Richard Bailey's Speaking American is one of those books I wish I could make every prescriptivist grouch in the world read. You know the type: the kind of misinformed peever who kvetches about "kids these days" and the language going to hell while yearning to preserve English, as if it were a precious vase a teenage texter might knock over while planking, shattering it forever and leaving us all mute.  Continue reading...

Mike Vuolo, a producer for the NPR show "On the Media," has started a new podcast about language called "Lexicon Valley." For his first installment, he chats with OTM host Bob Garfield about the history of the curious "rule" against ending a sentence in a preposition. Slate is hosting the podcast, which you can listen to here.

One aspect of the computing world that we're all deeply involved in (whether we realize it or not) is the specialized field of databases. In this article, I thought it might be fun to look at the terminology of that involvement from the database's point of view.  Continue reading...

With the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens approaching (get your party hats ready for February 7th!), it's a good time to gauge the enormous impact he had on the English language. By many accounts he was the most widely read author of the Victorian era, and no writer since has held a candle to him in terms of popularity, prolificness, and influence in spreading new forms of the language — both highbrow and lowbrow.  Continue reading...

Back in December, a small study by researchers at Long Island University got a lot of news play. Maybe you heard about it. It was about the supposed recent increase in young American women's use of vocal fry — the lowest vocal register, the one with a creaky quality to it.  Continue reading...

Merrill Perlman looks at the way that the "drink/drank/drunk" verb paradigm is changing, and advises you how to derive "drunk" (but please, don't drive drunk).  Continue reading...