What Is a Transfusion?

A blood transfusion (say: trans-FEW-zyun) is a way of giving one person's blood to someone else who needs it. When you need blood, you really need it because your body won't work right without enough healthy blood. Your heart pumps blood through blood vessels that reach every organ and tissue in the body. One of the blood's most important jobs is to deliver oxygen to each cell in the body. And without oxygen, the body can't stay alive.

Blood transfusions are possible because volunteers donate their blood. That makes it available at hospitals. It may sound creepy to donate blood, but it's safe and no big deal for a healthy person to donate a small amount — usually 1 pint (473 milliliters). Your mom or dad might have done this. Kids don't usually donate blood, but it's a good thing to do when you're older.

Healthy, donated blood is very valuable stuff. They even call the place that collects it the blood bank. Get it? A bank is a safe place for money and other valuables.

What Is a Gene?

How to use Everyday and Every day

The word ‘EVERYDAY’ is a lexical item of interesting grammatical and orthographic properties. Grammar in this context refers to the Lexical Category (Part of Speech) of the word, and Orthography is about its spelling. Indeed, its grammatical classification and function in usage depend on its spelling. As an adjective, ‘EVERYDAY’ is spelt as one word – compounding, but as an adverb, the compound word is split into two words: ‘EVERY’ and ‘DAY.’ For better understanding, let us see illustrative sentences as follows:

Illustrative Sentences

·         Chantiwuni prays EVERY DAY. [Adverb]. In this construction, ‘EVERY DAY’ modifies the verb ‘prays.’ It is, therefore, an adverb.

·         Chantiwuni observes EVERYDAY prayers. [Adjective]. In this sentence, ‘EVERYDAY’ modifies the noun ‘prayers’. Therefore, it is an adjective.

·         Yelsuma writes poems about Dagbon Tradition EVERY DAY. [Adverb]. Here, ‘EVERY DAY’ modifies the verb ‘writes’. So, it is an adverb.

·         Writing of poems about Dagbon Tradition is an EVERYDAY activity of Yelsuma. [Adjective]. In this context, ‘EVERYDAY’ modifies the noun ‘activity’. For that reason, it is an adjective.

It is instructive to note that the modifiers – adverbs and adjectives – are just intensifiers. This implies that if they are removed, the sentences are still meaningful. Let us restate the sentences without the modifiers.

·         Chantiwuni prays.

·         Chantiwuni observes prayers.

·         Yelsuma writes poems about Dagbon Tradition.

·         Writing of poems about Dagbon Tradition is an activity of Yelsuma.

Synonyms

To maximize our understanding, we need to state some synonyms of ‘EVERYDAY’ as an adjective and as an adverb.

ADJECTIVE: daily, day-to-day, quotidian, commonplace, ordinary, regular, and conventional.

ADVERB: daily, day by day, day in day out, regularly, steadily, conventionally, and ordinarily.

Conclusion

Fellow learner, you may be surprised about or confused by the seemingly hidden grammatical and orthographic symbiotic information about ‘EVERYDAY’. Please, consult Oxford Dictionary of English (2015) for confirmation. With all humility in certainty, your favorite Literary Discourse would be vindicated.

Balancing of Chemical Equation

The Man Who Hated Semicolons

The Man Who Hated Semicolons

Ten years ago, the author Kurt Vonnegut stirred things up with four sentences he wrote in his final book, A Man Without a Country: “Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.”

One must consider the source here. Vonnegut was a world-renowned novelist who had earned the right to make outrageous statements. He was not condemning all semicolons; he was condemning all pretentiousness.

As Vonnegut well knew, semicolons have at least one legitimate role: to separate items in a series when one or more of the items contain commas. Look at this mess of a sentence: The conference has people who have come from Italy, Texas, Moscow, Idaho, Venice, California, and other places as well. How could a reader know that only three specific locations are mentioned? The simple fix is three semicolons: The conference has people who have come from Italy, Texas; Moscow, Idaho; Venice, California; and other places as well. (Yes, Italy is a town in Texas.)

What Vonnegut disdained was the discretionary semicolon, used by writers to combine complete sentences when a period feels too final, as in this example: I looked at her; she smiled; we danced until dawn. Here the semicolons blend three terse statements into one sentence, which, in the writer’s opinion, more faithfully evokes the flow of events on that enchanted evening. (Vonnegut would have preferred three short sentences.) Note that there are no conjunctions in the sentence. If the last clause were and we danced until dawn, commas would suffice, and most editors would banish the semicolons.

Fledgling writers especially should be wary of semicolons where commas will do. One wonders what the Vonnegut of 2005 would have said about the following sentence, written by a twenty-seven-year-old novelist: “Kroner’s belief [was] that nothing of value changed; that what was once true is always true; that truths were few and simple; and that a man needed no knowledge beyond these truths to deal wisely and justly with any problem whatsoever.”

The young author would defend his semicolons, claiming they give more weight to each clause than a comma could. But many editors would want commas there. The sentence, by the way, is from Kurt Vonnegut’s first published novel, Player Piano (1950).