February 01, 2011

Nulla dies sine linea


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Today's saying is Nulla dies sine linea. In English: "No day without a line."

I always think of this saying as the bloggers' motto: no day without a line of writing - in other words, no day without a blog post. This is advice that I have been following for several years now. I don't post in every one of my blogs every single day, but I do post at least something somewhere every day. Then, by the time summer comes around, I have enough raw material to use for a book! Before I started blogging, I didn't like to write, and the idea of writing a book was terrifying to me. Blogging a little bit every day, however, is something fun, and I can't wait for summer to come when I can turn my writing into something really useful. That's why I also encourage my students to blog, hoping that maybe they, too, will learn to enjoy writing this way. No day without a blog, nulla dies sine linea.

In terms of Latin grammar, this saying has no verb, but in the Adagia of Polydorus you can see a verb included: Nulla dies sit sine linea. Polydorus also explains the connection of this saying with the famous painter Apelles, where the daily lines were not lines written by an author, but instead the lines drawn by the artist.

For those of you who are fans of macrons, here is the Latin written with macrons:

Nulla dies sine līneā.



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