Words, Words, Words

I am actually really pleased with the final result for my podcast. I was a little worried about how it would sound, having never recorded a podcast before, but when I played it back to myself before uploading-- it was exactly as I'd envisioned it.

If I'd had the time, I think I would have made major rewrites or restructuring to my podcast once I'd timed the full transcript. Rather than tweaking sentences throughout, I would have tried to cut an entire segment and smoothe the transitions, because I ended up finishing on the longer end of the acceptable limit. Still, I don't think it's a bad thing to include more information-- just dangerous, when dealing with maximum limits.

To anyone setting out on a project like this, I'd say make sure to pick a topic you can see yourself talking about a lot-- but not too much! It always ends up taking a bit longer than you'd expect.

English And Such: Pronoun Problems

Ever been worried about using the wrong pronoun? "Should I say he or him? I or me? Who or whom? What is the deal with the word whom, anyway? Why do we have so many pronouns?"
Becky Friedman, staunch grammarian, comes to your aid in this special podcast episode of English And Such, explaining the history of cased pronouns, what they're good for, and a few choice tips on how to know which word to use. Please click below to listen to "Pronoun Problems". A transcript of the podcast follows the audio link.

Segment Running Length: 16 minutes 41 seconds

[MUSIC: Kevin MacLeod, "Cool Intro" (from incompetech.com) -- doubled]

Becky FRIEDMAN: Hello and welcome to English and Such. This is Becky Friedman, staunch grammarian, here to talk to you today about pronoun cases. Before I begin, I'd like to give my thanks to Mignon Fogarty, whose Grammar Girl podcast inspired this episode. If you enjoy this podcast, or if you love grammar as much as I do, please check out her show at quickanddirtytips.com.

FRIEDMAN: A few weeks ago, I was teaching a class of grade five students, and I asked them a question to test their knowledge: "Who said to whom...?" Instead of answering right away, my students met my question with another question. "Why do you sometimes say 'who' and sometimes 'whom'?" they asked. Before insisting on an answer to my question, I took the time to briefly explain the difference to them, and offered them a couple of tips for figuring out which to use.

FRIEDMAN: When I came home from teaching that day, I realized that it wasn't just grade five kids who get hung up on pronoun cases. I've been asked by friends of mine-- fellow university students-- which word to use in a given situation. So I decided to set out once and for all, in podcast form, what is the deal-- and the difference-- with subject and object pronouns.

FRIEDMAN: Before I get into the tips for how to use them, I want to explain a little about the origins of pronouns with different cases, and what they're good for. If you're only here for the bottom line, then just sit tight, or skip ahead to the bit at the end.

FRIEDMAN: It was actually fairly difficult to find background on the history of cased pronouns, because they're so old. My baseline assumption was that they're the relic of the languages that helped form English. Most of those languages have case distinctions-- that is, different endings depending on what part of speech it is-- for almost all nouns. There's no real "first appearance" when they've been around longer than the language itself! I was, however, able to find some information which confirmed my suspicions. According to Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English by Walter Hirtle (2009), cased pronouns are indeed originally from the Proto-Indo-European that was the basis for most living languages today, English included. In the original Proto-Indo-European, Hirtle writes, there were actually eight cases! This shrunk down to four in Old English: nominative (subject), accusative (direct object), genitive (possessive), and dative (indirect object) (p. 359).

FRIEDMAN: Martha Kolln and Robert Funk's Understanding English Grammar (2012), continues on that theme. Understanding English Grammar is an excellent English grammar textbook, often used in university-level grammar courses. It lists five noun cases from Latin: our same four as in Old English, plus a fifth, ablative, for the objects of prepositions (p. 290). What's more, they also manage to give me a date to throw out there. As I suspected, one can't really pinpoint an "earliest mention" for pronoun cases in the English language. Still, Understanding English Grammar does mention that as early as 1762, grammar books mandated the use of 'whom' for the object versus 'who' for the subject in a sentence in English (p. 141). Although they attribute this to similar grammar rules in Latin (p. 141), I'm hesitant to accept this as the sole explanation. After all, as Hirtle pointed out, pronoun cases were also present in Old English, thanks to the Proto-Indo-European roots.

