33rd / 424th District Courts

We lawyers and judges are "wordsmiths" by training and trade. Words are important and how they are used can be quite interesting. Even in legal briefs. Why are those called "briefs" anyway? Oh, but I digress.

Ever wonder the frequency with which a certain word is used in the English language? Try the little online program called Wordcount. In a collection of 86,800 of the most commonly used words, Wordcount will show you where that word ranks. For example, the word "court" is 298th out of 86,800.



Wonder what words people wonder about? Well, there is a companion program called Querycount which tracks the way people use Wordcount while it tracks the way people use the words themselves.



Learning new words is always a good endeavor. We could all watch William F. Buckley, Jr. every time he is on television or buy all of his books. He has to be the most articulate user of the English language and must have a working vocabulary 10 times that of we mere mortals. Or, you can subscribe to A.Word.A.Day which you can do by clicking here. Then there is Wordspy for lexpionage, which you can join by clicking here. Wordspy is interesting because it digs out new words and phrases and shows you the places and ways the word or phrase is being used. Both of those services send you an email with a different word or phrase each day.



But lest you become obsessive over words, heed these words about words from one of the Wordspy issues:

Words About Words
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I'm well aware there is little profit in asking for sympathy for sticklers. We are not the easiest people to feel sorry for. We refuse to patronise any shop with checkouts for "eight items or less" (because it should be "fewer") ... Sticklers never read a book without a pencil at hand, to correct the typographical errors. In short, we are unattractive know-all obsessives who get things out of
proportion and are in continual peril of being disowned by our exasperated families.

--Lynne Truss, English writer and journalist, _Eats, Shoots &
Leaves_, 2003

Just passing the time at half-time of the OU - OSU game where OSU was ahead (to my great glee -- son Matt is a senior there).