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  1. Backstory

     Michelle Richmond, author of "Dream of the Blue Room"
    Sat Jun 24 00:00:00 EDT 2006

    Dream of the Blue Room began with a classified ad in the employment section of the New York Times. I was living on the Upper West Side, and I'd just quit my fatally boring cubicle job at Ogilvy New York City. Desperate for a paycheck, I answered an ad for an English tutor, and a couple of days later I was being interviewed by Tony, the president of a Chinese trading company in a posh apartment in midtown. We sealed the deal on the spot. For a bit more than I'd been making at the PR firm, I would accompany Tony to restaurants, farmers' markets, art galleries, design stores -- anywhere that he could learn new vocabulary.

    My first day on the job, I assembled a vacuum cleaner in Tony's apartment. My task: to decode the instructions. I tried to explain to Tony that instruction booklets for home appliances do not represent the best of American English, but that did not compute. Three hours after we began, we stood admiring the partially-functioning vacuum cleaner. That's when Tony hit me with the news: "I go to China next Monday. You go Wednesday."

  2. Behind the Dictionary

     "Fake News" Is the Real Word of the Year
    Sun Jan 07 15:00:00 EST 2018
    In the past year, fake news has gained currency as well as a new sense: Not only can it signify "disinformation or falsehoods spread as real news" – but it has also come to mean "actual news that is claimed to be untrue" if it's perceived as unflattering.

  3. Candlepower

     Into the Past
    Thu Nov 19 09:00:00 EST 2020
    From nostalgia to fauxstalgia, from golden oldie to Before Time, here are some of the ways we talk about days gone by.

  4. Teachers at Work

     Wetting Feet at a High School Journalism Workshop
    Wed Aug 29 00:00:00 EDT 2012
    At a summer journalism workshop, young writers were thrown into the deep end of the pool but came up with impressive results. Bob Greenman recounts how the high school students that he taught proved up to the task of becoming dogged reporters.

  5. Teachers at Work

     Helping Your Students Spend $80,000: The College Search in Your Classroom
    Fri Nov 09 00:00:00 EST 2007

    Shannon Reed is an award-winning playwright who teaches high school English to a large pack of bright young women at a private school on the beach in Queens, New York. She graciously contributed this column:

    If you're a teacher, you've no doubt already have made the following observation: the two emotions that truly motivate a student are genuine interest... and fear. Many of us no doubt experienced this phenomenon ourselves when we were in school. I remember being motivated to do good work in three classes in high school: English and History, which I genuinely loved, and Earth Science, where the fearsome Mr. Colsun looked ever-ready to explode into a hellish ball of flame that would singe my eyebrows and ruin my complexion if I mislabeled the periodical table one more time. Mr. Colsun, I wish you ill, but to this day, I still know were mercury goes.

  6. Teachers at Work

     The Same Old Song, But with a Different Meaning Since We've Been Gone
    Mon Aug 24 00:00:00 EDT 2009

    Shannon Reed wraps up her summer of delving into literary and cinematic depictions of the classroom with appreciations of Half Nelson, Election, and The Class.

    It's that time of year, folks. I've been watching the Facebook status updates as summer winds down for my friends across the country. First comes a note that there's only one week of summer left, then a sad little post about the last day of break, and then an update about the first day of school. Parents, teachers, students, people who can't wait for all of us to clear out of Starbucks between 9 and 3 — we all know it's here.

  7. Department of Word Lists

     Manhattan Magic
    Mon Jan 25 00:00:00 EST 2010
    These memories of Manhattan in the summer of 1956 employ a number of words that appear in my book "More Words That Make a Difference," with illustrative sentences from the Atlantic Monthly.

  8. Blog Excerpts

     Back in Black: On the Origins of "Black Friday"
    Fri Nov 28 00:00:00 EST 2014
    On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, Americans kick off the holiday shopping season with a bang. We look back to a Word Routes column by lexicographer Ben Zimmer exploring the origins of the phrase "Black Friday." It is not, as many believe, the day when retailers' balance sheets change from red to black.

  9. Word Routes

     Powers of Ten
    Thu Jun 11 00:00:00 EDT 2009
    I've been thinking a lot lately about our decimal system and the way that exponential powers of ten capture our imagination. In part, that's because I've been called upon by various news outlets this week to counter a claim that the English language is adding its millionth word. But it's also because of a humbler, more personal milestone: what you're reading right here is (drumroll, please) my one hundredth Word Routes column.

  10. Blog Excerpts

     Back in Black: On the Origins of "Black Friday"
    Thu Nov 28 00:00:00 EST 2013
    On Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, Americans kick off the holiday shopping season with a bang. We look back to a Word Routes column by lexicographer Ben Zimmer exploring the origins of the phrase "Black Friday." It is not, as many believe, the day when retailers' balance sheets change from red to black.
4 5 6 7 8 Displaying 51-60 of 103 Results