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These scenes from my life in Boston — when my wife Carol and I lived there many years ago and during our recent work there on "More Words That Make a Difference" — employ a number of words that appear in that book, with illustrative sentences from the Atlantic Monthly.  Continue reading...

When I read in the New York Times recently that everyone is going quant in "the Age of Metrics," my first thought was, "Is that anything like Sarah Palin going rogue?" What's going on with these new ways of going, anyhow?  Continue reading...

As far as I know, no university has a Department of Nomenclature. I've never heard of an internship in brand naming. So what's an aspiring name developer — or even an inquiring civilian — to do?  Continue reading...

The latest selection for 2009 Word of the Year comes from the good people at Merriam-Webster. Unlike other dictionary publishers that anoint an annual word, Merriam-Webster bases its winner and runners-up on actual user lookups to its online dictionary and thesaurus. So instead of the novelties selected by its competitors (distracted driving from Webster's New World, unfriend from New Oxford American), Merriam-Webster's choice is an old word that worked its way into current events: admonish.  Continue reading...

The prestigious National Book Awards have been announced for 2009. The winners are:

Fiction: Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin

Nonfiction: T.J. Stiles, The First Tycoon

Poetry: Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies

Young People's Literature: Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin

We were pleased to discover that the Visual Thesaurus has fans in the Blue Man Group, the highly creative outfit that has been producing theatrical shows and concerts for the past two decades. We talked to one of the original Blue Men, Matt Goldman, about how the group has drawn on the Visual Thesaurus for inspiration in both their stage productions and in their latest venture, an innovative pre-K and elementary school known as the Blue School.  Continue reading...