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Blog Excerpts
For National Reading Month, Finding Vocabulary All Around Us
Thu Mar 20 00:00:00 EDT 2014
March is National Reading Month, and to commemorate the occasion, Time's Katy Steinmetz points to some great writing in small packages. She also checks in with our sister site, Vocabulary.com, for insights into vocabulary items in the texts she has chosen.
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Dog Eared
A Worldly Tour of the Oxford English Dictionary
Wed Jan 23 00:00:00 EST 2013
Late last year, there was some controversy in the media over a new book by Sarah Ogilvie about the Oxford English Dictionary's historical coverage of foreign words. The controversy turned out to be a tempest in a teapot, overshadowing the worthy book behind it. Here, Mark Peters has an appreciation of Ogilvie's Words of the World.
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Word Routes
When Typos are Set in Stone
Wed Feb 18 00:00:00 EST 2009
Every writer knows the feeling: you've just released a carefully edited piece of prose into circulation, and when you take another look you cringe at the sight of a typo that you missed. With online writing, typos can very often be fixed without anyone even noticing. Printed errors usually require red-faced corrections. But don't feel too bad: imagine if your typos were etched in granite for all to see!
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Word Routes
Of Clunkers and Junkers
Tue May 12 00:00:00 EDT 2009
Leaders in the U.S. House of Representative recently reached an agreement on a plan that would award vouchers of up to $4,500 to car owners who trade in older vehicles for more fuel-efficient models. The proposed legislation has a nickname that is memorably alliterative: "Cash for Clunkers." How did clunker become the favored American word for cars that are past their prime?
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Word Count
The End of The Affair: Last Lines of Novels and What They Tell Us
Wed Jun 18 00:00:00 EDT 2014
Last month I examined the first lines of novels and how authors use different strategies to capture the reader. This month I will be looking at last lines, the different kinds of messages they send, and how they can leave the reader feeling about the novel as a whole.
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Candlepower
Why Blog?
Mon Apr 09 00:00:00 EDT 2007
Say you're a journalist or a copywriter. Or you write novels or screenplays. Or you're an expert in your field who's working on a book. You've got deadlines to meet and bills to pay. So why would you add to your to-do list a blog -- an online journal no one pays you to write? For some very good reasons.
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Evasive Maneuvers
An Enhanced Look at the Euphemism of the Year
Wed Jan 05 00:00:00 EST 2011
The American Dialect Society’s annual meeting is coming up, and like all word nerds, I have Word of the Year fever. I won’t be in Pittsburgh for the meeting, but as the only euphemism columnist in this star quadrant, I want to make a case for euphemism of the year.
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Behind the Dictionary
When News Breaks, People Look it up in the Dictionary
Thu Mar 10 00:00:00 EST 2011
The Internet may be the new newspaper, but it's also become the new dictionary, and the two are inextricably linked: when news breaks, people rush online to find out what it means, and whether it's a noun or a verb.
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Language Lounge
Auspicious Pairs
Wed Jun 01 00:00:00 EDT 2011
The idea that we all have a soul mate out there somewhere is a popular cultural meme. Words seem to have soul mates as well, judging by the way that they mate for life. But such word unions are not always marked with ceremony, the way human ones are, and this makes some of the hookups a bit difficult to document and validate.
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Backstory
Katharine Weber, Author of "True Confections"
Fri Apr 09 00:00:00 EDT 2010
After an extended hiatus, we are pleased to announce the return of the Backstory series, in which authors share the secrets that inspired their fiction. In this installment we welcome back Katharine Weber, previously featured in the Backstory series for her novel Triangle. Here Katharine tells the story behind her new novel, True Confections.
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