Search the Site

Your Search:
49 50 51 52 53 Displaying 501-510 of 3488 Results

  1. Word Count

     Don't Confuse Astrologers and Astronomers!
    Thu Oct 30 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    Here's the latest in our series of quick tips on usage and style shared by Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Mignon points out a common confusion that might leave you star-crossed.

  2. Word Count

     Playing Ball and Playing with the Language
    Wed Oct 29 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    Ripped. Slapped. Poked. Swatted. If you've been watching the World Series, you've probably heard some of these verbs for hitting a baseball. Sports can involve a lot of repetition, so to make it different and exciting, sportscasters often use a wide variety of terms to describe the action. It is this variety that makes sports lingo an interesting object of study.

  3. Blog Excerpts

     Ben Zimmer Wins LSA's Linguistics Journalism Award
    Wed Oct 29 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    The Linguistic Society of America today named Vocabulary.com-Visual Thesaurus Executive Producer Ben Zimmer as the first recipient of the Linguistics Journalism Award. The award honors "the journalist whose work best represents linguistics" during the past 12 months. In addition to his stellar work on Vocabulary.com and the Visual Thesaurus, the LSA singled out Zimmer's language column in the Wall Street Journal, as well as "articles on linguistic topics for the Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Slate's 'Lexicon Valley' blog, and Language Log."

  4. Word Count

     The Life and Death of Fictional Characters
    Mon Oct 27 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    For ten years I've given my writing students at St. John's University this exercise: I ask each student to stand up and say, truthfully, their name, where they live, and something that they like to do. When they've all done that, I ask them to stand again and this time make up a name, a place where they live, and something they like to do.

  5. Teachers at Work

     You Mean I Really Have to Write This?
    Fri Oct 24 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    Once, a long time ago, my English III class began whining when I assigned an essay. "Why does it have to be five paragraphs? Why do we have to write this?" Without addressing the latter question, I answered very easily, "Let's make it ten."

  6. Word Count

     Heavy Lifting and Shaving Yaks: Corporate Lingo
    Wed Oct 22 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    Anyone who works for a large organization (or maybe even a small one) knows that certain phrases grab people's imagination and spread through the organization. If you're like me, you go to meetings and presentations and expressions keep popping up, which is very distracting — you try to listen to what the speaker is saying, but you end up paying more attention to how they're saying it.

  7. Word Routes

     A "Snark" Hunt on Lexicon Valley
    Mon Oct 20 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    For my latest appearance on Slate's Lexicon Valley podcast, I quizzed the hosts Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield about a five-letter word that seemed to spring out of nowhere in online usage about a decade ago but in fact has roots that are centuries old: snark.

  8. Candlepower

     The "Ish" List: One Suffix to Rule Them All (Sort of)
    Fri Oct 17 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    When the ABC-TV sitcom "Black-ish" debuted in September, it joined a growing set of titles and brands built on the odd little ish suffix. There's a lot more to ish than "sort of" and "more or less." Here's a brand-by-brand rundown of the ish spectrum.

  9. Blog Excerpts

     Happy Dictionary Day!
    Thu Oct 16 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    October 16th is National Dictionary Day, commemorating the birth of the great lexicographer Noah Webster. Celebrate by delving into our archive for articles about Webster and the world of dictionaries. A sampling: "Noah Webster at 250: A Visionary or a Crackpot?," "The Case for Dictionary Day," "The Birth of Webster's Dictionary," and "Dictionary Day and the Quest for All-American Words."

  10. Word Count

     What Are the "Criteria" for Plurals from Greek?
    Wed Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2014
    It's time once again for the latest in our series of quick tips on usage and style shared by Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl. Here Mignon clarifies how to pluralize some nouns derived from Greek (sometimes by way of Latin).
49 50 51 52 53 Displaying 501-510 of 3488 Results