FRIEDMAN: But whether it's from Latin, or Old English, or both, my suspicions are correct that pronoun cases in English are something older than English itself, dating back to earlier languages where the nouns, not just the pronouns, had to be conjugated, or changed, to indicate case.

FRIEDMAN: Okay, but with eight cases for all nouns in that Proto-Indo-European, how do we get here? Well, Hirtle points out a gradual reduction in noun cases over the course of history, indicating a general tendency toward fewer distinctions (Hirtle, 2009, p. 360). We already see this when we jump from that eight to Latin's five or Old English's four. And these are then reduced in English to two cases for nouns in general (the regular form and the possessive, or genitive, form), and three for pronouns-- subjective (nominative), objective (accusative), and possessive (genitive). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (Peters, 2004) suggests that this trend is actually still continuing, and that we may yet see a reduction in the distinctions between pronoun cases in English (p. 95).

FRIEDMAN: Because most people are comfortable with how and when to use possessives, I'm going to set those aside for now. For today, I'm going to focus on the distinctions between subject and object. We now know where they're from, but we still need to look into what they're actually good for-- why we have them-- before we're ready to get into the tips for how to use them.

FRIEDMAN: We already have Kolln and Funk's somewhat cynical explanation for pronoun cases in English: We have them because Latin has them (Kolln and Funk, 2012, p. 141). Well, that's a valid point, but I like to think that they're good for more than that. Case distinctions actually make a lot of sense. They allow us greater freedom with how we use language. With case distinctions, we can rearrange our words in more ways while keeping the same meaning. What do I mean? Well, take this sentence:

Sally loves Timmy.

If I reverse the nouns in there, I end up with:

Timmy loves Sally.

Which means a completely different thing, even if Timmy's and Sally's love is mutual. But watch what happens when I replace the names with pronouns, which have case distinctions:

She loves him.

If I rearrange the order of the words, I can have:

Him loves she.

It's an unusual word order, but it's still a perfectly grammatical way of saying that Sally loves Timmy, not the other way around. The case distinctions become even more useful with other verbs. Take, for instance:

Suzie ate the chicken.

If I reverse the nouns, I end up with:

The chicken ate Suzie.

Poor Suzie! She got eaten by a chicken! And she could have avoided it just by being a pronoun:

The chicken ate she.

Because 'she' is a subject pronoun, she's clearly the one doing the eating, not the chicken. For the chicken to eat Pronoun-Suzie, I'd have had to say:

The chicken ate her.

FRIEDMAN: Okay, I can hear you saying, but what if we're not language libertarians obsessed with putting all our sentences in weird orders just because we can? What good are case distinctions then? Well, I'd like to argue that it's always useful to be able to rearrange word order, not just because you can. You can emphasize a word by putting it earlier or later in the sentence. For example, maybe you want to emphasize that him, Sally loves, as opposed to me, whom she does not love. You might also start off saying one word or phrase, and then decide you want to turn it into a full sentence. "What did she eat?" "The chicken... ate she." Plus, of course, if you're a poet, it's always useful to be able to rearrange the words to find something that rhymes, or that better fits the metre.

FRIEDMAN: Even when your word order is perfectly normal, case distinctions can clear up a lot of ambiguity about who's doing what in the sentence. They give you that extra bit of information, and knowing more things is always better. In fact, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004) mentions that some Aboriginal languages use even more cases, ones that don't exist in English. They even have one "expressing the lack of something" (p. 95)!

FRIEDMAN: Right, okay, we're convinced on why we want them, but what exactly is it that you've convinced us to want? Subject and object pronouns are, respectively, pronouns that take the subject or object position in a sentence. In order to count as sentences, all sentences have verbs. A subject is the noun that's doing the verb in the sentence. If the object is a direct object, it's the thing the verb is happening to. If it's an indirect object, it's the thing that the verb's happening at.

FRIEDMAN: In English, our subject pronouns are: I, he, she, we, they, and who. Our object pronouns are: me, him, her, us, them, and whom. I'm not going to discuss it or you, because those both stay the same between the subjective and objective. It wasn't always like this: you used to have two forms-- thou and thee, respectively. More support for the Case of the Disappearing Case Distinctions!

