Despite its popularity among teens, you're not going to find class sets of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series in the English department book rooms across the country. Even if most teachers don't incorporate trendy literature into their class syllabus, it doesn't mean that they can't take advantage of the excitement of the fad and harness it to teach some valuable lessons about writing, editing, and word choice.  Continue reading...

I've gone theme-happy with this column in recent months, looking at euphemisms for death, pregnancy, 30 Rock, and angels. Enough cohesion! It's time for a random roundup of terms that have crossed my eye, brightened my day, and befuddled my brain.  Continue reading...

Yesterday was National Grammar Day, and I've been thinking about one of the long-standing usage peeves. It doesn't usually make people's top 10 lists, but it's been out there since the 19th century: try and instead of try to. The usual complaint about this idiom is that it doesn't mean what people who say it seem to think it means.  Continue reading...

Today, March 4th, is National Grammar Day. Someone who tweets under the name @DrGrammar just has to write about #NationalGrammarDay. So, in the spirit of the latest grammatical fad of starting every sentence with "so," here goes.  Continue reading...

Happy National Grammar Day, all you grammar-heads! To celebrate, you might enjoy reading through the contributions to the annual Grammar Haiku Contest. (Congratulations to the winners — full results are here). And check out Jen Doll's piece for The Atlantic Wire about how best to celebrate the day (featuring an interview with our own Ben Zimmer) here.

Few of us get through a week without asking some version of the question, "What's happening?" There's always a lot going on and there are always a lot of people who want to know about it. Authorities want to know about it too, if what's going on threatens the safety or security of a population that is under their protection. A 21st-century way that authorities try to find out what's going on is called event detection.  Continue reading...

National Grammar Day is just around the corner — it falls on Monday, March 4th (march forth, get it?). Among the festivities is the annual Grammar Haiku Contest, overseen by editor Mark Allen. In the contest, verbivores vie for glory by submitting grammar- or usage-based haikus on Twitter. This year, I've been asked to be a judge.  Continue reading...