This time last year, David Letterman was making jokes about Blagojeviching, playing on the name of disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Now we've got a brand-new political eponym on our hands: Salahi is being used as a verb meaning "to gate-crash an official event."  Continue reading...

We welcome back Michele Dunaway, who teaches English and journalism at Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, Missouri, when she's not writing best-selling romance novels. Michele has an important lesson for those who teach and study literature: your analysis always depends on your personal perspective.  Continue reading...

Veteran copy editor John E. McIntyre holds forth entertainingly on all manner of issues related to language and editing on his blog, "You Don't Say." Here McIntyre wonders why we're stuck with the term foodie when there are so many serviceable gastronomic alternatives.  Continue reading...

Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she looks at the all-too-common confusion of principal and principle.  Continue reading...

Britain's Plain English Campaign has given out its annual Golden Bull Awards for "the worst examples of written tripe." The winners this year include American Airlines and Coca Cola. You can read the exquisite examples of official gobbledygook here.

The end-of-the-year movie rush is upon us, when the studios roll out their high-prestige projects. I've been thinking about words related to two major movies of the season: Up in the Air (now in theaters), adapted from the novel of the same name by Walter Kirn, and Avatar (coming soon!), the sci-fi extravaganza from James Cameron of Titanic fame.  Continue reading...

My 15-year-old daughter and I share many traits. We'd both rather eat a really good piece of cheese than a sweet. We share the belief that The Gilmore Girls was one of the funniest, most charming programs ever produced by network TV. And we both have scoliosis.  Continue reading...