At age 56, I'm not yet a senior. But I'm starting to become constantly surprised by how young other people are — doctors, CEOs, even heads of government (the president of Kosovo is only 38, the president of Finland is 42 and even Barack Obama, at 52, is younger than me.)  Continue reading...

We're happy to introduce the first in a series of tips on usage and style from the inimitable Grammar Girl, a.k.a. Mignon Fogarty. First up: how do you punctuate do and don't when the words are pluralized?  Continue reading...

If you have any interest in apologies, language as performance, or politics, you'll enjoy Edwin L. Battistella's Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apologies. This is a terrific book, full of compelling examples and expert analysis. Reading this book will not only help you become better at making a mea culpa: you'll become a sharper observer of other people's apologies too.  Continue reading...

What makes a good column? Like any piece of writing, a column needs a beginning, middle, and end — here starts the middle of this one. Beginning with a joke, as I did above, an intriguing question, or an outlandish statement may hook readers, but once you've got 'em hooked, you need to give 'em ideas worth listening to, or they'll quickly yawn and turn the page.  Continue reading...

Days of Future Past: It's not just the subtitle of the new X-Men movie that recently opened; it's an invitation to explore some of the lesser-traveled corridors in the English verb tense system.  Continue reading...

Context collapse is cited by researchers as a reason friendships fall apart online, with only the Borg mind of Mark Zuckerberg to connect them. That certainly makes sense. If the only context we share is that we were in the same fourth-grade English class, and the teacher tossed the same erasers at us for talking in class, and we didn't even like each other much then, our context is thinner than a supermodel.  Continue reading...

In reimagining the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty, Disney had a great tool in their arsenal: the classic villain name "Maleficent," now elevated to title character.  Continue reading...