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...

Shannon Reed, a regular contributor to our Teachers at Work column, teaches at the Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School, where she has discovered that adapting the Euripides play Iphigenia has lit an unexpected spark for her students.  Continue reading...

In his latest monthly roundup of under-the-radar euphemisms, Visual Thesaurus contributor Mark Peters gets all pop-cultural, finding inspiration from the likes of 30 Rock's Jack Donaghy.  Continue reading...

I've got a problem with solutions. Well, it's not solutions, per se, but the word "solutions." Actually, it's not even the word "solutions"; it's the notion that all you have to do is throw that word onto your home page and the world will beat a path to your door.  Continue reading...