I recently read an article by John Humphrys, written on the 24th September, 2007 and titled “I h8txt msgs: how texting is wrecking our language”. I agree with some points of this article, especially in how it is ruining the English language. When people text they use lots of abbreviations such as U for “you”, R for “are”, WUU2 for “what are you up to?” This is because it might be quicker for some people. When it comes to doing tests, Certain individuals forget how to spell words and write in full sentences, missing out spelling, punctuation and grammar, and therefore not getting good English grades.
I was particularly impressed with his analogy of Mary – “Mary had a mobile, she texted day and night. But when it came to her exams, she’d forgotten how to write”. This is very true because when you’re writing a text message, you use lots of abbreviations For example, I was previously writing an exam and instead of writing you are, I actually did write “U” and “R”. I only noticed this at the end of the test, which meant I had to spend an extra 10 minutes going through the whole of my test correcting this. Luckily I finished 15 minutes early and had enough time, or otherwise I would have lost lots of marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar. I do agree that abbreviations do affect young people’s spelling which is therefore messing up the English language and perverting the minds of the young.
I can understand that people use emoticons (or emojis) to express themselves quickly. Humphreys said that it has been 25 years since the emoticon was born, and they have evolved in this time from using punctuation to create a face, to actual images. Even in Microsoft Word now typing a colon and end bracket 🙂 it will automatically turn it into a J! Sending a picture or smiley face can instantly tell me someone is happy. However, I agree that it can be “irritating” and “absurd”. This smiley face does not tell me how the person is really feeling and I may read it differently to how they originally intended it. It would be better for them to express themselves through words because it’s more explanatory and I don’t have to spend ages working out what their vague emojis could mean.
Also, I agree with him being angry at the Oxford English Dictionary removing 16000 hyphens from words because they’re trying to make life easier for people using technology. However, in doing this, they’re removing 16000 instances of our cultural history, which though making it easier for the lazy, younger generation to spell words, causes a lot of the older generation who grew up with these spellings, including John Humphries, to have to learn completely new spellings. As such, now everyone is learning new spellings and where’s the point in that?
However, I don’t agree with the point where he says “it’s partly the physical sensation” (using a dictionary). Technology has advanced over the last 9 years and nowadays you can just look a word up and get its definition, which is quick and easy. Using an online dictionary still gives you all the information and spelling required, but it also gives you synonyms and origins and examples of the word in sentences; it will even give you hyperlinks to new words (if you don’t know what hyperlinks are you’d better catch up with the times). You argue that leafing through a dictionary is “infinitely more satisfying than looking something up on the internet”, however using these sites gives you just as much satisfaction and saves you 20 minutes.
My grandmother (quoting Oscar Wilde) always said to me sarcasm was the lowest form of wit. As such, I disagree with Humphrey’s thorough use of sarcasm throughout his article, “the spell-check (sorry, spellcheck)”. He isn’t being intelligent. He isn’t being funny. He’s just being disrespectful and obnoxious. He’s being sarcastic because he can’t get his own way and is reverting back to his childhood and is simply throwing his toys out the pram. If he had made his argument through discussion I believe more people would have listened to his point of view and maybe he would have received a better response.
Nowadays, people use technology to look up a word, e.g. on their phones, tablets, etc. Older generations may still prefer to leaf through dictionaries, to pick up books and read them to get knowledge. This is all well and good, but if we are trying to make society a better place and reduce the paper we use creating books, it would be a lot cheaper and easier to use technology instead. I don’t like the use of text abbreviations; they’re irritating and useless. Although, if the English language is to remain the same, technology is a brilliant resource that can help achieve this.
I h8 txt msgs 2 m8. I mean y wud any1 wnt 2 tlk lik dis? SNM. (That’s say no more, FYI…)
Both Shakespeare and Robert Browning show that love makes people do hateful acts. In Julius Caesar, Brutus Kills Caesar telling the people “not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more”. This shows that he has more love for his country than for someone who has been a father figure. In Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover, the speaker strangles Porphyria in a horrific way because she pushes him over the edge.
