A Vocabulary Lesson

I think I mentioned grawlixes here before, but the first two I don’t recall, even though I read the book.

The words come from a book named The Lexicon of Comicana by American cartoonist Mort Walker. He intended the book as a tongue-in-cheek look at the devices used by cartoonists. Walker invented an international set of symbols called symbolia after researching cartoons around the world. (Taken from Wikipedia)

The C with the circle around it is called the copyright symbol, by the way, but you probably knew that.

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Marcom is tech-writer-ese for “marketing communications.” We say that all marcom people are insane. That’s our interpretation of their brand of creativity, one part of which is mentioned in this comic:

So what do you think of marketing communications?

I think it’s a slight pause before saying the word and a slight increase in volume.

What do you think?

What’s typical is that the word uses a Latin prefix and a Greek root. This bugs come folks.

And the word isn’t even all that simple. mono is Latin, meaning “one,” but it’s derived from the Greek monos meaning “alone.”

Lithos is Greek for “stone,” by the way. The material. The thing you can hold in your hand is petros, a rock.

Not much content today; just a reminder that unlike this guy, I never correct anyone’s writing unless they ask.

I notice that the imprint on the field doesn’t quite match the guy’s comment…