FRIEDMAN: Before we go further, here's a tip for remembering which is which: all but one of the object pronouns end in a consonant: him, her, us, them, whom. In contrast, all the subject pronouns end in vowel sounds: I, he, she, we, they, who. The only exception to the consonant rule, me, still fits because its counterpart, I, doesn't have any consonants. Just like the object in a sentence can't be the one to "do" the verb, the object pronouns are "closed off" with their consonants. In contrast, the subjects are left wide open to grab the verb. So, if it's closed by a consonant, it's an object. If it's open with a vowel, it's a subject.

FRIEDMAN: One of the biggest areas of pronoun confusion is what to do when the pronoun's connected with an and to another pronoun or noun. Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, suggested a quick and dirty tip for this in one of her books (2011). Her advice is to pretend the other word's not there (p. 64). If the pronoun were the only word in that position in the sentence, which would you use? Usually, this clears up the problem. Take, for example, the following sentence:

She gave the book to Billy and I.

Or:

She gave the book to Billy and me.

It's very difficult to remember which one is correct. But if we take Billy out of the sentence, it becomes clear that we want to say:

She gave the book to me.

Not:

She gave the book to I.

Then we can put Billy back in, confident that we're using the right pronoun. The same trick applies when we're dealing with two pronouns. Take, for example:

Him and her are really good at what they do.

Or:

He and she are really good at what they do.

When we have the two pronouns together, they make each other sound less wrong. So which one is the right one? We might have to isolate them to figure it out. When we split it into two sentences, we see that we want to say:

He is really good at what he does.

And:

She is really good at what she does.

Not:

Him is really good at what he does.

Or:

Her is really good at what she does.

When we isolate our pronouns, it becomes much clearer which one is correct. Then it's the work of a moment to put them back together and choose the right sentence.

FRIEDMAN: Another common point of confusion, one that gets me all the time, is which pronoun goes after the "to be" verb. I constantly have to remind myself that if I say "It's me," I'm wrong. How does this make sense? We say:

It looked like him.

But:

It was he.

We say:

You killed her!

But:

You are she.

The best explanation for this that I've seen was in Maxine Ruvinsky's Practical Grammar (2006). Maxine Ruvinsky is a professor at Thompson Rivers University, with degrees in communication and comparative literature. Ruvinsky explains that the nature of the "be" verb means that the sentence is "reversible" (p. 90). In any sentence where the verb is "be", we can switch the nouns on either side of it and still keep the exact same meaning. If you can reverse the word order and keep the meaning, the second noun isn't really an object-- it's called a "complement" (p. 88) to the subject. That makes it... another subject. Since I can say "I am it" and mean the exact same thing as "It is I," I know that "It is I," not "It is me," is correct. What's nice is that the explanation doubles as a rule. If you can't remember that "to be" is different from the other verbs like this, then you can use Ruvinsky's trick: try to reverse the nouns in the sentence, with your pronoun in its subject form. If it means the same thing, keep the subject pronoun. If it doesn't mean the same thing, you have to use the object pronoun.

FRIEDMAN: Since I based this whole podcast on a question I got about "who" and "whom," it would be rather silly if I didn't deal with it. This, though, is one of the easier ones to figure out. First, we already have my tip from before, about the pronouns in general: if it's closed with a consonant, it's an object. If it's open with a vowel, it's a subject. We can reverse that tip to tell us which word to use in a given situation: If you want to use it like a subject-- the one doing the verb in the sentence-- you use the one that's open with a vowel (who). If you want to use it like an object-- the one that the verb is happening to or at-- you use the one that's closed with a consonant (whom).

FRIEDMAN: If you're not sure whether you want who-the-subject or whom-the-object, Grammar Girl suggests in her book to try answering the question with a pronoun (Fogarty 2011, p. 116). If the answer makes sense with he or they, you know that you should use who. If the answer makes more sense with him or them, you know that you should use whom.

FRIEDMAN: The last point I want to cover is whoever-whomever. Take the following sentences:

Give the door prize to whomever you choose.

