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  1. Word Routes

     Mailbag Friday: "Dude"
    Fri Sep 19 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    VT subscriber Kcecelia of San Francisco, CA writes in about yesterday's Visual Thesaurus Word of the Day: dude. She observes that the word's current usage has little to do with its more historical sense, "a man who is much concerned with his dress and appearance":

    Last month a 20-something man in an Oregon gas station punctuated his conversation with me with references to me as dude. I am a 55-year-old woman. Also, people say duuuude as an exclamation or interjection. I sometimes say dude myself in a more joking manner to people I am with who are sprinkling it liberally into their conversation. I do not mean that they are a fop or a dandy.

    Especially now that Todd Palin, husband of Gov. Sarah Palin, is in the news as Alaska's "First Dude," this is a good time to reflect on the peculiar history of this all-American word.

  2. Word Count

     David Crystal on the Myth of Texting
    Thu Sep 18 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    David Crystal is one of the most well-respected writers on language and communication, having published an impressive array of books from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language to The Fight for English. His latest, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8, tackles the facts and fictions of text messaging. In the first of our three-part interview, he explains how persistent myths about the dangers of texting, particularly in his native Great Britain, compelled him to write a book laying out the empirical realities of this novel form of communication.

  3. Blog Excerpts

     Tributes to Wallace
    Thu Sep 18 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    David Foster Wallace left a lasting impact on his fellow writers. Edward Champion's Reluctant Habits and McSweeney's Internet Tendency have collected scores of touching tributes.

  4. Dog Eared

     The Best of D.F.W.
    Wed Sep 17 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    The late David Foster Wallace will be remembered as a master of many literary forms: novel, short story, essay. Here's some of his best work.

    Infinite Jest

    Girl With Curious Hair

    Consider the Lobster

  5. Word Routes

     Blaming Fannie and Freddie
    Tue Sep 16 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    As news from the financial world gets bleaker and bleaker, two scapegoats have emerged in the ongoing credit crunch: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Here's a sampling of headlines from the Wall Street Journal opinion page: "Fannie Mayhem," "Fannie and Freddie's Enablers," "Frantic Fannie," "Fannie Mae Ugly," "Freddie Krueger Mac." Someone unfamiliar with the American economic system might think that Fannie and Freddie are the new Bonnie and Clyde, shooting up banks with reckless abandon. How did the crisis in the banking sector get so personal?

  6. Blog Du Jour

     David Foster Wallace, RIP
    Tue Sep 16 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    The passing of acclaimed writer David Foster Wallace has triggered remembrances from many literary bloggers.

    The Millions

    A Life Divided

    Omnivoracious

  7. Candlepower

     For Effective Copywriting, Focus on Your Customer, Not on Your Company
    Mon Sep 15 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    A while ago I ran across a website written by a management consultant whose target audience included high-level executives. The home page copy was full of "I, I, I," as in "I do this, I do that, I was educated here, I've worked for these companies," blah, blah, blah.

    Here's the plain truth: no one cares about you or your company.

  8. Backstory

     Maryann Miller, Author of "One Small Victory"
    Fri Sep 12 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    One day while reading the newspaper I happened across a small, four-inch item about a woman who infiltrated a drug ring and helped bring down a major distributor in a small town in Michigan. She was a single mother with several children, had no background in law enforcement, and had just lost her oldest son in a car accident. The news story did not give many details about the woman or how she managed to get on the drug task force. It only said that she did so at great personal risk.

  9. Word Routes

     Of Pigs and Silk and Lipstick
    Thu Sep 11 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    The latest political kerfuffle revolves around an expression Barack Obama used at a campaign event on Tuesday: "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Putting aside the accusation from John McCain's camp that this had something to do with vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, the saying has a fascinating historical background, and I had a chance to delve into this history for Slate's "Explainer".

  10. Blog Excerpts

     Authors on YouTube
    Thu Sep 11 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    Jack Kerouac, Zora Neale Hurston, Vladimir Nabokov, William Burroughs, Sylvia Plath: they're all on YouTube, believe it or not. The Guardian has the full list of YouTube's greatest arts footage.

260 261 262 263 264 Displaying 2611-2620 of 3488 Results