Witchcraft At Salem Essays - Salem Witch Trials, Witchcraft

Witchcraft at Salem In 1692, nineteen villagers were put to death in Salem, Massachusetts. The reason for conviction was the torment of teenaged girls by supernatural means: witchcraft. These teenagers had experienced "pricking" and "pinching" sensations, and some contorted into strange bodily positions, reaching unusual postures of extreme rigidity. The village doctor blamed the abnormal behavior on the supernatural; he delared, "An evil hand is on them."(1) With those words began the greatest witchhunt in America's history. In 1976, Linnda Caporeal from the University of California at Santa Barbara explained the actions of the girls as the effects of an illness resulting from the ingestion of ergot--a fungus with LSD-like properties that resides in rye. Perhaps this is not the true cause of the strange behavior, but to the twentieth century world, it is a justification more believable than that of the village doctor. It is a human tendency to jump to conclusions without knowing all of the facts. In the case described above, the village doctor probably did not feel that he was jumping to conclusions because of the abundance of "witches" in those days. Even today, with the abundance of knowledge about the way things work, some hasten to postulate "God's doings" as the answers to all of our unanswered questions. Are we on this earth because "God put us here"? Was it a chance arrangement of amino acids in a molecular pool which evolved into a human being? Or does the answer lie in some different theory that only time will reveal? Whether it be in the case of medicine, religion, history, or anything requiring judgement, even gossip, one must realize that reality is impossible to pin down. Although we may be sure that two parallel lines could never meet, there may be someone named Lobachevski who is sure that they can. (1) Alice Dickenson, The Salem Witchcraft Delusion (New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1974), p. 16.

A Gerund Is a Verb and a Noun in One

A Gerund Is a Verb and a Noun in One A Gerund Is a Verb and a Noun in One A Gerund Is a Verb and a Noun in One By Mark Nichol A gerund is a verb that also functions as a noun. For example, one can say one is engaged in the act of writing, but one can also say that what one is doing is a thing called writing. A gerund can be part of the subject of a sentence (â€Å"Writing takes a lot of effort†) or part of the object (â€Å"I’ve done a lot of writing†). Most writers generally employ gerunds without difficulty, but one aspect of their use can be confusing: the genitive case. In the genitive case, the pronoun associated with the gerund takes a different form than it would when associated with the same word used as a verb. For example, when expressing that you listened to some people talking, you would write, â€Å"I heard them talking.† However, if you are emphasizing talking as a thing rather than an action, you would write, â€Å"I heard their talking.† Or, consider the difference between â€Å"They heard it breaking† (breaking is a verb) and â€Å"They heard its breaking† (breaking is a gerund). Writers should also make a distinction with possessive forms of nouns: â€Å"The girl shouting awakened her parents† uses shouting as a verb (girl is the subject); in â€Å"The girl’s shouting awakened her parents,† however, shouting is a gerund (and shouting, not girl, is the subject). In many instances, the difference in connotation is insignificant, but whether one employs a simple verb or uses it as a gerund can change the sense of the sentence. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Grammar category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:When to Capitalize Animal and Plant Names3 Types of HeadingsDealing With A Character's Internal Thoughts