GROWING GRAMMAR: Sites for soaring
Today I’m featuring a few sites of interest and invite you to explore them. I hope they provide information, entertainment, and justification for being on the internet. 
Double-Tongued Dictionary: A site to behold! You can find new words, slang, and jargon. The “About” page bills the site as one that “records undocumented or under-documented words from the fringes of English.” You can search entries by subject, language, country, and state. Great place to find words to add local flavor to dialogue. A search of Louisiana (my home state) showed: “gone pecan n. a person who is doomed, defeated, or beyond rescue.” Yep. If you’re gone pecan, you’re a goner.
Noble Desktop: I didn’t know apostrophes could be dumb until I tripped across this site. Primarily a place for graphics training, the page linked here provides a cool chart for PC and MAC users to “educate” their punctuation. It shows the mistake, how to correct it, keystrokes, HTML code, and an explanation. Everything you’ve always wanted to know about endashes and emdashes are on this site.
Figures of Speech Served Fresh: This site provides a banquet of figures of speech using current examples. You can click on links to provide digestible definitions. While you’re there, don’t miss “10 Ways to Use Figures: Pimp Your Rhetorical Ride.”
Social Security Popular Baby Names: So, this has nothing to do with grammar things, but I was intrigued by the fact that the SSA has this site. You can look up names for a particular birth year beginning in 1879.
And, just because a girl’s gotta have some fun (okay, guys, I’ll try to find one of these sites for you next time): Manolo’s Shoe Blog