You can see similarities between Shakespeare and Browning’s writing in the structure of foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is a warning or indication of a future event. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, foreshadowing takes place in Act 1 Scene 2 when a soothsayer says “beware the Ides of March” and this is repeated in the same scene, when Brutus repeats what the soothsayer said, “A soothsayer bid you beware the Ides of March”. This is very significant because he is predicting the conspiracy. Additionally, in Act 2 Scene 1, Brutus has a soliloquy where he talks about Caesar being crowned, “And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg and kill him in the shell”. Brutus is saying that Caesar must be killed before he “hatches” into a snake and becomes evil through power. In this Brutus is showing his real feelings towards Rome and Caesar. In Act 2 Scene 4, where Caesar speaks to his wife Calpurnia, he states that “cowards die many times before their death, the valiant never taste of death but once”. Calpurnia is trying to get him to stay at home and not go to the Senate but Caesar is arguing that cowards who hide from things die many times from running away from battles but when he dies he will do so honourably. He says this just before he dies, bravely.
I think that the Ides of March is talking about the conspiracy and I think this is a build up to Caesars death. When Caesar is stabbed by all the other conspirators, he doesn’t speak. However, when Brutus goes to stab him, he exclaims “Et tu, Brute?”. This means “do you hate me so much you want to kill me?”. It is important that Caesar only speaks to Brutus because it tells us that Brutus is very dear to him and is questioning why he would hate him, or where their previous love had gone. Brutus doesn’t say anything afterwards because I think that he knows that he has killed a father figure and has respect for him still, but again, I have seen a production of Julius Caesar where Brutus stabs him in the groin, which is one of the worst acts of death, suggesting the murder was actually done out of hate.
The idea of being betrayed by someone you loved is also represented in Robert Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover. When Porphyria is strangled she is strangled because the speaker thinks that she will betray him, by going with another lover “murmuring how she loved me — she too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour, to set its struggling passion free”. As such, he is trying to say I want you and if I can’t have you then no one can. This suggest that he is unstable as a normal couple would not be so extreme even in the break-up period, and the characters were not even in the break-up period. That that is why I think he is unstable.
In Act 1 Scene 3 Cassius says Brutus is noble but can be easily manipulated, “well Brutus, thou art noble; yet I see that honourable metal may be wrought”. This is suggesting that Brutus could be told what to do easily and would be proud in doing what he was told to do. this analogy becomes true when Brutus is misled by Cassius and joins the conspiracy even though he does not want to at first.
In Porphyria’s Lover, the scene is set as a cold and rainy day when a young lady walks in and takes off her jacket, lets her hair down and “made her smooth white shoulder bare”. She puts the man’s arm around her and then he strangles her with her own hair. This suggests to me that he may be mentally unstable as there was no apparent reason why he killed her. I think this poem was written after he killed her. This tells me about hate because he must hate her so much to kill her.
Shakespeare uses pathetic fallacy in Julius Caesar by having Casca and Cassius discuss a storm of lightning and thunder in Act 1 Scene 3, which symbolises that there is going to be rage and destruction. This could symbolise the God’s hatred of the act that is going to be committed, with Casca saying “the world, too saucy with the gods, incenses them to send destruction”, or even the conspirator’s hatred for Caesar. Lots of the conspirators hate Caesar, apart from Brutus who has been misled, so therefore the lightning strikes may represent the physical stabbing of Caesar, “the cross blue lightning seemed to open the breast of heaven”, and the thunder may represent the conspirators’ shouting both during and after the murder. This idea can be related to Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover as before the lady walks in it is raining and it is very windy. It seems like the storm is doing it on purpose with “it tore the elm-tops down for spite”, suggesting something angry and bad is going to happen in the poem. The use of the word “spite” suggests that hatred is in play. The hatred of the storm then suggests the speaker strangling the lady with her own wet hair.
The Laboratory is about the speaker finding out that her lover has a lover and she wants her lover to feel pain by killing her lover’s lover with a poison. Browning represents hate to us by using repetition. As the speaker tells us the plot, we can see her anger building towards the situation as in stanza VI “with her head and her breast and her arms and her hands,should drop dead!” the use of using no commas and using repetition means that when you are reading it, the speed you read at increases. This is trying to tell us that she it getting angry with every word she speaks, especially when at the end of dead she uses a exclamation mark.
