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  1. Blog Excerpts

     "Eggcorns" Signaled Out for a New Leash on Life
    Wed Jul 18 00:00:00 EDT 2012
    Online since 2005, the Eggcorn Database is a repository for non-standard reshapings of words and phrases that make sense in a new way, like writing the word acorn as eggcorn. There are currently 641 entries in the database, many of them contributed by Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer. Three of his recent entries are signal out (for single out), new leash on life (for new lease on life), and when all is set and done (for ...said and done).

  2. Candlepower

     How Words Become Names (Part Two)
    Mon Nov 26 00:00:00 EST 2007
    In Part One of this series, I talked about three common ways to create product and company names: from people's names, from connecting two words, and by creating a blend or portmanteau. As naming exercises go, those three techniques are among the most basic. In this installment we move into Intermediate Naming: techniques that require a bit more mastery of the workings of language but can reward you with distinctive, memorable names.

  3. Language Lounge

     Mr. Grice, Meet Mr. Miranda
    Wed Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016
    This month marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Miranda v. Arizona. The decision, handed down on June 13, 1966, ushered vocabulary into American English that is in nearly everyone's lexicon today, including Miranda Rights, Miranda Warnings, and even the verb mirandize, which means "recite the Miranda warnings (to a person under arrest)". Nearly 10 years after Miranda, philosopher of language Paul Grice began to develop his theory of conversational implicature and the Gricean Maxims that are part and parcel of it.

  4. Teachers at Work

     Testing is a Sport (and Other Teaching Analogies)
    Wed Sep 22 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    The past week or so, while I wrestled with trying to tackle another column on the five-paragraph essay, I found myself monitoring all those little things I say in class. So, as the school year begins to rev up into high gear, I thought maybe something more lighthearted would be fun.

  5. Backstory

     Martha Southgate, author of "Third Girl From the Left"
    Sat Dec 30 00:00:00 EST 2006

    Third Girl from the Left started as the story of a woman who failed -- and it stayed that way. The short story that later grew into my most recent novel was quite a surprise to me -- but as I've continued to write novels, I've come to believe that that's how you know it's working. I wrote the story "Show Business" (anthologized in Mending The World) in graduate school. It in turn, had grown out of a short exercise that I did at a place called the Writers Studio in New York City, where I've lived for the past 21 years. Here's the first line of the story: "Every night, I dream of actors." And here's the first line of the novel: "My mother was an actress." In both cases, I went on to tell the story of an actress in the films of the 1970s's that are commonly referred to now as blaxploitation. Actually, the person telling the story was her daughter, who was (I like to think) rueful, wise and a bit more clear sighted than her mother.

  6. Dog Eared

     Stats Meet Lit in an Insightful New Book About Writing
    Wed Apr 19 00:00:00 EDT 2017
    Anyone interested in literature or becoming a better writer will find something to like here: Blatt doesn't just shine a light on writing, he lets in a whole new area of the electromagnetic spectrum.

  7. Word Count

     Glints of Good Writing in Prose
    Tue Sep 29 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    Since fiction writers can conjure up big chunks of a text by consulting only their imaginations, we often think of fiction as more personal than nonfiction. But when reading the most fact-based nonfiction, I and many readers still want to connect one-to-one, soul-to-soul, with the writer as well as with the characters.

  8. Word Count

     Punctuation Point: The Direct Address Comma
    Thu Apr 22 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    Erin Brenner of Right Touch Editing provides "bite-sized lessons to improve your writing" on her engaging blog The Writing Resource. We previously heard from Erin about the serial comma, and now she offers tips for using commas for direct address.

  9. Weekly Worksheet

     Getting the Hang of Idioms
    Tue Dec 07 00:00:00 EST 2010
    Idioms can act as roadblocks and detours on the road to learning English — for ELL students and native speakers alike. In this "Idiom Workout," we chose some idioms that can be found in the Visual Thesaurus database and that have "idiom cousins" with the same starter words (i.e., get the..., in a..., on the...).

  10. Word Routes

     "Not to Put Too Fine a Point Upon It": How Dickens Helped Shape the Lexicon
    Fri Feb 03 00:00:00 EST 2012
    With the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens approaching (get your party hats ready for February 7th!), it's a good time to gauge the enormous impact he had on the English language. By many accounts he was the most widely read author of the Victorian era, and no writer since has held a candle to him in terms of popularity, prolificness, and influence in spreading new forms of the language — both highbrow and lowbrow.
120 121 122 123 124 Displaying 1211-1220 of 3460 Results