Last month, a post at the Poynter Institute took a strong stand: "It's time for copy editors to loosen the cardigan when it comes to 'media,'" Andrew Beaujon wrote. He said he felt "like a tool writing 'The media are.'"  Continue reading...

Today is opening day for Major League Baseball, though the only game on the schedule is in far-off Tokyo, where the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics are beginning a two-game series. But let's cast our minds back to opening day a century ago. On April 2, 1912, in a Pacific Coast League game between the Portland Beavers and the Los Angeles Angels, a pitcher uncorked his "jazz ball" — and possibly helped set into motion a chain of events that brought the word jazz together with the music it named.  Continue reading...

Last week we brought you coverage of the 35th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held in Brooklyn. But there was another wordy competition held in conjuction with the ACPT: the first-ever World Palindrome Championship. Here's a full report of the back-and-forth action from The Palindromist Magazine.  Continue reading...

If — two letters, one little puff of breath between tongue and teeth—ranks high among language's most powerful and mysterious words: little if can build all the castles in Spain. The dictionary calls if a conjunction meaning "supposing that"; I call if a trigger word, one that signals and sets off the extraordinary mental process we call imagination.  Continue reading...

Writer and journalist Ben Gibberd is British by birth but has made his home in New York City. Here Ben shares his experiences of writing for the New York Times, which required him to make all manner of linguistic adjustments in order to write in an American (and Timesian) style.  Continue reading...

The opening of the 2012 baseball season is just around the corner. Teachers, what better way to prepare your students for the season than to give them a little baseball vocabulary preview? Every sport has its own vocabulary, and baseball is no exception.  Continue reading...