The story is about getting revenge on her lover by killing his lover, revenge is shown in stanza II “at me fled to the dear empty church, to pray god in,for them—I am here.” and in stanza X “he is sure to remember her dying face!”. Stating that she is trying to get revenge by killing her lover’s lover, and letting her lover watch her die and he will have to remember that the rest of his life. Again the speaker uses the exclamation mark to show that she is explaining the point with aggression. In doing all of these hateful acts she know that he will never come back to her because they’re unforgivable by anyone’s standards but yet she still wants to do this because she feels the need to hurt the person she loves. He hurt her but it makes me think did she never loved him because you would not hurt him that much, that is why you could compare it to Porphyria’s Lover as both speakers could be stated unstable.
To conclude, Shakespeare and Robert Browning both show that love makes people do hateful actions. You can see this in Julius Caesar, when Brutus kills Caesar and in Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover where Porphyria is killed by the speaker and in The Laboratory the speaker kills her lover’s lover by letting her lover live with it his whole life. All of this presents hate as related to the motivations of characters in one way or the other.
That day, the day that every mother is scared of, the day her son gets taken.
On that Wednesday, her son Jack had finally received the assignment he had been waiting for all his life, to go to the front and fight for his country in Afghanistan. In one week he would be taken. He knew the instant that he got back from the training camp. He knew he had hurt her – things would never be the same.
The days wasted away like nothing, time stopped. It felt like an infinity. A forever.
That night, the night before, she went upstairs with a cup of tea and kissed her son on the forehead. A kiss, but with absolute silence. She got into bed but there was no attempt to sleep because of the fear. It’s like the fear when you were a child, scared of the bogey man but ten times worse. The sweat flowed from her head like a waterfall so she went into the bathroom to look into the mirror. She looked ill so she took some pain killers. Not one thing was happening, they had no effect apart from the hallucinations.
The voices, the images and surrounding smells, a montage of all the good moments she had with her son. All the moments when he needed her but she could not help. Hell. Horror.
It hit her, she remembers when her little boy was on the beach and got sunburn and she was there to put sun cream on and after sun on to ease his pain. She was always the one to kiss it better and protect her son from the outside world but now she is in uncharted waters.
She woke up suddenly with a gasp of air as the situation was drowning her. That night she had no sleep. Zombie.
The next morning, today, the day her world would be turned upside down.
She walked down the stairs; it was around six am. There was a cup of tea waiting for her and a figure she didn’t know sitting in her son’s armchair, someone dressed in an army uniform. She realises it’s her son. She knows that there is only one hour until armageddon. He will be taken. They have sat there in silence as no-one can think of the words to say, as there are not many words to describe the way that a mother is feeling, she is trying to say something and stt-tuters and staaamers, He can see that she loves him dearly.
Her anxiety is going crazy, she can’t stop biting her nails and the skin around them. She has bags around her eyes as she is tired, as her son is looking at her as he can see that without him she can not go on living.
A knock at the door it’s them, Jack gets up as she gets up, making an awkward situation. They’re both at the door, it was as if they were saying I love you and be safe. As she pins a Poppy on his uniform, she gives him a hug, but now his shoulder is damp.
He walks to the car and a word was said “love you” as she was the only one who has been there his whole life. A tear rolls down his face with a smile to go with it.
She will never let go,but she must let him go.
15/10/15
In this scene Anthony, Octavius and Lepidus plan their strategy on how to claim power of Rome
When the scene starts Anthony, Octavius and Lepidus are discussing the fates of the conspirators. also when discussing the fate of the conspirators they’re talking about lepidus’s brother who is a conspirator, and Anthony’s sisters son who is also a conspirator. by saying that even though they are family they should be killed because they are conspirators that helped in the killing of Caesar.
after they talk about the fate of the conspirators Anthony sends Lepidus to get Caesars will in order for them to change the will so that they can fund their own expenses. when they send them away they talk behind his back about him saying and A quote from Anthony is this “he is a slight unmeritable man” by this he is saying that he is a small man and he doesn’t have good intentions and he what’s to create mischief.
