On TIME Newsfeed, Katy Steinmetz wonders why Twitter has inspired "an army of fusion words," or portmanteaus — from "Twiplomacy" (Twitter diplomacy) to "Twitterati" (Twitter literati). Our own Ben Zimmer has some ideas.  Continue reading...

Much like the government, the English spelling system is a popular punching bag. People love to kvetch about its inconsistencies and exceptions, lamenting the near-impossible task of learning to spell.  Continue reading...

Figuring out how to teach poetry is particularly troublesome, and may be ruining some poor teacher's time on the beach at this very moment. The threshold for frustration over poetry seems to be extremely low, indeed, judging from the groans and complaints from both sides of the teacher's desk.  Continue reading...

Use Alan Brown's Sports Literacy Blog to find creative ways to encourage jocks to read! On Alan's blog, you'll find lots of links to popular sports-related texts, organized by genre – e.g., baseball, football, cycling, and even rock climbing. Since the site's curator, Alan Brown, spent years as a high school teacher and as a basketball coach, he knows how to excite students about reading through sports stories.

Next month marks the 44th anniversary of the Woodstock festival, and we're still hearing its echoes. One of Woodstock's most enduring legacies is its influence on language. Wherever there's an "X-stock" festival, from Artstock in Oregon to Zoostock in Pennsylvania, from Rootstock in Santa Rosa, California, to Bloodstock in Derbyshire, UK, Woodstock lives on.  Continue reading...

Edward Snowden's leaking of National Security Agency information has put the term whistleblower back in the news. Since the early 1970s, whistleblower has come to be seen as a positive term, but before that it had been decidedly negative for many decades.  Continue reading...