Or:

Give the door prize to whoever you choose.

And:

I will give the prize to whomever comes first.

Or:

I will give the prize to whoever comes first.

My copyediting class spent at least two classes last semester trying to explain why it was correct to say "whomever" in the first sentence, but "whoever" in the second. I found the most perfect explanation of it in The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White (1979). The Elements of Style is the quintessential book on English grammar, and I am absolutely in love with that book. Elements of Style explains: "When who introduces a subordinate clause, its case depends on its function in that clause" (Strunk and White, p. 11). So in the first sentence, if we isolate the clause, it's clear that we should say:

whomever you choose

because you is the one doing the choosing, and therefore the subject, in the clause, making whom the object. Whereas in the second sentence, isolating the clause, we see that we should say:

whoever comes first

because here, the verb "comes" is being done by whoever (or who)-- who is our subject. But, my class and I kept pointing out, the whoever and whomever come right after a to. And isn't the object of a preposition always in the object case? Strunk and White come to our rescue again. "Whomever" or "whoever" isn't the object of our preposition. The Elements of Style says that "the object of the preposition to is the entire clause" (p. 11) [my emphasis]. So here's the tip: if you see a 'whoever' or 'whomever' coming after a preposition, use the "ever" as a sign to "chop off" everything from that point on in your sentence. That way, you can figure out who or whom based on just the clause it's in. Then you can reattach it, safe in the knowledge that the preposition can't hurt your who when it's talking about the whole clause.

FRIEDMAN: This concludes my podcast on pronoun cases. Thanks for listening to the first podcast of English And Such. This is Becky Friedman, staunch grammarian, signing out.

FRIEDMAN: The music in this podcast is "Cool Intro" by Kevin MacLeod. It is licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 and is available at incompetech.com.

[MUSIC: Kevin MacLeod, "Cool Intro" (from incompetech.com)]

References

Fogarty, M. (2011). Grammar Girl's 101 Misused Words You'll Never Confuse Again. New York:

             St. Martin's Griffin.

Hirtle, W. H. (2009). Lessons on the Noun Phrase in English: From Representation to Reference.

             Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Kolln, M. & Funk, R. (2012). Understanding English Grammar: Ninth Edition. New Jersey:

             Pearson Education, Inc.

MacLeod, K. (2008). Cool Intro. Location: incompetech.com. Licensed under Creative

             Commons: By Attribution 3.0. Retrieved from 

             http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100504

Peters, P. (2004). The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University

            Press.

Ruvinsky, M. (2006). Practical Grammar. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Strunk, Jr., W., & White, E. B. (1979). The Elements of Style: Third Edition. New York:

            Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

The Sound is in the Air

Becky here, reporting in from what is once again the awful depths of winter. Fortunately, I don't need to be outside to try out recording software.

I am now settled on using Audacity, in conjunction with my computer's inubuilt microphone, to record my podcast. I like that Audacity is very user-friendly and intuitive-- with all the buttons and effects clearly labelled, it took me about twenty minutes or less of playing around with the features to figure out how to do everything I could want for my podcast. By the end of twenty minutes, I was an expert in how to import audio files, synchronize two tracks with each other or drag one track to start at a later point, and add effects such as a fade-out to one of the two tracks.

If my trial-and-error were insufficient, Audacity has a wealth of official sites aimed at helping users: the wiki, quick help guide, online manual, and forum top the list.

As I tested out the software, I discovered something that will be important for the assignment: in order to save an audacity file in MP3 format, I need an additional free program installed on my computer: the Lame MP3 software. Once I downloaded that, it was the work of a moment to select Export from the drop-down File menu, choose my destination folder, and choose MP3 as the format in which I wanted to save my audio. As an added bonus, I discovered that Audacity allows me to edit the metadata for the audio, which I hadn't expected to be a possibility. I played around with that, as well, to make sure I had a solid grasp of the controls.

Listening to my test recordings convinces me that Audacity and my computer's microphone make an excellent team-- the recordings sound great! I can't wait to record my full podcast.

Structural Integrity

Now that I've written a draft for my actual transcript, I can take a step back, surveying that transcript from a broader view, to get a look at what sort of structure my podcast takes.