Octavius dislikes Lepidus and does not see him fit to share the spoils and power,A quote from Octavius is “some that smile in their hearts, I fear, million of Miss Chief” by this I think it means that even though you smiling on the outside and agreeing with everything,inside his disagreeing and has bad intentions.
‘Bothered’-thinking about it, guilty but never apologises or says sorry. ‘Many THINGS I have done wrong’ things plural so he’s done more than 1 but chooses to talk about this one. ‘Played the handles’ very deliberate action of heating the handles ‘For eternity’ she is marked for life. ‘Thirteen’ immature and naive at 13 Age around 40 male written in 1st person and he’s looking back on life. Written in past tense.
What does the poem remind you of? Group meeting where you open up about guilty things you may have done because why else would you need to talk about this event that happened a long time ago. Remind others of bad things they potentially may have done in the past as kids. Quotes to support ‘I am very bothered when I think of the bad things I have a done in my life’ ‘Marked, the doctor said, for eternity’ this is the things that bothers him most. ‘Don’t believe me, please, if i say that was just my butterfingered way, at 13, of asking you if you would marry me.’
Friday 17th April 2015
scout and jem think there farther is not good at any thing where as all there friends at school have dads that do lots of fun stuff and there father cant even play football with them and also the kids at school are giving them lots of grief about there dads court case about tom Robinson and because she has promised her dad that she would not fight she cant do any thing about it scout is unhappy because her hole neighborhood is full of old people and miss Maude acknowledges that there aren’t any 20 year olds are around to be role models and as she is talking about this she pulls up that atticas is a “checkers grand master and he can play the jaws harp “but scout dose not care because she always beats him playing checkers but miss mauldie explained that he lets her win.
jem, is depressed because his farther will not participate in the local towns football match so him and scout go out into the wildlife with there new shiny air rifles that there dad would not teach them to use so there uncle jack dose but dose tell them “it is a sin to kill a mockingbird “, and kill some thing when they see a dog acting really strange so they tell miss mauldie and see rings attackas to tell him and then she hangs up the phone and rings the people or run and tell people to warn them about the do attakas and jem and scout watch on and the sheriff had the riffle and then gave it to attackas and mocked him about his accracy so he took aim and shoots the dog dead scout and jem are shocked that he hit it first time so they want to tell every one at school butjem tell her not to because attackas has never metioned it also jem sayes ” i wouldent care even if he could not do any thing because hes a gentle man like me “.
Monday 12th January 2015
Chapter 1:
The story is told by a girl named Jean Louise Finch, but people always call her by her nickname Scout. Scout starts to explain the situations that led to a braking her arm that her older brother, Jem, sustained many years earlier she begins to look over her family history. Where the first of her ancestors to come to America was a fur-trader and apothecary named Simon Finch, who fled England to escape religious persecution and established a successful farm on the banks of the Alabama River. The farm, called Finch’s Landing, supported the family for many years. The first Finches to make a living away from the farm were Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, who became a lawyer in the town of Maycomb, and his brother, Jack Finch, who went to medical school in Boston. Their sister, Alexandra Finch, stayed to run the Landing.
A successful lawyer, Atticus makes a solid living in Maycomb, a tired, poor, old town in the grips of the Great Depression. He lives with Jem and Scout on Maycomb’s main residential street. Their cook, an old black woman named Calpurnia, helps to raise the children and keep the house. Atticus’s wife died when Scout was two, so she does not remember her mother well. But Jem, four years older than Scout, has memories of their mother that sometimes make him unhappy.
In the summer of 1933, when Jem is nearly ten and Scout almost six, a peculiar boy named Charles Baker Harris moves in next door. The boy, who calls himself Dill, stays for the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel Haverford, who owns the house next to the Finches’. Dill doesn’t like to discuss his father’s absence from his life, but he is otherwise a talkative and extremely intelligent boy who quickly becomes the Finch children’s chief playmate. All summer, the three act out various stories that they have read. When they grow bored of this activity, Dill suggests that they attempt to lure Boo Radley, a mysterious neighbor, out of his house.
