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  1. Teachers at Work

     The Enduring Impact of English Teachers on Students
    Tue Apr 28 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    In my last column, I asked several multi-published authors this question: What advice do you wish your English teacher would have given you? Now, in this column, I'm going to share the answers to the second question I asked: What was the most important thing you learned in your English class that had a lasting impact?

  2. Word Count

     Why We "Stave Off" Colds: It Started With Wine
    Wed Apr 22 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    "I'm trying to stave off a cold," a friend said. Another responded, "Wine will work for that." Neither probably realized that, indeed, to "stave off" has its origins in wine, or something like wine.

  3. Candlepower

     Thanks for Sharing?
    Wed Apr 15 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    Earlier this year the Associated Press Stylebook issued one of its frequent updates. "Do not use ride-sharing" to refer to services such as Uber and Lyft, the stylebook counseled; instead, use the modifier ride-booking or ride-hailing. It was the AP's quixotic bid to stem the increasingly common use of sharing to refer to a wide range of activities that are not quite as selfless as the word share may suggest.

  4. Word Count

     Why Do So Many Academics Write Badly?
    Mon Apr 13 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    A group of doctors paid me to edit a report a few years back. Their work — not a medical study, but a document aimed at making a political point — horrified me. When I ran it through readability stats, it earned a grade 14 rating.

  5. Word Count

     Writing and Philosophy
    Thu Apr 09 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    Writing and reading philosophy are two human activities famous for their inherent difficulty. If philosophy is thinking about thinking, writing philosophy is writing about thinking about thinking, and reading philosophy is reading writing about thinking about thinking.

  6. Word Routes

     The Devilish Origins of "Pumpernickel"
    Mon Apr 06 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    For the latest installment of the Slate podcast Lexicon Valley, I take a look at the peculiar history of the word pumpernickel — a kind of German bread with an origin that turns out to be downright devilish.

  7. Evasive Maneuvers

     Special, Authentic Distractions
    Fri Apr 03 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    In The Atlantic, Peter Beinhart called out a euphemism that was somehow common and under-the-radar at the same time: "Newspaper editors, lend me your ears: Please, never allow the phrase 'muscular foreign policy' to blight your pages again."

  8. Language Lounge

     The Continent of Lost Languages
    Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    Imagine yourself among the travelers to North America 500 or more years ago, arriving initially by ship as the earliest European explorers did, but equipped with the trained sensibility of a modern linguist.

  9. Blog Excerpts

     Ben Zimmer at ACES on "the Joys of Getting It Right"
    Tue Mar 31 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    As keynote speaker at the 2015 American Copy Editors Society meeting, lexicographer Ben Zimmer showed off the resources in the Vocabulary.com Dictionary as part of a talk on "Nitpickery, Debunkage, and the Joys of Getting It Right." Not surprisingly, ACES attendees live-tweeting the address were more likely to take note of Zimmer's singing, rapping, and discussion of language anachronisms in "Mad Men" and "Downton Abbey."

  10. Word Routes

     A Heart-Stopping Finish in the 2015 Crossword Showdown
    Mon Mar 30 00:00:00 EDT 2015
    At the 2015 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, it came down to a neck-and-neck battle between Dan Feyer and Tyler Hinman, the two titans of speed-solving. And in an absolutely heart-stopping finish, Dan beat Tyler by half a second.
41 42 43 44 45 Displaying 421-430 of 3488 Results