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  1. Contest Corner

     Six Degrees of the Visual Thesaurus: Winners!
    Thu Aug 20 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    The goal of the latest competition in Contest Corner was to link the words summer and break by clicking on the fewest number of related words in their Visual Thesaurus word maps.

  2. Word Routes

     Learning to Love the Semicolon
    Wed Aug 19 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Yesterday, our Editorial Emergency crew Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner offered up a great antidote to semicolon-phobia. "Once you understand their appeal," they advise, "semicolons can be addictive." Simon and Julia aren't the only ones singing the praises of this humble punctuation mark. Lately we've seen surprising expressions of affection for the semicolon, from New York to Paris.

  3. Candlepower

     Red Pen Diaries: Semicolons Are Not Just for Winking
    Tue Aug 18 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    Admit it — you're afraid of semicolons.

    Lots of folks, even professional writers, will cop to this phobia. No fear? Prove it (or engage in a little immersion therapy) by reviewing the following pairs of independent clauses and identifying the ones that would be better served by a semicolon than the period you see there now.

  4. Teachers at Work

     Minor Heresies of Modern Style
    Mon Aug 17 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    University of Missouri writing teacher Scott Garson takes a look back at a classic essay by George Orwell to see what lessons it still has for students today.

    Have you reread Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" recently? The awesomeness of that essay is undiminished. The relevance to college writers? Up for debate.

  5. Word Routes

     Mailbag Friday: "Caveat"
    Fri Aug 14 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    Laura C. of Wantage, N.J. writes in with today's Mailbag Friday question:

    Co-workers keep using the word caveat around work and it's driving me crazy. People will say, "This is a great plan, but the caveat is..." (meaning 'the hook or catch is...'). Sometimes they'll use it as a transitive verb: "Let's caveat that proposed media spend." Is this really acceptable?

  6. Behind the Dictionary

     The Universality of Swearing
    Thu Aug 13 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Earlier this week we spoke to Stephen Dodson, co-author of Uglier than a Monkey's Armpit, a compendium of curses and insults from around the world. By way of introduction to this lively and engaging book, here is a (lightly expurgated!) letter to readers from Stephen, musing on the boundless creativity of the "gems of abuse" he has collected.

  7. Blog Excerpts

     "Fail" Ever Upwards
    Thu Aug 13 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Last Sunday, Visual Thesaurus executive producer Ben Zimmer filled in for William Safire's "On Language" column in the New York Times Magazine, writing all about the word fail in its current use as a noun and interjection. Hear Ben talk more about the success of fail in an interview on the NPR show Future Tense.

  8. Word Count

     Lessons from Fitzy's Grandma
    Wed Aug 12 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    It was the woman's voice. Mellifluous. It made a small thrill run down my spine. She sounded like a college professor, accustomed to speaking to a roomful of students, or perhaps a good doctor, well educated and compassionate, or maybe even a newsreader, clear, calm and unflustered.

  9. Blog Excerpts

     Stephen Fry: So Wrong It's Right
    Wed Aug 12 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    British comedian and public intellectual Stephen Fry has kicked off a new series of his BBC Radio 4 program on the English language, "Fry's English Delight." In "So Wrong It's Right," Fry "examines how 'wrong' English can become right English." Intrigued? You can hear the whole thing online, at least for the next week.

  10. Behind the Dictionary

     Curses and Insults Around the World
    Tue Aug 11 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    Want to insult someone in Japanese? Try misokakku ('scum of soya paste'). In Polish, try motyla noga ('butterfly's leg'), and in Turkish, muhallebi çocuğu ('child of pudding'). These and hundreds of other colorful put-downs from around the world can be found in the delightful new book, Uglier Than a Monkey's Armpit by Stephen Dodson and Dr. Robert Vanderplank. We spoke about the book with Dodson, known to many language lovers by his nom de blog, Languagehat.
222 223 224 225 226 Displaying 2231-2240 of 3488 Results