In the spirit of How Sound's podcast "My Kingdom for Some Structure," I have drawn my own visual representation of the structure for my podcast, presented to you here:

Here I adapted Bradley Campbell's structural representation of Morning Edition to suit my own purposes. First is the opening scene, which I use to introduce my topic. Then there's the deep dip of the V, the half-or-so of the podcast taken up with the history and explanation of pronoun cases. Last, are those three disjointed lines-- the tips I give for a few different common grammatical issues involving pronoun cases. You'll notice that, unlike in Campbell's drawing for Morning Edition, none of those lines are attached to the starting line-and-V, because I don't really return to that initial scene of my students asking the question.

The other important thing to do once I've got the words written out is citation-- the "integrity" part of my structural integrity. In a podcast, it is extremely important to cite sources verbally, so that those listening will know where the information's coming from. Once I wrote out my transcript draft, I went over everything again, making sure that I attributed everything in a natural manner in the body of the podcast, in addition to the usual in-text citations for the written transcript.

A great example of a professional podcast with oral citations is 99 Percent Invisible's podcast "Icon for Access." When I first listened to the short podcast (it's about fifteen minutes long, just like the one I'm writing), I counted about five overt verbal citations. That didn't seem quite right to me, so I played it again-- the second time, I noted fifteen verbal citations. They did such a good job of seeding the citations into the podcast that at first, I missed two-thirds of those! I can use the manner of citation in that podcast as a guide for good ways I can attribute my sources in the course of my own podcast.

The Search is On

Well, I know it's a little early for March 2, but Becky's here, all the same, reporting from the trenches of search terms and such.

As I think I mentioned in my last post, I already had a lot of my sources found and available to me. From what I didn't have, I kept a narrowed-down research question of "Where do the distinctions between pronoun cases come from and why do they exist?" constantly on hand for my remaining research.

I think the biggest problem, for me, with my topic is that it doesn't have any specific terms unique to it that don't apply to other, fairly unrelated, topics. This means that no matter how narrowly I search, I'm going to be wading through a lot that's not useful-- and, taking advice from the research advice in lecture, I wasn't prepared to wade through nineteen pages of search results in the hopes of finding something relevant on the twentieth.

Google Scholar was particularly not my friend in this respect. Google by its nature just casts so wide a net, that with the added difficulty of separating my topic from all the others that share key terms, it becomes impossible to find something useful. The one time I did find something that seemed relevant to my search, based on its description from Google Scholar, I opened up the article only to find after a page that it was completely tangential to my research. At least when searching through the library and its associated databases, I was able to narrow down my search to a couple of relevant fields, to help sift the dross from the gold.

What I found most useful from the research advice in lecture was the practice of picking up synonyms and connected terms as I went. Every time I found a source that, while relevant to my topic, didn't give me any new information on my research question, I'd plumb that source for new terms on the topic to reuse in my search: I went from "subject," "object," and "pronoun" to "pronoun cases" and then "nominative" and "objective" and finally "accusative," as I travelled ever deeper down the rabbit hole of pronoun-related terms.

These varying terms are, of course, great for combining in a Boolean search, but because of the limitations to Boolean searches on most databases, I found it easier to just search various terms in random combinations that seemed to work for me. What limitations? Well, a Boolean search is essentially a mathematical equation: You instruct the search engine to search for a specific combination of terms, with the ANDs and ORs in place where you want them. My problem is I want a full order of operations. I want to be able to say

(Pronoun AND Case) OR ((Subject OR Object) AND Pronoun) OR (((Objective OR Accusative) OR Nominative)  AND (Pronoun OR Case))

 Unfortunately for my obsessiveness (but probably fortunately for anyone trying and failing to parse that), very few Boolean searches allow for that level of nested brackets. Therefore, like I said, I mostly abandoned the Boolean approach for just trying the various combinations that my Boolean statement specified, one at a time. It worked. At least I'm good as a nested Boolean searcher, if I can't qualify as a human.

Tunnels and Caves

I, Becky, have indeed begun my digging for information on my topic of choice.

