Let’s face it, some people think better in pictures.

They think with their eyes.

For the most part, I am not one of them. But I still think visual literacy is pretty cool. I wrote a longer post on this topic and offered up a couple of tools here.

A couple of weeks ago, a colleague of mine received a very exciting email informing him that he’d won a huge amount of money from some odd (but very official sounding) oversees organization. They didn’t ask for any personal information so my friend replied, thanked them, and let them know he couldn’t wait to start living the high-life.

Yesterday he got another similar email. This one was too good not to post here verbatim. The following is the email just as he got it word for word, punctuation for punctuation, bolded parts left as bold. I’ve only ommitted my friends name.

A Figure of Speech is a literary device used to create a special effect or feeling by making some type of interesting or creative comparison.

What follows are some samples of real students’ attempts at this. Each definitely create a special “effect or feeling”–though I don’t think it’s what the writer was shooting for.

These were not written by my students. But the collection reminded me that I should really be saving more student work.

It really doesn’t get much better than this:

Writing can be a bitch of a thing to do sometimes.

Currently I’m working on a column (I’m sure I’ll post it here soon enough so I won’t spoil the surprise), but I’m having a heck of a time with it.

It’s a good topic– interesting, relevant, and I anticipated having a bit of fun with it. The only trouble I’m having is actually writing it.