Chapter 2:
as September arrives, and Dill leaves Maycomb to return to the town of Meridian. Scout, meanwhile, prepares to go to school for the first time, an event that she has been eagerly anticipating. Once she is finally at school, however, she finds that her teacher, Miss Caroline Fisher, deals poorly with children. When Miss Caroline concludes that Atticus must have taught Scout to read, she becomes very displeased and makes Scout feel guilty for being educated. At recess, Scout complains to Jem, but Jem says that Miss Caroline is just trying out a new method of teaching.Miss Caroline and Scout get along badly in the afternoon as well. Walter Cunningham, a boy in Scout’s class, has not brought a lunch. Miss Caroline offers him a quarter to buy lunch, telling him that he can pay her back tomorrow. Walter’s family is large and poor—so poor that they pay Atticus with hickory nuts, turnip greens, or other goods when they need legal help—and Walter will never be able to pay the teacher back or bring a lunch to school. When Scout attempts to explain these circumstances, however, Miss Caroline fails to understand and grows so frustrated that she slaps Scout’s hand with a ruler.
chapter 3:
At lunch, Scout rubs Walter’s nose in the dirt for getting her in trouble, but Jem intervenes and invites Walter to lunch (in the novel, as in certain regions of the country, the midday meal is called “dinner”). At the Finch house, Walter and Atticus discuss farm conditions “like two men,” and Walter puts molasses all over his meat and vegetables, to Scout’s horror. When she criticizes Walter, however, Calpurnia calls her into the kitchen to scold her and slaps her as she returns to the dining room, telling her to be a better hostess. Back at school, Miss Caroline becomes terrified when a tiny bug, or “cootie,” crawls out of a boy’s hair. The boy is Burris Ewell, a member of the Ewell clan, which is even poorer and less respectable than the Cunningham clan. In fact, Burris only comes to school the first day of every school year, making a token appearance to avoid trouble with the law. He leaves the classroom, making enough vicious remarks to cause the teacher to cry.
At home, Atticus follows Scout outside to ask her if something is wrong, to which she responds that she is not feeling well. She tells him that she does not think she will go to school anymore and suggests that he could teach her himself. Atticus replies that the law demands that she go to school, but he promises to keep reading to her, as long as she does not tell her teacher about it.
Libraries are important. If you can’t see how important they are, then you’re blind.
I disagree with anyone who says public libraries are not needed. The only reason that people would say this would be because they are inconsiderate of others. They are unable to recognise people from different economic circumstances.
I will always remember the time when I discovered my own local library. I was walking down Streatham high road when suddenly it started pouring with rain. I was only wearing shorts and a t-shirt! I ran to the nearest building to get under cover; at first it looked like an old museum but when I went inside it turned out to be Streatham library – something that I never knew was there if I’m honest. So, I sat down on a lovely cushion to dry off and I picked up a book. Sitting there, I thought to myself I have lived in my area all these years and I’ve never come across this wonderful place, a place where I can come and read and forget about all my troubles. By the time the rain stopped I was a quarter way through my book, but I found out you could borrow books so I joined up and the rest is history.
Old outdated centres are getting repaired and modernised, and there is more funding for better disabled access, increasing the potential customer base. The refurbishment also means that they can stock more books and have better resources; books such as graphic novels, fiction, non-fiction and newspapers for those who want to be up to date in the world. These serve as community centres for people who like to be social and active, in some cases it can act as the hub for a community. There are so many different functions; libraries can host meetings and educational courses, and it’s a place where parents can bond with their children outside of a home environment.
I can also understand some of the reasons why they’re being closed. As technology moves on, better devices have been developed that have the ability to download books for a small fee or even for free. Some people are put off as they would prefer to buy the book and read at home as they are more comfortable with their surroundings (though they could borrow it from the library…). Lastly, as more people are worried about the environment they would prefer to download a paperless version of a book to save trees. People may also be worried about forgetting to take their book back or even losing it and having to pay fees.
Can you even imagine a life without books? Great novelists have allowed readers to be involved in their lives and imagination through their books. If you were to take books away from the world then you also take away people’s imaginations. People need this escape to get away from reality and reading a story can provide the transport.
