writing – Richmond Writing

Metaphor of the Month! Cognitive Offloading

So another school year begins in the age of Generative AI, with the majority of students using AI for some purpose or other, no matter what faculty or institutions say. You can read Ian Bogost’s excellent piece in The Atlantic, or have an AI summarize it for you, or look to my own survey data from the past three years. We are in a new world, educationally, yet only now are be coming to terms with some of the effects of widespread cognitive offloading to AI.

Our metaphor implies moving something to another place, the way I offload bales of straw from my pickup’s bed into our barn. Intellectually, however, cognitive offloading means letting something else perform a mental task. We have all done this: the calculator and map application on one’s phone perform jobs once done by hand and on paper.

I had tried a simple Web search to locate first use of the term. Not having any luck, I turned, naturally, to ChatGPT 5, a model I find works far better than earlier iterations. Here’s my prompt:

I’m curious to know when and where the term “cognitive offloading” was coined. If you can provide a source I can check, all the better. Thanks.

The reply was succinct and included links I checked for accuracy:

Earliest formal introduction: The term appears prominently in academic literature in a 2016 publication by Elisabeth F. Risko and colleagues. Their work explicitly defined cognitive offloading as “the use of physical action to alter the information processing requirements of a task in order to reduce cognitive demand.”

In a review or conference-style piece published around the same time, Risko noted that the term had long existed conceptually among cognitive scientists—but was rarely investigated empirically until then.

A 2016 article authored by E. F. Risko also reiterates the definition and situates cognitive offloading within a growing trend of interest in embodied, embedded, extended, and distributed cognition.

I recommend public-access sources here and here for readers who want to learn more directly, instead of cognitively offloading the work to an AI.

Learning takes time; I partner with AI to learn more, but I don’t lean too heavily on its reasoning.

Similarly, I still prefer paper maps as well as memorizing directions through experience; I even try alternative routes to help me understand the road-grid. I do use apps to plan trips, but when driving I tend to leave them off until the route becomes very complex (and you will also rarely find me on the Interstates, as I despise them). But I’m a map-geek who taught topographical-map reading when I was in military school. I do, however, love letting a machine shoulder the drudgery of multiplying or dividing numbers.

When it comes to more subtle and creative tasks, however, I grow concerned.

Like the person who only travels by map-app and finds it gives bad directions, what happens when the AI we rely upon makes mistakes we do not check? And longer term, what mental abilities may atrophy from cognitive offloading, and how, frankly, can one get back home again afterward?

Those remain unanswered questions of enormous consequence.

Send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. Want to write a guest entry? Let me know!

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Creative-Commons Image source: Geograph. That’s about four years worth of straw at our place, and I have loader-envy.

Word of the Week! Prescient

We’ve another loan-word from Latin this week, meaning to have foresight. That power need not be supernatural, but simply the art of seeing ahead often attributed variously to meteorologists, economists, futurists, gamblers, and soon-to-be-lost drivers who overrely on map apps.

All that said, our word can be predictive of certain outcomes. The OED notes in an 1860 usage, “The prescient sadness of a coming and a long farewell.” The person referenced here knows what lies ahead and can predict the emotions the event will stir.

The OED’s frequency chart reveals an interesting phenomenon. Usage dipped from 1880 until about 1950, then began a steady climb that shows no signs of abating. Was that the effect of, first, our inability to predict events such as the Great Depression and the World War that followed it? Then, after that conflict, our living in a time of rapidly advancing technology, where predicting the future became something of a pleasant parlor game?

Speculations about why “prescient” has enjoyed such popularity could itself become a parlor game.

Despite that fivefold uptick in usage from the 50s to the present, some seers of the future get ignored or ridiculed. I need a post about Cassandra.

Sometimes I wonder if some prescience merely means grasping the obvious. As Bob Dylan put it, sometimes “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

I’ve no predictions for the year ahead, as classes resume. Watch the weather and watch the news as much as you can stomach it. Be ready for surprises.

Send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. Want to write a guest entry? Let me know!

