How the word "wombat" entered the English language turns out to be a surprisingly complex story. Australian linguist David Nash tells the tale here.

David Hollander is a critically acclaimed novelist and essayist who teaches fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. We asked him to share some of the more peculiar recurring errors of spelling and usage that he's come across in his students' work.

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The late John Updike was a virtuoso of both fiction and non-fiction forms. Here is a sampling of his best work.

Rabbit Novels Vol. 1

Rabbit Novels Vol. 2

Due Considerations

Hugging the Shore

How can the Visual Thesaurus help students interpret figurative language in Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy?  Continue reading...

John Updike, one of the greatest writers of his generation, died Tuesday at the age of 76. Some remembrances:

Guardian Books

Literary Kicks

Newsweek

Slate

Omnivoracious

A blog commenter recently described the linguistic situation in her household as "a mixmash of English and German." As she later explained, the word mixmash was invented by her daughters to describe their experiences growing up bilingual. Now, mixmash is not a word you'll find in any dictionary, but it's easy enough to appreciate it as a mash-up of mix and (mish)mash. It's a wonderful example of how speakers of English are constantly mixing and mashing the lexicon, and yet somehow we manage to understand each other just fine.  Continue reading...