A boon to all language lovers, as well as those specifically interested in the history of English writing and...
Parade magazine columnist vos Savant takes the reader on an entertaining and illuminating journey into the confused world of English orthography.
Who hasn't complained about the pitfalls of English spelling? The problem, vos Savant suggests, began in the sixth century, when the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity and switched from the runic to the Roman writing system, whose Latin alphabet was inadequate for spoken English. The influx of immigrants during the Middle Ages, periods of French domination, and multiplicity of dialects just made the problem worse, and the stabilization of spelling between 1400 and 1600 did not record dramatic phonetic changes. Though calls for a spelling reform have periodically sounded ever since, lexicographers presume that no imposed standard would capture the dynamics of the language, which is in constant flux. So, brace yourselves for more discrepancies between the spoken and written word. Vos Savant will at least make insecure spellers happy, as she states that there is no direct correlation between spelling performance and general intelligence. However, a reader survey yielding 42,000 responses indicates that spelling ability is linked to some personality traits. For instance, detail-oriented, organized people are likely to be top spellers, and deficiency in pronunciation skills leads to more mistakes in writing. Vos Savant provides several easy tests to enable readers to determine their most typical spelling errors, along with helpful hints for improvement. The book also contains a set of rules and a list of commonly misspelled words. But the author is no fan of computer spellchecking, one of the many forms of modern technology she believes have a potentially negative effect of on spelling.
A boon to all language lovers, as well as those specifically interested in the history of English writing and psycholinguistics—and perhaps a therapeutic and educational read for poor spellers as well.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-393-04903-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An efficient guide to improving the effectiveness of any online marketing effort.
A trio of digital-marketing experts explains the huge gap between the number of people who visit websites in response to online campaigns and the number who become customers–and offers a well-tested approach to achieve better results.
Early Internet entrepreneurs counted "eyeballs" to determine whether their offerings were successful. Soon, however, online marketers realized that visitors viewing their banner ads and paid search listings were only part of the story–and a minor one at that. Then came the ascendance of "click-throughs" as the benchmark for effective Internet marketing. More recently, however, digital marketing has moved beyond merely counting clicks on display ads or hyperlinks in e-mail campaigns. Today, marketers worry about converting those prospects into sales leads or actual customers. That’s where post-click marketing comes in and where this informative how-to provides the answers. The authors, all veteran online marketing consultants, focus on methods for improving the dismal conversion rate–estimated at a paltry three percent–of people who click through to the average online marketer’s landing page. Their core technique relies on selling paths or conversion paths, which are three- to five-page series of screens that attempt to guide more clickers to become buyers. The difference between a conversion path and a conventional landing page is that, unlike a typical landing page where a web surfer can go in almost any direction, the conversion path presents the visitor with a set of carefully selected options. By offering visitors quicker, simpler, cheaper–or even free–choices, the post-click marketer personalizes and improves the online-selling process. The book consists largely of previously written blog posts, articles and other documents the authors produced over the last decade. While the material could theoretically seem rehashed, the inclusion instead adds genuine-feeling context. This intriguing title is divided into short segments–improving readability–and includes visual aids. Novices and marketing pros will likely find the authors’ approach convincing.
An efficient guide to improving the effectiveness of any online marketing effort.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-2185-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Eight history-laden essays on bizarre beliefs, fears, and behaviors, plus two additional pieces on several unfortunate human anomalies—all serving as reminders of human gullibility, mendacity, and cruelty. Bondeson, a London-based physician who specializes in rheumatology and internal medicine and has a Ph.D. in experimental medicine, appears to have a genuine love for the weird: Many of the illustrations in this odd little work bear the note ``from the author's collection.'' Those fascinated by tabloid journalism's sensational reports of spontaneous human combustion or the birth of nonhuman creatures to human mothers will, however, probably be disappointed by Bondeson's rather scholarly approach. He traces the rise and decline of beliefs in these and other strange phenomena, reveals the motives of the parties involved, and offers a medical explanation where appropriate. Among his topics are the fear of premature burial and the extraordinary mechanical precautions taken by some to avoid that fate, the notion that a race of giants once walked the earth, and the belief in a race of people with tails. Bondeson then dwells on the cases of four unusual individuals whose fate was to be exhibited like sideshow freaks. Today the Hunterian, a London museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, houses the double skull of the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal and the skeletons of the huge Charles Byrne, known as the Irish Giant, and the tiny Caroline Crachami, a dwarf known as the Sicilian Fairy. The mummy of the fourth individual, Julia Pastrana, known as the Ape-Woman for her hairy body and misshapen face, is in a medical museum in Oslo, Norway. With its numerous illustrations of these poor creatures, this in-depth Believe It or Not can be seen as a continuation of the exploitation that marked their lives.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-8014-3431-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Cornell Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1997
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