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  1. Blog Excerpts

     A Twitter Style Guide
    Fri Feb 13 00:00:00 EST 2009

    The short-form genre of Twitter (online messages of no more than 140 characters) has truly arrived: it now has its very own style guide. The New York Times Bits blog reports.

  2. Word Routes

     Happy Lincoln/Darwin Day!
    Thu Feb 12 00:00:00 EST 2009
    Today marks the bicentennial of two of the most influential minds of the modern age: Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Besides sharing a birthday, Lincoln and Darwin also shared an eloquence with the English language, despite the very different prose styles of their work. In a new book, Angels and Ages, Adam Gopnik argues that this shared eloquence allowed them to impart their world-changing visions. But what about on a more basic level, that of the individual word? What lasting contributions did Lincoln and Darwin make to the English lexicon?

  3. Behind the Dictionary

     A Jaunt Through the Alphabet with Roy Blount, Jr.
    Wed Feb 11 00:00:00 EST 2009
    Recently we had the opportunity to talk to Roy Blount, Jr. about his entertaining new book Alphabet Juice, subtitled "The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory." In this idiosyncratic dictionary, Blount distills a lifelong love affair with the English language into pithy observations on everything from amazing ("Can't anybody say 'wonderful' or 'splendid' or even 'far-out' anymore?") to zoology ("Pronounced zo-ology. Not zoo-ology. Look at the letters. Count the o's"). Blount told us about some of his inspirations for the book and explained how language can be loose without being imprecise.

  4. Word Routes

     Hold the Mayo!
    Tue Feb 10 00:00:00 EST 2009
    Yesterday's Visual Thesaurus Word of the Day was mayonnaise, and the entry for it was a bit too terse for some readers: "This French word has enjoyed a handful of spellings since its first 19th-century appearance and merits an etymology of nearly 300 words in the OED, the gist of which is 'origin uncertain.'" There's nothing less satisfying in an etymological explanation than "origin uncertain," so let's explore what's behind those tantalizing words.

  5. Word Count

     A Writing Lesson from Richard Nixon
    Mon Feb 09 00:00:00 EST 2009
    I was in high school when former U.S. president Richard Nixon resigned. I don't remember seeing him give his official TV farewell, but I strongly recall his gravelly voice, his pursed lips and his shuffling gait. I devoured All the President's Men when it was published in 1974 and saw the movie starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as reporters Woodward and Bernstein when it was released two years later.

  6. Word Routes

     Mailbag Friday: "Taking Your Lumps"
    Fri Feb 06 00:00:00 EST 2009
    Greg H. of Boston, MA writes in with today's Mailbag Friday question: "When President Obama was interviewed about Tom Daschle's decision to bow out of the nomination process for Health and Human Services, he gave this mea culpa: 'Did I screw up in this situation? Absolutely. I'm willing to take my lumps.' I understand he means that he's taking the blame for the situation, but where do the 'lumps' come from?"

  7. Blog Du Jour

     Authors@Google
    Thu Feb 05 00:00:00 EST 2009

    When authors come to Google to give informal talks, videos get posted for all the world to see. Here are some language-related talks you might enjoy.

    Erin McKean

    Tom Dalzell

    Geoffrey Nunberg

    Steven Pinker

    Noam Chomsky

  8. Evasive Maneuvers

     Thought Identification and Other Potential Future Feelings
    Wed Feb 04 00:00:00 EST 2009

    Recently, my friend Diane started feeling nauseous and passing out. After a scary trip to the emergency room, she learned the problem was her heart: it kept stopping every once in a while, so she was strongly advised to get a pacemaker. (She now has one and is doing great, thank Zeus.)

    But when Diane was debating what to do, a doctor not only came down in favor of pacemaker insertion, but a certain word choice as well:

    "Oh, it's not a surgery," the doctor said. "It's only a procedure."

  9. Word Routes

     Buddy Holly, Wordsmith
    Tue Feb 03 00:00:00 EST 2009
    Today marks the 50th anniversary of the passing of Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash along with Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson. Rather than glumly mope about "The Day the Music Died," as Don McLean dubbed the tragedy in the well-worn song, "American Pie," I'd prefer to reflect on what a tremendously gifted singer/songwriter Holly was. He had a beautiful touch with the English language (sung in his signature hiccupy style), and in his lyrics he found ways to take familiar words and phrases and innovatively shape them into his own. Here are my brief thoughts on the language of four of his songs.

  10. Language Lounge

     Safe Search is Off
    Mon Feb 02 00:00:00 EST 2009
    Is a picture worth a thousand words? Possibly, but if your job is to assign words to pictures, it would be good if you could reduce that number a bit, and perhaps focus on quality rather than quantity. This month in the Lounge we've been thinking about the relationship between words and pictures, while in recovery from a brief addiction to Google Image Labeler.
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