What does a Hanseatic city have to do with America's most popular sandwich? How is the city of Mozart related to a ballpark favorite? And how did the names of these cities end up as common and productive English words? It's all because of Americans' love for an ethnic food that's so much a part of our diet that we might not even realize it's ethnic: namely, German cuisine.  Continue reading...

If you feel that lack of willpower has contributed to your difficulty with writing, then follow some tips from The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal. Writing coach Daphne Gray-Grant found inspiration from the book, even inspiring her to find the willpower to write this column.  Continue reading...

Lead is the name of a metallic element. Pronounced a different way, it's a verb meaning to take someone somewhere. But the past tense of the verb, led, sounds like the name of the metallic element. Confusing enough? Let Julia Rubiner clear up the situation, with a little help from rock legends Led Zeppelin.  Continue reading...

Communication — from the Latin "cum unio," union with — is the big answer humans have come up with to break us out of lifelong solitary confinement and link us up with other beings. Communication's content, the specific information sent or received, can be of life-or-death importance, but beneath the content, there's the bond, the union with, that communication creates, whether the content is "I love you" or "I hate you."  Continue reading...

We love to "range." When describing a new shopping mall, for example, an article might say: "It has everything from a roller coaster for the kiddies to high-end boutiques for fashionistas." The "from" and "to" implies a "range," and a range implies that "everything" will be along that line. But the only thing the roller coaster and boutique have in common is that they are inside this new mall. It’s a "false range."  Continue reading...

We welcome back James Harbeck for another installment of his "Word Tasting Notes." Here he considers the subtle distinction between a "bookstore" and a "bookshop."  Continue reading...

Novelist and journalist Jennifer Miller has been thinking about a recent scandal involving New York high school students cheating on their exams. She argues that one thing is clear from the scandal itself, and the reactions it engendered: we live in a culture of shortcuts, with ill-formed thoughts expressed in equally ill-formed language.  Continue reading...