Word: alphabetization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...basic problem is that the letter forms taught were not designed to accomplish the necessary combination of legibility, speed and ease. At the start, schools require five-and six-year-olds to construct an alphabet out of circles and straight lines. Calligraphers say that it is wrong to expect the resulting letters to resemble the modern sans-serif type faces that the children are simultaneously learning to read. Young hands can rarely produce the subtle but important nuances of printed type. The so-called ball-and-stick method requires exceptional motor coordination, and the effort spoils the handwriting of many...
...Communist country? History provides the explanation: Alexander II freed the Bulgarians from five centuries of Turkish rule in 1878, at a cost of 200,000 Russian lives. Unlike most of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria regards the U.S.S.R. as its liberator, not its conqueror. The two countries share the Cyrillic alphabet and speak similar languages. Though it is difficult to measure the affection felt by the Bulgarian people toward the Soviet government, there is no doubt about the official devotion of Sofia toward Moscow. As Todor Zhivkov, 71, leader of the Balkan country for the past 39 years, once characterized the relationship...
...substitute for the old-fashioned touch-feel-try experience of buying in a store. Many consumer complaints concern the failure of some mail-order companies to notify customers promptly if items ordered cannot be delivered within a reasonable period; even more maddeningly, the cataloguers' computers can make alphabet soup of a simple order. Most expensive things from jewelry and furs to high-style fabrics and all fitted clothing demand personal, tactile, in-store selection. There are still some salesclerks around who can advise customers, lead them to real bargains or steer them away from lemons. Big-ticket appliances like...
...Hebrew, figures can be expressed by letters of the alphabet. The combinations of letters that represent larger numbers may, coincidentally, spell out words. A while ago, Israeli Cultural Affairs Minister Zevulun Hammer must have flipped a few months ahead in his calendar book. To his surprise, he found that the letters of the next year on the Jewish Calendar--5744, which starts next fall--spell out in clear-as-day Hebrew "destroy...
...LEAVING ROOM / had made my living by cadging odd jobs from newspapers, by reporting a donkey show here or a wedding there; I had earned a few pounds by addressing envelopes, reading to old ladies, making artificial flowers, teaching the alphabet to small children in a kindergarten ... I need not, I am afraid, describe in any detail the hardness of the work, for you know perhaps women who have done it; nor the difficulty of living on the money when it was earned, for you may have tried. But what still remains with me as a worse infliction than either...