I recently read an article written by Terry Deary, the writer of the Horrible Histories books. He said “we’ve got this idea that we’ve got an entitlement to read books for free, at the expense of authors, publishers and council tax payers. This is not the Victorian age, when we wanted to allow the impoverished access to literature. We pay for compulsory schooling to do that”. I feel this was irresponsible and selfish because the main reason people usually write is that they do it because it comes naturally to them and they want to bring joy to people. This is why he could be deemed selfish because he is doing it for benefit of money. Now I know this is only one writer, but it makes me think how many more think like this but are afraid to speak, out and if this is the case then what future is there for literature?
There will always be room for libraries in my heart. If libraries were a part of us they would be our brains – the bank of our knowledge as the pages of the books and information ran through our veins. They would be our creative sides, affecting our decisions. If you take them away you take away our minds. We would not be able to learn and think for ourselves. Actually, thinking about it, we wouldn’t even be alive! What better reason not to take our libraries away. Without our libraries our society has no character, no energy, no life.
Terry Deary quote taken from: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/feb/13/libraries-horrible-histories-terry-deary
Re-write sentences.
And if we read as little as what we have. At least tell the truth that we don’t like reading and we would rather do other activities than read, as it takes up a lot of your free time. Don’t give the reason books are too expensive to hide the truth.
Chapter 1: The hellhole
My name is Rocko Jones and I am 16 years old, I have grown up in carehomes since the age of 4. I’ve been treated like an outsider from the other children in the carehomes. Some of the things they have done to me have been not only hurtful to the outside but also scarring on the inside. I remember one time when they hid the only photo I had with my parents when I was a child. My only physical memory of them and I thought I had lost it forever. There were other instances where they had put worms in my pillow or even spiders in my bed. It drove me to my limit but who could I tell? No one would truly listen and if they did it would only cause more trouble for me. No one likes me and I’m not sure how much I can take, fighting isn’t an option, I’ve had to control my anger and tunnel it into different avenues. These experiences, I believe, have made me the man I am today.
I am now 18 years old, the day I leave care, the day I start my life. I’ve got my own flat on the blueberry estate. It’s not what I would call perfect but what I know as home. My new job as a junior detective is one I’m enjoying, it’s a new fresh start which gives me a sense of freedom but also justice. My past slowly fades into the background as my future is layed out in front of me. Then the biggest barrier in my life came to me on my first case on the job.
A fairly standard domestic murder case arrived on to my desk. It hadn’t been solved at the time of murder but new evidence had appeared. Finally, a chance to prove my worth. However, when I started to read through the file my excitement turned to a cold vacancy coursing through my body, as the shudders creeped through every vertebrae in my spine. It was my mothers murder. The murderer… My father. I looked at the murder weapon, as it lay there staring me in my face, I started blaming myself. ‘Was it my fault?’ ‘If they hadn’t had me maybe mum would still be alive’. These thoughts lasted for a matter of minutes before reality hit me. I had to find my father, I had to bring him in and serve my mother she finally deserves. But where could he be? It had been 15 years since I last saw my father, we were fishing by a lake in Hampstead Heath, it was quiet, secluded and relaxing. I absolutely adored it there but now… It seems like a distant nightmare.
2 years have passed and I think I’m close. The emotion I felt when I first got the case has drained from me. I feel nothing towards this man, my so called ‘father’. To me he is now just another criminal waiting to be caught. There was one slight problem, his absence. I was sitting at my office. It was my 21st and of course no one had remembered. I sat there staring at the window thinking of the time I went fishing on my birthday with him. Then it hit me. He must be there, it can’t be just coincidence. I grabbed my coat and keys and made my way to the car park.
As I approached Hampstead Heath, the adrenalin running through me was immense, this was displayed but the sweat dripping down my face, I was one minute away now, my heart racing as my foot got steadily heavier on the accelerator. I pulled a sharp right and stopped. When I got out of the car I saw him. The sight sickened me. This man, my ‘father’ was there hanging from a tree. Hanging like the coward he was. I called it in. He was dead.
10 years on and I’m now the chief detective. My experiences in life have taught me never to hold anything back and go with your heart. Never let emotions get the better of you and always stay strong. However, the case now sitting on my desk will test every last ounce of these things. My favourite careworker, Miss Mulligan… Murdered.