Talk About Big Words!

One sentence, but you need a good vocabulary to follow it!

In view of these recent developments, the fascinating and dynamic etymology of astrobiology is elucidated, and thus shown to encompass a plethora of vivid characters drawn from different continents, religions, ideologies and centuries.

http://astrobiology.com/2020/04/whats-in-a-name-the-etymology-of-astrobiology.html

I counted more than a dozen words with three or more syllables. Click the link and see whether you can track down the article that it’s referring to. If you find it, be prepared for some big words!

I like pictures, so here’s one. Not sure it has a whole lot to do with the article…

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Maybe “lying” is a bit strong here, but it’s a good illustration of how you can tell the truth and still distort things. Here’s the chart:

Beautiful News is a site about graphics; it doesn’t seem to have a political agenda per se, but this is a good example of how not to label a graph.

It makes a reduction by half take up the whole chart! The bottom line should be zero. I think we have a lack of detail here, too. Was the decline in incarcerations really a straight line? What happened in the years before 2006 and after 2016? I think the chart’s purpose is to make a statement, not to give information.

Harrumpf.

PS—I ran into another mis-drawn graph. The left margin of the graph should start where the lines start to go up, and spread out the jagged lines.

Need convincing that punctuation is optional? Read this:

And I have a question for you: Did he put the right number of commas at the end???

It’s we do things, not us do things. Just because you throw in some extra words doesn’t mean you can change that. Third panel.

Harrumpf. Get it right. Don’t be a Tareyton smoker.

In this case, a separable verb, pin down. It’s at the bottom.

I think that’s how you do it, anyway. How would you do it?