Hi, faithful Visual Thesaurus subscribers! I'm back! Did you have a good summer? Did you miss me? I missed writing this column for you. One of the nice things about having some time off from full-time teaching (besides the long days spent in pajamas and sleeping past 6 a.m.) was that I had an opportunity to think about the next direction to take my contributions to the "Teachers at Work" feature.  Continue reading...

Welcome to Mailbag Friday, where we answer your burning questions about the origins of words and phrases. Ivete L. of New York, NY asks: "You can be overwhelmed, and I suppose you can even be underwhelmed. But why can't you be just plain whelmed?"

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"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber..." So begins the winner of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which competitors write incredibly bad opening sentences to incredibly bad novels. Read the full results here.

"Bill Gates once asked me, 'Could you make me more human?' I said, 'Being human is overrated.'"

This doubly priceless quote comes from Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's former campaign strategist. (Hat tip: The Atlantic.)

When it comes to writing copy, the human touch is still vital. Here are some tips for making copy that reads like a human being wrote it.  Continue reading...

It's Bulwer-Lytton Contest time! Catch up on "the funniest opening sentences from the worst novels never written."

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Son of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Bride of Dark and Stormy

Dark and Stormy Rides Again

Yesterday the always entertaining "Editorial Emergency!" team of Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner contributed a column on the misuse of the word literally. I keep tabs on people's pet peeves about English usage, and this is certainly one of the most widespread complaints currently in circulation. There's even a blog entirely devoted to "tracking abuse" of literally. I agree with Simon and Julia that using literally as an intensifier can often "strain credulity" when it's emphasizing a figurative expression like "a handful of Jewish members." But allow me to play devil's advocate for the much-maligned hyperbolic extension of literally. Like many usage bugaboos, it gets a bad rap while other similar perpetrators get off scot-free.  Continue reading...

Here are a few exceptional blogs exploring the frontiers of education technology.

Moving at the Speed of Creativity

EdTechTalk

Teach42

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