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  1. Teachers at Work

     Back From Slack: Reading "Our Town"
    Mon Aug 25 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    Hi, faithful Visual Thesaurus subscribers! I'm back! Did you have a good summer? Did you miss me? I missed writing this column for you. One of the nice things about having some time off from full-time teaching (besides the long days spent in pajamas and sleeping past 6 a.m.) was that I had an opportunity to think about the next direction to take my contributions to the "Teachers at Work" feature.

  2. Word Routes

     Mailbag Friday: "(Over)whelmed"
    Fri Aug 22 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    Welcome to Mailbag Friday, where we answer your burning questions about the origins of words and phrases. Ivete L. of New York, NY asks: "You can be overwhelmed, and I suppose you can even be underwhelmed. But why can't you be just plain whelmed?"

  3. Blog Excerpts

     Worst Opening Lines
    Thu Aug 21 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber..." So begins the winner of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which competitors write incredibly bad opening sentences to incredibly bad novels. Read the full results here.

  4. "Bad Language"

     Being Human is Overrated (But Not When You are Writing)
    Wed Aug 20 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    "Bill Gates once asked me, 'Could you make me more human?' I said, 'Being human is overrated.'"

    This doubly priceless quote comes from Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's former campaign strategist. (Hat tip: The Atlantic.)

    When it comes to writing copy, the human touch is still vital. Here are some tips for making copy that reads like a human being wrote it.

  5. Dog Eared

     So Bad It's Good
    Wed Aug 20 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    It's Bulwer-Lytton Contest time! Catch up on "the funniest opening sentences from the worst novels never written."

    It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

    Son of It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

    Bride of Dark and Stormy

    Dark and Stormy Rides Again

  6. Word Routes

     Really! Truly! Literally!
    Tue Aug 19 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    Yesterday the always entertaining "Editorial Emergency!" team of Simon Glickman and Julia Rubiner contributed a column on the misuse of the word literally. I keep tabs on people's pet peeves about English usage, and this is certainly one of the most widespread complaints currently in circulation. There's even a blog entirely devoted to "tracking abuse" of literally. I agree with Simon and Julia that using literally as an intensifier can often "strain credulity" when it's emphasizing a figurative expression like "a handful of Jewish members." But allow me to play devil's advocate for the much-maligned hyperbolic extension of literally. Like many usage bugaboos, it gets a bad rap while other similar perpetrators get off scot-free.

  7. Blog Du Jour

     EdTech Blogs
    Tue Aug 19 00:00:00 EDT 2008

    Here are a few exceptional blogs exploring the frontiers of education technology.

    Moving at the Speed of Creativity

    EdTechTalk

    Teach42

    2 Cents Worth

  8. Candlepower

     Red-Pen Pointer: She Literally Misused the Word
    Mon Aug 18 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    A Jewish friend wrote recently to tell me that her son had been invited to join a fraternity. "It's not a Jewish fraternity," she noted, "although they have a handful, literally, of Jewish members." Now, I've known some tiny Jews in my day (some of my best friends and family are tiny Jews), but I can't imagine even one fitting in someone's hand.

  9. Backstory

     Kristy Kiernan, Author of "Matters of Faith"
    Fri Aug 15 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    Matters of Faith is my second novel, and I'm delighted that the advance reviews have been fabulous. They've also surprised me with their clear understanding of exactly what I was trying to write about, not because I think critics are thick, but because I tend to think for years and years about a story, and am convinced that it's clear in my head, but am often concerned that I was able to get it down as clearly on the page. And now I get to try to actually explain that process? You're brave people, you really are.

  10. Behind the Dictionary

     Inside the OED, Part 3: Across the Alphabet
    Thu Aug 14 00:00:00 EDT 2008
    In parts one and two of our interview with Oxford English Dictionary editor at large Jesse Sheidlower, we talked about how the the OED is being transformed by new electronic research methods and the creation of a continually updated online edition. In our final installment, Jesse explains how OED editors are taking a fresh approach to revisions for the dictionary's Third Edition, focusing on particularly interesting entries from across the alphabet.
263 264 265 266 267 Displaying 2641-2650 of 3488 Results