Home | Conscious Style Guide

Home | Conscious Style Guide

Conscious Style Guide is a simple and accessible community resource for anyone curious or serious about conscious language. In one place, you can access style guides covering terminology for various communities and find links to key articles debating usage.

We study words so that they can become tools instead of unwitting weapons. Brought to you by the creator of AP vs. Chicago.

Orality and Literacy | A Working Library

Orality and Literacy | A Working Library

Ong’s is perhaps the only book I’ve discovered that carefully and thoroughly addresses the differences between oral and literate cultures.

In pointing out that Plato used writing to deliver his objections to the written word, he says,

“Once the word is technologized, there is no effective way to criticize what technology has done with it without the aid of the highest technology available.” (page 79).

Bots | A Working Library

Bots | A Working Library

Bots are a kind of manifestation of Walter Ong’s secondary orality—text that works like spoken language, even though it’s written, made ever more strange by being filtered through the uncanny valley of a bot’s impression of that language.

Maybe this is a tertiary orality, even—an orality removed first by text, then by bots.

Intro To Computational Linguistics

Intro To Computational Linguistics

ELIZA

Natural language processing comes in many varieties. The most robust natural language systems are tailored to the most limited applications. The simplest approach to natural language processing is to program the computer to look for a limited set of key words or phrases. When the computer finds these words it produces a programmed response. The ELIZA program offers a particularly compelling example of the keyword approach to natural language processing. ELIZA was written at MIT in the mid-1960s to mimic the role of a psychoanalyst interviewing a patient. Examples of ELIZA and related programs are now widely available on the web and personal computers.

ELIZA was never intended to be a model of natural language understanding, yet it is still one of the most popular artificial intelligence programs in the public domain. As long as the user accepts the premise that the program is conducting an open-ended interview, ELIZA can produce a convincing imitation of a talking computer. ELIZA works by searching for a list of keywords in the input. If the program finds one of these words, it asks a preprogrammed question that centers around the keyword. If the program does not find a word on its list, it chooses from a set of open-ended responses, such as Tell me more or Go on. Continue reading “Intro To Computational Linguistics”

Merriam-Webster Unabridged

Merriam-Webster Unabridged

Merriam-Webster Unabridged is the largest, most comprehensive American dictionary currently available in print or online. It is built on the solid foundation of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged and is the best source of current information about the English language.

We are actively engaged in creating an entirely new edition of the Unabridged, and new and revised entries and usage content will be added to the site on a continuing basis.

Merriam-Webster Unabridged includes rich, clear definitions and more usage information than ever before. Definitions have been enhanced with over 123,000 author quotations. Supplementary notes provide additional context, and usage paragraphs offer clear guidance and suggestions for words with confused or disputed usage. Dates of first known use are being added, and editorial style changes are being made throughout the dictionary to make entries more readable and easier to understand.
Continue reading “Merriam-Webster Unabridged”

The True Story of the Backward Index (Video) | Merriam-Webster

The True Story of the Backward Index (Video) | Merriam-Webster

There it sits, hidden in plain view on a set of shelves in the basement of the Merriam-Webster offices: the Backward Index. But why would anyone type out 315,000 words spelled in reverse?