In terms of scholarly sources, I have from the library:

• The Cambridge Guide to English Usage
• Practical Grammar: A Canadian Writer's Resource

These are in addition to what I have at home, which somewhat straddle the line between scholarly and popular:

• Understanding English Grammar (9th Edition)
• The Elements of Style (3rd Edition)
• Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace (4th Edition)
• The Canadian Press Stylebook (17th Edition)

These texts, between them, cover pretty well the tenets of usage of subject and object pronouns, as well as their places in the language, and their different roles. I am still intending to find further scholarly sources that help explain "why" subject and object pronouns as separate entities exist, preferably from a historical standpoint. I think for this purpose I should most want to find scholarly journal articles on the history of the English language, as well, possibly, as articles or books on the history of related languages that developed earlier than English. (For example, I have a Latin textbook I might want to look at for insight into nominative versus objective cases not just for pronouns but for all nouns, and how that aspect of Latin may have influenced this aspect of English.)

I have also amassed the following popular sources from the library:

• All About Me, or is it I?: Beware the Wild Pronoun
• Grammar Girl's 101 Misused Words You'll Never Confuse Again

I don't think I'll necessarily need any further popular sources, though I'll keep my eyes open on my journey; if I find a magazine article or some such which is relevant to my material, particularly one that deals with the history of different cases for pronouns, I definitely won't say no to it! 

How Very Refined

It's Becky! I think working on the pitch helped me structure my topic. I was already very confident about talking about subject vs. object pronouns, but having to put it into a pitch forced me to articulate what exactly about subject and object pronouns I meant to say.

The pitch also energized me, in a way. I mean, I was already passionate about my topic, but the adrenaline of performing the pitch in front of my tutorial group made me really excited, taking the project to a new level for me.

Although I suspect that I would soon grow irritable if forced to stage a pitch for every class writing assignment, I can see how it could help in some cases-- say, for essays in which we can choose any topic. In such a case, the pitch would enable me to make sure my essay topic is actually something I can write an essay on.

Distilled and refined, my podcast is going to "demystify" subject and object pronouns: I will talk about what they are and why we have them, before moving on to explain how to use them and what the differences between them are.

Pitch Perfect

It's Becky again. A little early for Sunday, because earlier is always better!

Because there was no requirement to find scholarly sources for this blog, I did a simple Google search, trusting my own common sense to determine which sites were reliable. I did manage to find a few, from each of which I gleaned some potentially useful advice on pitching for podcasts and radio.

For the first, AIR Media, I took a look at its highly-detailed "About Us" page in order to assure myself that the site was reliable. The page itself constitutes a Q and A with an expert on pitching. I learned:

• Always make the pitch before the "story," so the editors can have a sense of contributing to the final product
• The pitch needs to be focused, and specific enough to set it apart

The second site I found, Last Word, didn't have a very descriptive "About" page, but it did have a list of some of its clients, which included a number of respected institutions in the UK: I was satisfied. From here, I learned:

• Know the show you're pitching to: the types of programs they usually run, their audience, etc.
• Introduce any "characters" who will be in the program

My third site required no verification beyond the url; CBC Radio looks reliable enough for me, considering how established the CBC is. Although the page is designed as guidelines specifically for pitching a show to CBC Radio, it had a lot of information that I find useful in a more general way-- such as:

• Consider what excites people most when I talk about my topic-- start with that
• Tell them who I am and why they should want me doing the show for them
• Have someone else read my pitch and tell back to me what the show's about

Based on what I've been reading, I think the most important thing for me to do before next week is get talking to friends and family about my podcast topic-- that way, I can refine my topic while seeing what others think, and what gets them enthusiastic.

Whom have I chosen?

Becky here, reporting for duty!

As of last week, I'd narrowed my podcast choices down to Grammar Girl or Lexicon Valley. Since then, I've moved definitely into the Grammar Girl camp. For one thing, my passion lies more truly with grammar than with individual words in general. For another, the style in which Grammar Girl is presented appeals to me more.

Whereas Lexicon Valley was presented as a dialogue or conversation between hosts and sometimes guests, Grammar Girl is primarily just one person talking. While I do have talented friends who would be willing to "guest star" in my podcast, my preference, when such a major part of my grade is depending on this one assignment, is to only have to rely on my own contribution. 
 
