One of the most important moments in writing my novel, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, came when I realized I could reach outside of reality.  Continue reading...

A great voice was silenced earlier this week with the death of Bob Sheppard, longtime public-address announcer for New York Yankees baseball games and New York Giants football games. Sheppard, who also worked as a speech teacher at the high school and college level in New York, had such a memorable way of announcing players' names that he was fondly known as "the voice of God."  Continue reading...

New techniques of "digital archaeology" reveal long-lost secrets about how Thomas Jefferson tinkered with word choice while drafting the Declaration of Independence. University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron has the full story.  Continue reading...

Should college students be taught the parts of speech? Writing teacher Margaret Hundley Parker explains why she takes the time to work through this seemingly basic aspect of grammar with her students.  Continue reading...

What happens when paleontologists get together for drinks and brainstorm for names of dinosaur species? They come up with Mojoceratops, inspired by the mystical, magical mojo. And with the publication of a paper in the Journal of Paleontology this week, the name is official.  Continue reading...

It was a Friday night and I was sitting at my computer studying Google maps. I had to give a speech to more than 200 people the next morning and — given my notoriously bad sense of direction — wanted to be sure I was heading for the right place.

Suddenly, my husband yelled from the basement four words no homeowner wants to hear: "We have a leak."  Continue reading...

The latest quarterly update of the Oxford English Dictionary's online revision project covers the alphabetical range Rh to rococoesque, and it includes a fascinatingly complex entry for a seemingly simple word: rock, used as a verb. From the rocking of cradles in Old English sources to the rocking of microphones in rap lyrics, this entry has it all.  Continue reading...