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image: Ulysses consults Tiresias 1st century CE from the villa Albani Marble Italy Creative-Commons license by Mary Harrsch at Flickr

Word of the Week! Contranym

I enjoy playing the New York Times‘ Wordle and Connections games daily. Recently the latter game used contranyms for one grouping of four words. I got it, eventually, then looked up the definition.

We have a simple definition this week: a word that can have two completely opposite meanings. The examples given by a quick search were cleave (to sever or to join), garnish (to add or penalize, as in “your wages are being garnished for non-payment of that fine”), oversight (to ignore or to monitor), and sanction (to prohibit or to permit). The final one has a cousin, unsanctioned, meaning unauthorized. That clears matters up considerably, but many other contranyms offer no alternatives.

English-language learners need to use context to figure out the right term. So do too many native-speakers in their first few years in college, as today’s students have rotten vocabularies from a lack of attentive and frequent reading (a future metaphor of the month will be “Brain Rot”).

I found a list that offers 75 common contranyms. Some of them seem simpler than others, but a few very confusing words appear there. Have a peek.

Some usage advice: if the context remains hazy, employ a different word. In the case of “we don’t know if this development will hold up our plan” (delay or support), I’d change it to one of those words. Incidentally, “hold up” can also mean armed robbery! Speaking of legal matters, in business and criminal-justice writing in particular, a secondary audience can be found in the courtroom. Use the right word or ask your attorney. In short: find one who does fine work to avoid paying a fine.

Send words and metaphors my way by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Creative-Commons image courtesy of Pixabay.

Word of the Week! Shenanigans

Thanks to Kim Chiarchiaro, of the Modlin Center For the Arts, who nominated this wonderful word. We see the word in names of bars, unusually, and not the sort where I want to order a Martini (somewhat dry, Hendricks Gin, dash of bitters, clean not dirty, olive not lemon, shaken and VERY cold, thank you). Try that on a server or bartender in a bar named Shenanigans. You might get punched out.

Yet beyond that dark vision, the word has a Gaelic sound. I asked the robotic brain at the OED, and found “unknown origin.” Now we have a mystery. The definitions are also delightful, including “Trickery, skulduggery, machination, intrigue; teasing, ‘kidding’, nonsense; (usually plural) a plot, a trick, a prank, an exhibition of high spirits, a carry-on.” The OED records first usage as 1855.

The word might be a bit informal for student work, but I’m thinking that it could be of use to scholars describing several rascals, past or present, who influenced public events. Have shenanigans increased in the past century? I am not certain, but the usage of the term has skyrocketed, from 0 instances in 1870 to just under .05 instances per million words in 1930 to .25 per million in 2010.

Shenanigans may also be on the rise.

This blog will continue all year, so send words and metaphors of interest by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or by leaving a comment below. Also let us know if you would like to write a guest column.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia, from the University of Tulsa’s alumni who placed a memorial stone to celebrate “wonderful memories of their college days, including their participation in many shenanigans.”

Word of the Week! Saunter

The Atlantic, still one of my favorite publications after more than 40 years as a subscriber, runs archived pieces from its illustrious past; no less a writer than Henry David Thoreau contributed to the magazine in its first decades. Recently Thoreau’s “Walking” ran and this passage by the sage of Walden Pond struck my fancy:

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, — a Holy-Lander.

There the Republic was in 1862, fighting for its life in a bitter Civil War, and Thoreau found solace in walking and in words. The OED lists the etymology of our word as “obscure,” noting only a 15th Century first recorded use. I’m going with Thoreau’s folk etymology, given no other compelling counterargument.

I’ve never encountered one connotation of sauntering before, given by the dictionary, to “wander or travel about aimlessly or unprofitably; to travel as a vagrant.” The next definition, given as “obsolete” is to stroll in a leisurely way.

Well then, I’m obsolete, like Thoreau who also rambled on his walks. The devil take the power-walkers, the step-counters, the harried moms I see on my way to work. They frantically push a baby, walk a dog, and talk on the phone at the same time.

Thoreau adds about sauntering that “we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall?” Indeed. The writer worried about the fencing off of once-wild lands until the walker would only be able to stay on paths and roads. He hoped that day would be far off, and he got his wish. He died about the time The Atlantic ran his piece before our modern era of sign-posts and security systems, secure (as am I) that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World.”

