
"how to build a deck"	"building a deck"
"how to grow tomatoes"	"growing tomatoes"

Dr. David R. Williams cautions against trying to write your paper in one draft "unless it is already 3:00 a.m. of the morning the paper is due and you are so far gone that you don't care what grade you get as long as the assignment is accepted." The first draft, he goes on to explain, "is always just a rough sketch of possibilities."

In his book Sin Boldly!: Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2000), 6, Williams suggests this four-step approach to writing:

The very act of writing can itself be liberating. The rough first draft may well be nothing more than a page or two of hastily scribbled impressions. If you have any interest or curiosity at all, whether negative or positive, about a specific character or phrase or event, begin describing it. You will be amazed how soon ideas begin to flow. But under no circumstances should you think of this first effort as any more than the jotting down of rough preliminary notes.

If the first draft, then, is barely comprehensible, the second draft is your best working paper. This is written once you have a pretty good idea of what you want to do. It is the skeleton of what will become your final paper. It is also the hardest one to write. Do not worry here about perfection, for this is also the draft that you next must comb over carefully to correct logic and organization, to note where better evidence is called for or has been left out, or where the argument has wandered off the path. The third draft then comes close to being your finished paper, but this is the copy that needs to be examined closely for typos, grammatical mistakes, misspellings, and other last-minute problems.

Ideally, then, your fourth draft should be your final paper. Okay, laugh, but at least you've been told.

For more helpful writing tips from Dr. Dave, click here.

In a Sun Times review of the movie "Dawn of the Dead," critic Roger Ebert says, "We like to be frightened. We like a good creepy thrill." If you like to be frightened, celebrate this Halloween by checking out one of Chicago Film Critics Association's 100 Scariest Movies of all Time – an excellent list which includes many obscure gems and older horror films you may have missed. Better yet, let your own imagination — which can be much scarier than the most sophisticated computer-generated images — give you a good creepy thrill and curl up with H. G. Wells' original The War of the Worlds. Just keep the lights on.

Start by going to a site used by many journalists: JournalismNet. The "Search for News" page on this site includes links to news agencies, wires, tickers and search engines, resources for searching by country or language, and many other options. Want to know what's on the front page of today's newspaper in Greece, China or Kenya? Newspaperindex.com offers links to the latest editions in more than 200 countries. RefDesk's "First Things First" page identifies local and international sources for news, sports, opinion and much more. Did you miss something in yesterday's news? You may find it in Vanderbilt University's Television News Archive which calls itself "the world's most extensive and complete archive of television news."

And if a story is circulating which doesn't quite ring true, investigate it via a debunking site like Snopes which reports on its litmus tests of various news and legends.