I’ve always had a thing for Valentine’s Day that I can’t explain. Maybe it’s the incongruous combination of red and pink. Or maybe it’s the stupid puns on hokey valentines and cheap, terrible candy. Could be the hearts, because I really do love hearts. Beyond all those solidly rational reasons, though, my absolute favorite thing about this holiday is that it’s an entire day built around celebrating something that, in the day-to-day, is all too often taken for granted: your special someone.

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Remember the neutral male pronoun? In case that sounds like jargon to you, let me provide an example:

If a student hopes to earn an A on his final report, he should not only study all the previous course material, but also bring his teacher gifts and perform various other tasks that serve to boost his favoritism ratings.

While this is clearly objectively excellent advice, notice the consistently male pronouns. Am I writing to a class of only male students? Am I assuming that only the male students are required to perform brown-nosing acrobatics while the female students are naturally gifted enough to earn A’s on their own? Do only the male students care about their grades? This is so confusing!

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Do you engage in risky writing? Or, more to the point, should you?

I’m not talking about Charlie Hebdo-style cartoons, or even the kind of novel that forced Salman Rushdie into hiding for years. I’m talking about garden-variety edginess for rhetorical effect: strong language, subtle references to sex, drugs, alcohol, bodily functions, taboos of various kinds… you get the idea. Where do you draw the line? How far (and how often) do you cross over it before a little bit becomes too much?

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I recently came across a series of eye-tracking heat maps that show where people really look when they look at ads. My initial reaction was to think, “Cool!” and then completely forget about it as I do with most Internet things I skim while I’m waiting for my morning coffee to brew. But something about it came back to haunt me as I sat down to do some writing later on in the day.

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Hello, and welcome to the first Questions for a Language Ninja of 2015! May this year bring many and sundry language-related treats for web content-readers to enjoy, and for the Language Ninja to lightheartedly ridicule. Let’s get started!

Q: Which language trend would you like to see abandoned in 2015?

A: Without question, the Ninja would like the suffix “–ista” to be jettisoned from the popular English lexicon, permanently. Does the addition of “-ista” to a subject really cause anyone to think that the title is suddenly weighty or fabulously European? The Ninja is overdosing on cute.

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Every 365 days or so, people like to reflect on the previous year and extract lessons. From news stories to top 10 lists, it seems late December and early January is a time of reflection and pointing out all that has changed in the past 12 months. And there’s plenty of change to reflect upon since, after all, change is the only certainty in life — well, that and death and taxes. However, while it’s easy to reflect on worldly events, sometimes our own lives take on a more nuanced progression.

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Welp, here we are at the end of 2014 with a brand new year peeking out over the horizon. If you’re like us, you’re thinking about your business adventures from the past 12 months and planning on how to make 2015 blow 2014 right out of the water.

Here are a few tips that can help:

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Happy holidays!

Let’s get this festive Questions for a Language Ninja party started with a few topics that really bother her questions from her legions of devoted fans:

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One of the most internationally ubiquitous weapons, the Russian AK-47, has undergone a little makeover. The assault rifle was developed in the 1940s in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov, who died almost exactly one year ago. Prior to his death, the weapons engineer wrote of his “spiritual pain” in wondering if the AK-47 has done more harm than good. Although Kalashnikov’s intentions to invent a weapon of defense may have been noble, it’s impossible to determine if the weapon has wrought more destruction than it has ever defended, given the AK-47’s uncontrolled global distribution.

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A couple years ago, I participated in the much-touted and much-maligned National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This annual event happens in November and is designed to inspire writers (and regular people) who struggle with procrastination, fear, distraction and time management in their quests to craft the next great American novel. I was a “winner” my first time out, meaning I completed the NaNoWriMo quest of cranking out 50,000 words in one month. Go me! 

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