上海日报网络版又一次改版了,这次不仅调整了版式,看上去更加现代,更加时尚(远比土了巴基的某××日报好),还增加了不少新的元素,或者说是把某些报纸上有,但没有上网站的元素追加了进来,其中就有偶喜欢的加菲猫漫画,还有“数独”和星座之类。
每天看看上海日报网站,了解身边事的英语版,获取上海实用信息的英语内容,学学财经稿子里花里胡哨却简洁高效的表达,既是兴趣也是工作需要。挺好。
By Simon Rabinovitch
LONDON (Reuters) - About 16,000 words have succumbed to pressures of the Internet age and lost their hyphens in a new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
Bumble-bee is now bumblebee, ice-cream is ice cream and pot-belly is pot belly.
And if you've got a problem, don't be such a crybaby (formerly cry-baby).
The hyphen has been squeezed as informal ways of communicating, honed in text messages and emails, spread on Web sites and seep into newspapers and books.
"People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for," said Angus Stevenson, editor of the Shorter OED, the sixth edition of which was published this week.
Another factor in the hyphen's demise is designers' distaste for its ungainly horizontal bulk between words.
"Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography," he said. "The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned."
The team that compiled the Shorter OED, a two-volume tome despite its name, only committed the grammatical amputations after exhaustive research.
"The whole process of changing the spelling of words in the dictionary is all based on our analysis of evidence of language, it's not just what we think looks better," Stevenson said.
Researchers examined a corpus of more than 2 billion words, consisting of full sentences that appeared in newspapers, books, Web sites and blogs from 2000 onwards.
For the most part, the dictionary dropped hyphens from compound nouns, which were unified in a single word (e.g. pigeonhole) or split into two (e.g. test tube).
But hyphens have not lost their place altogether. The Shorter OED editor commended their first-rate service rendered to English in the form of compound adjectives, much like the one in the middle of this sentence.
"There are places where a hyphen is necessary," Stevenson said. "Because you can certainly start to get real ambiguity."
Twenty-odd people came to the party, he said. Or was it twenty odd people?
Some of the 16,000 hyphenation changes in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, sixth edition:
Formerly hyphenated words split in two:
fig leaf
hobby horse
ice cream
pin money
pot belly
test tube
water bed
Formerly hyphenated words unified in one:
bumblebee
chickpea
crybaby
leapfrog
logjam
lowlife
pigeonhole
touchline
waterborne
From oddly enough of Reuters.A Pocket Full of Rye
(published in 1953) is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, featuring her detective Miss Marple.
Like many of Christie's novels, the title and substantial parts of the plot reference a nursery rhyme, in this case Sing a Song of Sixpence.
When wealthy Rex Fortescue dies during tea, the police are baffled. Mr. Fortescue died during his morning tea in the office and the diagnosis was that a poison, taxine - a poison found as an alkaloid in berries of the yew tree, had killed him. His wife was the main suspect in the murder, until she also was murdered. Her lover, Mr. Dubois, was the suspect next. Just about everyone that knew the family was a suspect. Going on the only clue, a pocket full of rye found on the victim, Miss Marple begins investigating. Maple realized the murders are arranged according to the pattern of her childhood nursery rhyme 'Sing a Song of Sixpence'. Murder though, is anything but child's play. She worked together with Inspector Neele, even though they had completely different thought patterns about what had happened.
Adapted into a Russian film in 1983 (using the Russian edition's translated title, The Secret of the Blackbirds) with an Estonian actress Ita Ever as Miss Marple and then by BBC on March 7, 1985 with Joan Hickson in the lead.
内容简介
由一个旅游作家来写地球的科学简史,这个企划与过程真是太有趣了!
作 者BillBryson是国内知名的徒步旅游作家,国内出版过他的旅游书《欧洲在发酵》和《一脚踩进小美国》,为何会写下这本书呢?作者在书里说道:「我 在旅行途中时,透过机舱的窗口看到下面旷阔的月光与海景,一个念头闪过,我发现到我虽然经常旅行但是对自己生活在上面的星球所知甚少。」作者用清晰明了、 幽默风趣的笔法,将宇宙大爆炸到人类文明发展进程中所发生的繁多妙趣横生的故事一一收入笔下。惊奇和感叹组成了本书,历历在目的天下万物组成了本书,益于 人们了解大千世界的无穷奥妙,掌握万事万物的发展脉络。
书中回溯了科学史上那些伟大与奇妙的时刻,引用了近年来发现的最新科学史料,几乎每一个被作者描述的事件都奇特而且惊人:宇宙起源于一个要用显微镜才看 得见的奇点;全球气候变暖可能会使北美洲和欧洲北部地区变得更加寒冷;1815年印度尼西亚松巴哇岛坦博拉火山喷发引发的海啸夺走了10万人的生命;美国 黄石国家公园是"世界上最大的活火山"……而那些沉迷于科学的科学家们也是千奇百怪:达尔文居然为蚯蚓弹起了钢琴;牛顿将一根大针眼缝针插进眼窝,为的只 是看看会有什么事情发生;富兰克林不顾生命危险在大雷雨里放风筝;卡文迪许在自己身上做电击强度实验,竟然到了失去知觉的地步;发现第一批陆地动物鱼甲龙 化石的瑞典古生物学家贾维克居然数错了手指、脚趾的数量,还把化石藏了48年不让别人看……
因 此Bill Bryson花了3年的时间,找寻相关的资料与拜访相关的科学家及学者,以科学的角度及散文体例的方式介绍我们所居住的地球。本书虽然厚达544页,但是 涵盖近年来发现的宇宙、生物、地质、物理化学等科普散文知识,这个厚度,才刚刚好呢!本书也获得亚马逊网站2003 年度优秀图书的推荐!
作者简介
一 九五一年出生於美国爱荷华州,毕业於美国德雷克大学。曾任职於伦敦『泰晤士报』与『独立报』,在英国居住长达二十年之久,同时也为『纽约时报』、《君子杂 �I》、《GQ》与《国家地理杂�I》等刊物撰文。他的兴趣很广泛,在语言学方面着有《麻烦词汇字典》(A Dictionary of Troublesome Words)、《母语》(The Mother Tongue)、《美式英语》(Made in America)等书,皆为非学院派的幽默之作,获致很高的评价;在旅游记事方面,着有《别跟山过不去》、《一脚踩进小美国》、《欧洲在发酵》、《哈!小 不列颠》等书。而最新力作《请问这�Y是美国吗?》(I am a Stranger Here Myself)可说是比尔.布莱森在抒写自己的故乡--美国的作品中,最至情至性、最努力经营的一本书,不仅佳评如潮,还被喻为媲美《哈!小不列颠》的佳 作。目前他和英国妻子以及四个小孩居住於美国新罕布夏州的汉诺威市。