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  1. Evasive Maneuvers

     All-American Polypragmatists Get Sprizzlefracked
    Tue Jul 06 00:00:00 EDT 2010

    USA! USA! USA!

    Sorry for the chanting and the giant foam finger. I just wanted to establish that this is a thoroughly all-American column and provide a smooth transition to a term that brings together two of my top two interests: euphemisms and dogs.

  2. Word Count

     Realism: The Truth of Fiction
    Mon Jul 05 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    Michael Lydon, a well-known writer on popular music since the 1960s, has for many years also been writing about writing. Lydon's essays, written with a colloquial clarity, shed fresh light on familiar and not so familiar aspects of the writing art. Here Lydon shines a light on literary realism, the style by which writers "make the imaginary real and the real imaginary."

  3. Word Count

     Don't Read This: What Kindle's Highlights Tell Us About Popular Taste
    Fri Jul 02 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    Users of Amazon's e-reader, the Kindle, can not only highlight their favorite passages, they can see what everyone else is highlighting. University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron ponders the consequences.

  4. Language Lounge

     The Submodified World
    Thu Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    This month in the Language Lounge, we take a look at an underappreciated grammatical category: submodifiers. We hope that by shining the spotlight briefly on the term, we might win over a few converts, as well as alert readers to the nuances of the delightful class of words so designated.

  5. Blog Excerpts

     Worst Opening Lines, 2010
    Thu Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    In the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, competitors are asked to write incredibly bad opening sentences to incredibly bad novels. The 2010 winner for worst opening line features a comparison to "the world's thirstiest gerbil." Read the whole thing, and the rest of the results, here.

  6. Department of Word Lists

     Summertime, and My "O" Key Was Faded
    Wed Jun 30 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    Once again award-winning writer and educator Bob Greenman takes us on a journey through words selected from More Words That Make a Difference, a delightful book illustrating word usage with passages from the Atlantic Monthly.

  7. Lesson Plans

     The Three M's of Statistics: Mode, Median, Mean
    Wed Jun 30 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    How can students use the Visual Thesaurus to learn more about mode, median, and mean, and to apply their knowledge in solving some basic statistical math problems?

  8. Candlepower

     The Case of the Lay Flat Collar
    Tue Jun 29 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    In theory, advertising copy doesn't need to be elegant or even eloquent: its job is to make us pay attention and take action. But should it adhere to generally accepted rules of spelling, punctuation, grammar, and syntax?

  9. Blog Excerpts

     Oops!
    Tue Jun 29 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    For "Oops," the latest episode of WNYC's Radiolab, Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer shares examples of unfortunate search-and-replace errors. (Did you know Queen Elizabeth lays 2,000 eggs a day?) Listen here, and check out Language Log for further reading.

  10. Behind the Dictionary

     Called on the Carpet
    Mon Jun 28 00:00:00 EDT 2010
    Our resident linguist Neal Whitman has been thinking about the idiomatic expression "call (someone) on the carpet," in the news because of President Obama's firing of General Stanley McChrystal.
186 187 188 189 190 Displaying 1871-1880 of 3488 Results