With the average American home watching more than eight hours of television a day, it's no wonder how we talk has become eerily similar to how they talk on the tube. Duh! Author Leslie Savan has studied the way popular idioms have crept into our language and -- long story short -- wrote an entertaining and enlightening book on the subject called Slam Dunks and No-Brainers. Just released in paperback, it was recently selected as a "Book for the Teen Age," by the New York Public Library and has been required reading at several universities. In her book, Leslie explains the phenomenon of what she calls "pop language." We phoned Leslie and said, Bring it on!

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Leslie Savan, the author of Slam Dunks and No-Brainers we interviewed about "pop language," recommends these books on how we communicate:

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language by Steven Pinker

Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English by John Russell Rickford and Russell John Rickford

Nancy Friedman, naming and branding expert and contributor to our Candlepower column, wrote an entry on her blog about "how to write like Stephen King and other tricks they don't teach at those fancy-schmancy writing workshops." She suggests you check out these websites:

Everything You Need to Know about Writing Successfully--in Ten Minutes. "It's from Stephen King, so it's gotta be true, right?"

Random Book or Story Title Generator: "Six titles per click, so you can go crazy and name your entire oeuvre."

How not to write for technology users, "a grumble for common-sense error messages from deep within the belly of the beast (IBM)."'

Cliche Finder: "More than 3,300 cliches served, from 'Dumb as a stump' to 'Water over the dam.' "

Sentence Diagramming Guide, "modestly subtitled 'One Way of Learning English Grammar' and patiently explicated by the saintly Eugene R. Moutoux."

My company, Articulate, runs regular seminars in London aimed at getting companies (rather than individuals) to write better. Two questions always resonate: how to encourage staff to write better and how to give feedback. Get them right and you are on your way to being an articulate business.

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A linguistics blog called Anggarrgoon runs something it calls "Language of the week." If you've ever had a hankering to know more about Hadza, Emberá or Anejomon, you found your blog! The site recently talked about Iñupiaq, "spoken in northern Alaska by roughly 3000-4000 people, mostly adults over 40." The post is quite fascinating. You can read it here.

Getting ready for that big renovation project at home? To make sure you have the right words for the job, we called Kevin Ireton, the editor of Fine Homebuilding Magazine, who graciously explained these -- fine -- homebuilding terms:

Stool. "The ledge on the inside of a window, which most people call the sill. The sill is the similar piece on the outside."

Crown. "It's used as a verb by framing carpenters and means to check a stud, rafter or joist to see if it's straight and to mark the crown (or high spot) if there is one."

Biscuit. "A small, football-shaped wafer of compressed wood used (like a dowel or spline) to join two boards together."

Eyebrow. "A particular style of dormer with an arched roof that mimic's the curve of your eyebrow."

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Give your favorite somebody your favorite word map! Now you can order a Visual Thesaurus word map on a t-shirt, mug, even a postage stamp. Simply search for a word, click on the "Share" button on top right hand of the Visual Thesaurus window, and follow the easy steps. We can't think of a better gift -- or a gift to yourself, for that matter! (Hey, we're biased!)