So I encourage you to leave the smart watch counting your steps at home and just take a walk in a National or State Park. Yes, you’ll want a phone if you get lost or injured, but try sauntering. Take a topo map you’ve learned to read, a magnetic compass, water and snacks; I’ll defy Thoreau on that as I’ve been lost only once in the woods and my map-reading training got me out. Or stay on well marked trails. They are still wilder than where the baby-strollers and power-walkers make their frantic way.

Sauntering will refresh your soul, as Thoreau intended.

As we all saunter toward the Fall semester (my final one as Writing Center Director) send words and metaphors of interest to me by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Image: from Wikipedia, Thoreau’s Cabin (replica) and statue of the writer out sauntering, Walden Pond.

Metaphor of the Month! Shrinking Violet

By Leo Barnes

A shrinking violet is an exaggeratedly shy person. Since violets grow in the low herb layer of most forests, their rich purple petals are often veiled behind other vegetation. So the metaphor goes, getting a shy person out of their shell is as hard as spotting violets in a forest.

In pop culture, two figures – ironically highly visible superheroes – come to mind: Violet Parr and Salu Digby. Parr, the shy heroine from The Incredibles franchise, has the power of invisibility while Digby from DC comics is better known as her alter ego Shrinking Violet, and can shrink herself. How apropos!

While we might often overlook shrinking violets, both popular media and real life remind us not to judge a book by its cover. Charismatic Atticus Finch may have endeared himself to readers in To Kill a Mockingbird but it was Boo Radley, the town recluse, who saved the day. In the Harry Potter novels, the unprepossessing Neville Longbottom was the one who ultimately killed Voldemort. In 2014, Ronald Read, a Vermont janitor and gas station clerk, donated six million dollars to his town library and hospital – money he had earned over a lifetime of frugality and investing. This from a man who barely graduated high school and was often mistaken for being broke.

While shrinking violets can be difficult to draw out, in my book a reserved nature is certainly better than an overbearing one. Sometimes shyness is endearing and, in the case of Read or Radley, even noble.

Editor’s Note: Thank you, Leo, for another excellent guest-post. I found a claim of first usage in 1820, followed by explosive growth on both sides of the Atlantic, here.

Leo’s in Indonesia for the summer, teaching English in Kediri in June as part of Dr. Leslie Bohon’s Global EFL program. I’m jealous!

The violets may have faded in my yard, but the blog continues all summer after a hiatus (a 2022 WOTW) for the rest of June. You might, however, see a loan-word from Irish here, mid-month.

As you enjoy your holidays, send words and metaphors to me by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

(Overused) Word of the Week! Disconnect

Readers know how much I despise the noun “Society” and adjective “Super.” To me, these words indicate rushed or even lazy thinking.

While our super irritating adjective super crops up mostly in speech, society just cannot understand why using society as a noun without any qualification seems so evil in my classes.

There. I got to use them both. And I feel soiled. Now I have a third word to indicate half-baked thought: disconnect. Not as a verb, when it has a clear meaning, but as a noun. Consider this popular bit of student-think:

A serious disconnect emerges between how the two characters think of their grandmother’s past.

Just. Stop. It. I’m adding the word to my Pet Peeves list, which means writers lose 10 points and have a week to regain some or all of them by revision.

This will, I fear, be a losing battle, but consider all of the options: misunderstanding, rift, estrangement, rupture, breakdown, gulf, and so so many more!

My argument is less with the word than with the lack of variety and nuance it evidences in student work. So please, writers, slow down and consider (with a thesaurus and many examples, if you must) the power of synonyms.

Keep hope alive; Elle Magazine published an article lamenting the overuse of “super.” We might be shouting into a hurricane, but civilization may survive, yet!

Send me misused or overused words, along with other good words and metaphors, by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Metaphors of the Month here and Words of the Week here.

Creative Commons image courtesy of The Noun Project

Word of the Week! “Analyzation”

I usually focus on words I like, but this one needs comment, if only to keep more students from using it. It cropped up in a midterm, and I marked but did not penalize it greatly.

