biochemistea

Me: minding my own damn business in the grocery store

One of my students and a few of his teammates enter the dairy aisle. 

My student is holding hands with one of his teammates. 

My student: Oh hey, Professor X!

Me, who has both my student and his girlfriend in my class: …Hello

My student, looking at his hand-holding partner: Oh! Don’t worry. My girlfriend knows. Not that I’m cheating! I’m not cheating. I’m not gay.

Hand Holding boy: Not that being gay is a bad thing! It’s a good thing!

My student: Right! But no, listen. We aren’t together, we just hold hands in public sometimes.

Hand Holding Boy: Especially on Friday nights. And weekends. And at away games.

My student: Because sometimes people will say shit and then we can punch them! And if the fight started because someone was being homophobic, coach won’t get mad at us.

(using parentheses)

using em-dashes—more or less liberally

using italics

DIALOGUE IN ALL CAPS TO IMPLY YELLING

the semicolon; or, how to properly use it

capitalizing Important words

More em-dashes and semicolons, we love sentence variation.

[id= an edited version of the "No take only throw" meme based on comic by cupcakelogic about a dog. The dog says "please queer intimacy??" with a pleading expression and a ball in its mouth. A hand reaches for the ball, and the dog, looking angry, says "no date/romance!!" and insists "only queer intimacy". The ace and aro pride flags have been drawn on the dog in each panel. /end id]

Things this article has taught me:

This same order of adjectives more or less applies to languages around the world.  “It’s possible that these elements of universal grammar clarify our thought in some way,” says Barbara Partee, a professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Yet when the human race tacitly decided that shape words go before color words go before origin words, it left no record of its rationale.

One theory is that the more specific term always falls closer to the noun. But that doesn’t explain everything in adjective order.

Another theory is that as you get closer to the noun, you encounter adjectives that denote more innate properties. In general, nouns pick out the type of thing we’re talking about, and adjectives describe it,” Partee told me. She observes that the modifiers most likely to sit right next to nouns are the ones most inclined to serve as nouns in different contexts: Rubber duck. Stone wall.

Rules are made to be broken. Switching up the order of adjectives allows you to redistribute emphasis. (If you wish to buy the black small purse, not the gray one, for instance, you can communicate your priorities by placing color before size).  Scrambling the order of adjectives also helps authors achieve a sense of spontaneity, of improvising as they go. Wolfe discovers such a rhythm, a feeling-his-way quality, when he discusses his childhood recollection of “brown tired autumn earth” and a “flat moist plug of apple tobacco.”

Brain scans have discovered that your brain has to work harder to read adjectives in the “wrong” order.

This blog stands with the Black community in the fight against systematic oppression and injustice. The murder of George Floyd by policemen is one drop in an ocean of racially motivated crimes against Black folks. A complete overhaul of the criminal justice system is long overdue. It is time to act.

I encourage my fellow white folks and non-Black POC allies to lend your support by listening, donating, protesting, and examining your own biases. Below is a list of nonprofit organizations and fundraisers who provide supplies and support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Personally, I have donated to Black Lives Matter Detroit and the Detroit Justice Center, and I strongly encourage you to do the same if at all possible.

Black Lives Matter

Detroit Justice Center

NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund

ActBlue Community Bail Funds

skatin’ into your DMs~~