New Writing Activity Proposed: Enhance this Statement

Gary O' said:
Gonna rain like a cow peein' on a flat rock
Click to expand...
Okay, here is an example: I played off the posting of Gary O. If this was posted as a new thread, it would look like this:

(OP) Enhance this: Gonna rain like a cow peein' on a flat rock.
Someone rewords it to: Precipitation will fall on the hard terrain in a way that resembles bovine urination.
Aunt Marg rewords it to: Cloudburst will saturate the hardscape similarly to that of micturate erupting on a plumb boulder with a homoloidal plane.

Now, I had no idea of the meaning of micturate, so I looked it up. This is where dictionaries and thesauruses come in handy.

micturate: formal verb form meaning urinate
homoloidal: adjective / Mathematics. Of or relating to straight lines and planes

Aunt Marg took the sentence "Gonna rain like a cow peein' on a flat rock." and paraphrased it to read “Cloudburst will saturate the hardscape similarly to that of micturate erupting on a plumb boulder with a homoloidal plane”. (Really creative, BTW!)

They essentially say the same thing! The concept does not change.

Perhaps OP's could start with "paraphrase this:" or "reword this:"



 

Gary O' said:
Seems right

I'm not a participant in the games section
Not for or agin it
I can see why some folks like the games
It's a bit of an escape
Guess my crosswords do it for me
Click to expand...
This is not a game, it's a creative challenge under the English Language forum.
I give up. I'll look for other sites to join that offer similar activities and I'll go back to playing my custom 20 tile scrabble game.
It was fun playing off your sentence!
 

Rules for Underlining:

Emphasis
The need to emphasize the word is among the most common reasons for underlining. Other type styles, such as boldface and italic, are used as well. For example:
  • If a particular word or phrase in a piece of text is to be emphasized, particularly when the piece of text is to be read aloud.
  • To make a word or phrase seem accusatory in nature, as in "you're the real problem here, buster!";)
To underscore something in a piece of writing that is particularly important: "books are not to be placed on the floor." The underline gives the word a bit more gravity.
 
Em in Ohio said:
Okay, here is an example: I played off the posting of Gary O. If this was posted as a new thread, it would look like this:

(OP) Enhance this: Gonna rain like a cow peein' on a flat rock.
Someone rewords it to: Precipitation will fall on the hard terrain in a way that resembles bovine urination.
Aunt Marg rewords it to: Cloudburst will saturate the hardscape similarly to that of micturate erupting on a plumb boulder with a homoloidal plane.

Now, I had no idea of the meaning of micturate, so I looked it up. This is where dictionaries and thesauruses come in handy.

micturate: formal verb form meaning urinate
homoloidal: adjective / Mathematics. Of or relating to straight lines and planes

Aunt Marg took the sentence "Gonna rain like a cow peein' on a flat rock." and paraphrased it to read “Cloudburst will saturate the hardscape similarly to that of micturate erupting on a plumb boulder with a homoloidal plane”. (Really creative, BTW!)

They essentially say the same thing! The concept does not change.

Perhaps OP's could start with "paraphrase this:" or "reword this:"
Click to expand...
I personally think "enhance" is great, because really, that's essentially the aim of this exercise, to enhance, polish, and refine something that a member puts forth, yet keeping the presented content original to the structure intended.
 
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Feel like I'm back in high school with all these 'word of the day' threads you've started in games, and now 'enhanced statements'.

Are you a retired English school teacher @Em in Ohio ? .... just curious.

Myself, I'm not into writing assignments, so I'll just pass.
 
I had thought that the word "enhance" meant to "add to" something.....

rather than to paraphrase the same meaning...:unsure:
Now I am not sure if I was mistaken. :rolleyes:

But therefore, I had thought we were invited to widen the scope of the meaning.
To expand upon it, as it would be a starting point.

But it seems that was not what was intended.? :unsure:
 
Gary O' said:
I get that
Didn't think it a game
Just played off some of the commentary

I do like...actually love.... creative challenges

Haven't seen 'caption this' threads in awhile
Where folks submit a pic
And we submit the words

I so miss those
Click to expand...
I also like that idea, but my brief search for a stimulating image failed.
 
Kaila said:
I had thought that the word "enhance" meant to "add to" something.....

rather than to paraphrase the same meaning...:unsure:
Now I am not sure if I was mistaken. :rolleyes:

But therefore, I had thought we were invited to widen the scope of the meaning.
To expand upon it, as it would be a starting point.

But it seems that was not what was intended.? :unsure:
Click to expand...
The idea for was people to post a new thread with some words to indicate what to do with a relatively simple and boring sentence.

The OP would write 're-word this: She liked reading her books and riding her horse.'

Then others would rephrase that sentence and/or use a different structure to make it more interesting.

Or: Tom sees a cat. Tom spotted a feline. A cat came into Tom's line-of-sight. etc.

It could have a follow-up post that just changes a word to a synonym.
 
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Gary O' said:
Seems right

I'm not a participant in the games section
Not for or agin it
I can see why some folks like the games
It's a bit of an escape
Guess my crosswords do it for me
Click to expand...
I never went there...Didn't know we had games here....But I really don't like games...
 


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