If you were following the U.S. presidential campaign in late summer, it was easy to imagine you'd switched channels and were watching "Animal Planet." Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin compared "hockey moms" to pit bulls (with the addition of lipstick), and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke of his rival John McCain's policies as "lipstick on a pig" (which he said meant "mere window dressing").  Continue reading...

In a recent interview on the Voice of America radio program Wordmaster (a show that seeks to explain the vagaries of American English to an international audience), I was asked about a number of terms relating to the U.S. presidential campaign. We talked about red states (leaning Republican), blue states (leaning Democratic), and purple states (somewhere in between), a topic I discussed on Word Routes after the untimely passing of Tim Russert, who helped to popularize the terms in the 2000 election. But we also covered some earlier American expressions to describe "toss-up" states that predate the red/blue/purple color scheme: battleground states and swing states. Here's some extra historical background that I wasn't able to include in the brief interview.  Continue reading...

Should words like podcast, Bluetooth, and crowdsourcing be included in mainstream dictionaries? Computerworld talks to leading lexicographers about which high-tech terms make the cut.

Last week in part one of our three-part interview with David Crystal about his new book, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, we discussed the myths about text messaging that he is seeking to dispel. In part two, we explore how the rapid spread of texting has led to changes in attitudes about electronic communication. Crystal also explains how the use of abbreviations in texting is driven by a sense of playfulness with the new medium, both in English and in other languages around the world that have developed texting conventions.  Continue reading...

We asked David Crystal, author of Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, to suggest a reading list about new forms of electronic communication and how they're shaping our language. Here are his recommendations.  Continue reading...

Yesterday we heard from contributor Julia Rubiner about a pattern she identifies as an "epidemic": using the word myself in place of a plain old personal pronoun like I or me. She was disheartened to see Merriam-Webster's treatment of this use of myself as no big deal, writing, "Don't you hate it when something you were so sure was absolutely wrong is reduced to the status of pet peeve?" I wanted to flesh out the myself story, since it's been a point of contention for generations of grammarians and usage mavens.  Continue reading...