Note that I used “penalize” rather than “punish.” The former word exemplifies “derivation,” where an affix (prefix or suffix) gets attached to a word to create a new one. Thus, from “penal” we get “penalize.” I am not overly fond of words made with the “-ize” suffix, for no good reason other than their sound. Thus I do not put them in my list of faculty pet peeves. Like an ugly new car that gradually looks better over the years, “-ize” verbs seem to beat down purists about style and usage. I barely notice “penalize” now, considering it a less punitive synonym for “punish.”

Not so for “analyzation.” Consider its root: “analysis,” a word as old as Ancient Greece. The Online Etymology Dictionary supports that honorable origin. As with many “-ize” words, “analyze” provides us with a neologism that does powerful work. I use it as the soul of my courses where students analyze literary work. In fact, it’s the most powerful intellectual skill a student can hone in college, where I often tell writers “tell me what you learned. Even if I know the subject already, you can analyze what is new to you. That will then be new again to me.”

But the popular student word “analyzation” takes word-derivation a step too far, like a Rube Goldberg machine with too many steps to perform an action. A writer using our word simply makes a longer synonym for “analysis” that to a novice or careless reader sounds professional but actually, as in the title of a well respected essay by scholar David Bartholomae, merely provides another instance of “Inventing the University” rather than learning how we academics actually talk and write.

Moral: Never avoid analysis, but avoid “analyzation” at all costs.

Nominate a word by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.

See all of our Words of the Week here.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Out, Damned (Gravy) Spot!

Image courtesy of “Make your Own Bar-B-Q Sign“

Imagine an orator making a speech after a formal dinner, and imagine the speaker doing so very well. In the end, however, a large segment of the audience never recalls the content because of the large gravy spot on the speaker’s tie or blouse.

The speaker lost the audience. So what are the sorts of small errors that make otherwise sympathetic readers stop reading? A general list may be nigh impossible, but I will take a stab at what most perturbs academic readers of student prose. In doing so, I won’t focus on the fatal flaws of novice writing: sweeping generalizations, sentence fragments, lack of support for claims.

Confused words. One does not hear the difference, in speech, between the homonyms “here” and “hear,” but in writing, such gaffs make the writer look unprofessional, if not ignorant. See our Center’s list of “Commonly Confused Words.”
Overstatement. One study or source does not conclusive proof make, even if it is a valid source or study. Academics expect an abundance of supporting evidence, including admissions as to where more study may be needed or the limitations of a source. One might write “the 2011 study only considered effects on male college students at private universities” as a way to present such data.
Names. Student writers often use both first and last names for sources. It may be appropriate to cite a full name on first reference or for clarity when, say, two Smiths have been cited. But in most cases, in-text sources need only a last-name reference. A graver (gravier?) spot is to misspell the name of a source. I once had a reader of an article stop on page one when I did this, back in grad school. He said “after that I did not trust your prose any longer.” Ouch.
Format errors. APA, MLA, Chicago, and similar are not systems of fiendish torture. Writers use them to get work into a format needed for a particular journal or conference proceeding. I frequently see errors with a misplaced parenthesis, italics and double quotations both used for titles of sources, and the like. A first cousin of this problem can be adding blank lines between paragraphs, odd indents, and other mechanical gaffs. When in doubt…ask the prof!

These “spots” come to mind right away. Got more? Let me know in the comments section.

New International Blog About Writing Centers

I’m really pleased to announce “Connecting Writing Centers Across Borders,” a new publication by Writing Lab Newsletter. It gives me great pleasure personally and professionally to collaborate with editors Muriel Harris and Alan Benson in working on the first postings for the blog. Some veteran colleagues such as Carl Glover have already posted their ideas.

Our focus, at the blog and a new column in WLN, will be international collaboration. The need is there, as writing-center initiatives are cropping up globally, often taking shape in culturally appropriate ways for their home nations. My own first post focuses on how technology from a center builds ethos and influence on campus.

One shoe cannot fit every foot, and as I learned in 2013 at the Conference for The European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing, best practices vary widely and the US model of peer-tutor work is far from universal.

Using the new blog and column, we directors, tutors, writing consultants, peer mentors, and those doing similar work plan to share resources, stories from our centers, and advice to help our writers and each other.