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  1. Blog Excerpts

     National Punctuation Day

  2. Behind the Dictionary

     Tracking the Tide of Language Change
    Thu Sep 24 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    In part two of our interview with usage expert Bryan A. Garner, we talk about a new feature in the newly published third edition of his authoritative guide, Garner's Modern American Usage: the Language-Change Index, an innovative approach to evaluating how linguistic innovations spread and become accepted over time — for better or for worse.

  3. Announcements

     Introducing... Community Spelling Bees
    Wed Sep 23 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    The Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee has been an enormously popular feature since we launched it last year, with nearly three million words played thus far. And now we're rolling out a new way to play the Bee. We're introducing Community Spelling Bees, generated from word lists created by our subscribers. You can concoct your own spelling bee from any word list, or test your spelling knowledge of lists of words put together by other members of the Visual Thesaurus community.

  4. Candlepower

     Prostate With Grief
    Tue Sep 22 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Want to avoid using words that "sound somewhat like the ones intended but are ludicrously wrong in the context"? Let our Editorial Emergency team, Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner, help you to avoid coming off like the reincarnation of Mrs. Malaprop!

  5. Blog Excerpts

     Be Artwiculate!
    Tue Sep 22 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Artwiculate is a new Twitter-based Word of the Day competition that "helps clever people look clever and helps the rest of us learn new words." Use the Word of the Day in one of your tweets, and earn points if people like your style. Join in the fun here!

  6. Word Routes

     The Un-Believable Un-Verb
    Mon Sep 21 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    This past Sunday I had the opportunity to fill in once again for William Safire's "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine. This time I focused on how the prefix un- is getting pressed into service for all sorts of new verbs — particularly in the novel lingo of social networking, where following, friending, and favoriting can be instantly reversed by unfollowing, unfriending, and unfavoriting.

  7. Behind the Dictionary

     A Birthday Card for Dr. Johnson
    Fri Sep 18 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Today, September 18th, is Samuel Johnson's 300th birthday. The English essayist, poet, novelist, and witty conversationalist whom we know mostly through the anecdotes recorded by his friend and biographer, James Boswell, and his other friends, became famous in his day for his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. Dennis Baron, professor of English and linguistics at the University of Illinois, wishes Dr. Johnson a happy birthday — and a happy birthnight.

  8. Blog Excerpts

     The Apostrophantom
    Fri Sep 18 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    What's an apostrophantom? Stan Carey defines it as "an entity that absconds from the printed page, leaving only a ghostly trace of the apostrophe it once was." See it (and its relative the apostrofly) on Carey's Sentence First blog.

  9. Behind the Dictionary

     Garner on Plain Language
    Thu Sep 17 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    We've been talking to Bryan A. Garner about the new edition of Garner's Modern American Usage. Garner's book is not simply a compendium of do's and don't's: he also offers thoughtful essays advising writers on a wide variety of topics related to usage and style. Here we present Garner's essay on "Plain Language," a useful tonic to muddled and belabored prose.

  10. Behind the Dictionary

     Are You an Informed Prescriptivist?
    Wed Sep 16 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Bryan A. Garner wears many hats: he is a lawyer, a prolific lecturer, and an equally prolific author. Since 1995, he has been editor-in-chief of Black's Law Dictionary. He is also the author of Garner's Modern American Usage, a widely respected guide to contemporary usage that has just been published in its third edition. In this, the first of our two-part interview with Garner, we learn what it means to be an "informed prescriptivist," and why you should be wary of anyone who uses prior to instead of before.
218 219 220 221 222 Displaying 2191-2200 of 3488 Results