I also like the general tone of the show, the not-patronizing way the host demystifies a common error in grammar so that her listeners won't have to make the mistake again. The one aspect of the podcast that I am seriously considering not mimicking is the "message from sponsors"-- I don't see how it could be done with integrity for the purposes of the class, though that's something I should probably ask the professors about more as I get closer to working on the details of my podcast. It would clearly not be appropriate to put in a fake advertisement for a real company without permission, which leaves the options of either an entirely fictional ad, or asking a friend to advertise her business on my podcast-- both options which have potential problems attached, as well.

The biggest challenge I'm likely to have in imitating Grammar Girl is length-- all her podcasts seem to run under ten minutes, while for the assignment I'll have to go closer to fifteen (another reason why it might be a good idea to include a "message from sponsors" if feasible). I have faith, however, that I won't have a problem talking for fifteen minutes about grammar.

Which brings me to my specific topic, about which I have no doubt I can talk at length. I actually hit upon my topic idea as I was listening to some Grammar Girl podcasts, and typing to some friends in a chatroom in the background. One friend wrote "who" instead of "whom," and I automatically corrected him. As my friends reacted to the correction, one of them asking me to clarify another point of grammar for him, I realized that this, a pet peeve of mine, would be an excellent topic for the podcast. Specifically, I plan to elucidate subject and object pronouns, and when to use each of them.

Because of the way in which I came upon my topic, I did not need any advice sites to help me with it; I did, however, take a look at SPARK in the name of thoroughness afterward. I don't think the advice it gave is necessarily to my taste, because I as a rule prefer to hit upon my own topics in similar ways to how I did this-- making connections in the back of my head as I go about my business. Still, the principles it suggests are sound, and potentially useful. 
 
What I would add, or adapt, from their suggestions, is rather than look amongst topics for the one that interests me, I would find something (or somethings) that interest me, and then look for a connection between my interests and the relevant topics. That way, I'm sure to be doing the project on something I feel strongly about.

Not Quite a Salutation to the Planet

I have a tendency toward making "hello world" posts that... aren't. On my personal blog, I'd made a dozen or more posts before I bothered to tell anyone that it existed, and it was only at that point that I made a "hello world" greeting any hypothetical readers. Here, too, I can't in good conscience call this a "hello world" when it's far from the first post on the blog-- even if it's the first from me.

I'm Becky. I like to call myself a storyteller, because I'll tell a story in any medium-- in text (whether novel, short fiction, poetry, etc.), in theatre, in song-- you name it. I'm a Professional Writing major, and studying in the Concurrent Education program. In addition to stories, I am passionate about language and languages, grammar and translation, imagination and the written word.

I exercise my passions in teaching, which I do for an after-school program once a week; in the fiction writing I do basically nonstop in all the time I don't have; in co-running a collaborative writing game for a community of friends. It also came up last year when I helped save the world (in an ARG, anyway). To save the world, my friends and I had to solve problems and crack codes, research creative solutions for strange situations that came up, write fiction and music and persuasive essays, and be generally nerdy and/or heroic.

To be absolutely honest, I want to learn how to reframe 'research' in my mind. I'm perfectly confident researching with such tools as Yorku's e-resources, GoogleScholar, and the Responsa Project, but I can't shake my mental associations of the word "research" with "boring" and "dry." It would be nice to make that go away.

I've never used RefWorks or Zotero before, though Zotero looks like it could be particularly useful to me (perhaps it could even solve my frequent "tab explosion" problems!). I also don't have experience with podcasting-- the closest I've come was either an experimental one-shot vlog about ducks or an audio recording of a short story that I made as a favour for a friend. I am very excited, though, at the prospect. For one thing, it's something new, and yay new things! For another, I talk a lot. I'm talking a lot right now. So recording myself talking a lot should be fun.

As of right now, I'm inclined to choose Grammar Girl or Lexicon Valley for the course project. After all, I love grammar (deeply), and I love words. The only difficulty, I suppose, would be limiting myself to fifteen minutes once I start talking about language.