There's a new online threat to writing. Critics of the web like to blame email, texts, and chat for killing prose. Even blogs don't escape their wrath. But in fact the opposite is true: thanks to computers, writing is thriving. More people are writing more than ever, and this new wave of everyone's-an-author bodes well for the future of writing, even if not all that makes its way online is interesting or high in quality.  Continue reading...

Merrill Perlman settles a dispute between a sportswriter and his editor about whether the word "fraught" needs to take a preposition.  Continue reading...

On the linguistics blog Language Log, Mark Liberman of the University of Pennsylvania has "a terrible idea that could probably make someone a modest fortune." What if you could combine "a speech recognizer with a style checker" to create "an app for your smartphone that will make it vibrate (or beep, or flash) whenever you indulge in any of the verbal tics that you've asked it to watch out for"? Read Liberman's reluctant proposal here.

By the time you read this, my babies will have graduated. Yes, Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School, founded in 2007, graduated its first class on June 24, 2011, at 9:30 in the morning in what's got to be one of the largest school auditoriums in New York City.  Continue reading...

The 2012 presidential election is still well over a year away, but the campaign trail is already in full swing. On Tuesday, Jon Huntsman, Jr. threw his hat in the ring for the Republican nomination, adding his name to a list that already includes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Herman Cain. (And that's just the declared candidates.) The Republicans have been using some heated rhetoric toward President Obama, and toward each other. Here are some of the campaign's early buzzwords.  Continue reading...

During the 1970s Boston underwent a process of school desegregation which resulted in “forced busing,” where children from white neighborhoods were assigned to schools in neighboring black neighborhoods in order to achieve racial balance across the school system. My earliest memories were of boarding a bus in my safe and middle-class white neighborhood and driving through the blighted areas of Roxbury and Dorchester to my elementary school. On the way we passed run-down houses, boarded-up storefronts and empty lots filled with litter and marked by graffiti.  Continue reading...