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WRITING AND EDITING: WORD CHOICE AND WORD ORDER, 1.21 (Q) Low-stakes practice

1.21 (Q) Low-stakes practice

1. In the book Why Not? by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff, a Yale law professor (Ayres) and a Yale economics professor (Nalebuff) team up to offer a series of techniques to help people become better problem solvers. In a section called “Prizes and Punishments,” they note that “whether something is a prize or a penalty simply depends on your initial perspective.” They then explain this point with a series of examples:

You can give people either a penalty for dying or an to live. You can create a penalty for working or an to retire. Sallie Mae rewarded student loan borrowers with a quarter-point reduction in their rate if they had a flawless repayment schedule. This gets the same result as starting with a quarter-point-lower rate and taking it way if the borrower is late. But, the penalty for one late payment might well lead people to complain. In contrast, it's harder for customers to protest when they don't get a reward because they didn't earn it. Fill in the missing word. (It's the same one for each blank.) -impediment

-obligation

-incentive

-tax

2. One of the psychologists who coined the term “impostor syndrome,” Pauline Rose Clance, has said that she regrets the “syndrome” part of that phrase. “If I could do it all over again,” she told an interviewer in 2015, “I would call it the impostor , because it's not a syndrome or a complex or a mental illness. It's something almost everyone [goes through at some point].” -illness

-experience

-disease

-ailment

3. In Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, the journalist Jessica Bruder chronicles the lives of a transient set of (mostly older) workers who crisscross the country in vans and RVs looking for temporary jobs. A few do it by choice. Many do it out of necessity, having lost or never had the stability of more permanent employment. Inspired by the resilience and creativity of these “new nomads,” Bruder includes the following explanation of how they label themselves:

Some call them “homeless.” The new nomads reject that label. Equipped with both shelter and transportation, they've adopted a different word. They refer to themselves, quite simply, as “.”

Complete the sentence.

-houseless

-hopeless

-aimless

-costless


1.21 (Q) Low-stakes practice

1\\. In the book Why Not? by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff, a Yale law professor (Ayres) and a Yale economics professor (Nalebuff) team up to offer a series of techniques to help people become better problem solvers. In a section called “Prizes and Punishments,” they note that “whether something is a prize or a penalty simply depends on your initial perspective.” They then explain this point with a series of examples:

You can give people either a penalty for dying or an ______ to live. You can create a penalty for working or an ________ to retire. Sallie Mae rewarded student loan borrowers with a quarter-point reduction in their rate if they had a flawless repayment schedule. This gets the same result as starting with a quarter-point-lower rate and taking it way if the borrower is late. But, the penalty for one late payment might well lead people to complain. In contrast, it's harder for customers to protest when they don't get a reward because they didn't earn it. Fill in the missing word. (It's the same one for each blank.) -impediment

-obligation

-incentive

-tax

2\\. One of the psychologists who coined the term “impostor syndrome,” Pauline Rose Clance, has said that she regrets the “syndrome” part of that phrase. “If I could do it all over again,” she told an interviewer in 2015, “I would call it the impostor ______, because it's not a syndrome or a complex or a mental illness. It's something almost everyone [goes through at some point].” -illness

-experience

-disease

-ailment

3\\. In Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, the journalist Jessica Bruder chronicles the lives of a transient set of (mostly older) workers who crisscross the country in vans and RVs looking for temporary jobs. A few do it by choice. Many do it out of necessity, having lost or never had the stability of more permanent employment. Inspired by the resilience and creativity of these “new nomads,” Bruder includes the following explanation of how they label themselves:

Some call them “homeless.” The new nomads reject that label. Equipped with both shelter and transportation, they've adopted a different word. They refer to themselves, quite simply, as “________.”

Complete the sentence.

-houseless

-hopeless

-aimless

-costless