I was born organized. In fact, I'm the kind of nut-bar who writes a family meal plan once a week. As a child, I longed to sort our family's books by size and color (no one would let me!). Now that I'm the mom, my spice drawer is alphabetized.  Continue reading...

As the summer vacation season draws to a close, we hear about a new entry in the "X-cation" trend from Stan Carey, a professional editor from Ireland who writes entertainingly about the English language on his blog Sentence First.  Continue reading...

Have you used any of these words in your writing?

• Low-hanging fruit
• Learnings
• Efforting

They are buzzwords, popular industry words that people use to impress others.  Continue reading...

Did you hear about the professor of English who was removed by police from a New York Starbucks over a bagel-related language complaint? A more mild-mannered professor of English, Dennis Baron of the University of Illinois, investigates.  Continue reading...

Years ago, after I'd graduated from grade 12 and moved on to higher learning — English 100 and Philosophy 120 — I discovered that my university had a recording library. Hallelujah! Sounds quaint now, I know, but this was more than a generation before iPods, and I was ridiculously excited about getting to hear music via headphones.  Continue reading...

Here is the latest contribution from Michael Lydon on the writer's art.

My recent Visual Thesaurus essay, "Realism: The Truth of Fiction," set off a brisk debate in the comment section, the gist of which was, "Okay, Michael, realism is the truth of fiction, but what is this 'reality' that realism describes?"  Continue reading...

Stan Carey, a professional editor from Ireland, writes entertainingly about the English language on his blog Sentence First. Here Stan warns of the perilous ambiguity that can result from incautious use of the word that.  Continue reading...