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  1. Word Routes

     The Return of the Grammar Haiku Contest
    Thu Feb 28 00:00:00 EST 2013
    National Grammar Day is just around the corner — it falls on Monday, March 4th (march forth, get it?). Among the festivities is the annual Grammar Haiku Contest, overseen by editor Mark Allen. In the contest, verbivores vie for glory by submitting grammar- or usage-based haikus on Twitter. This year, I've been asked to be a judge.

  2. Blog Excerpts

     How Language Shapes The Gun Debate
    Thu Feb 28 00:00:00 EST 2013
    On NPR's Morning Edition, Ari Shapiro reported on how the debate over gun restrictions in the United States is powerfully framed by terms such as "gun control" and "gun rights." Our own Ben Zimmer is interviewed about how language shapes such political debates. Listen to the segment here, and check out a list of "loaded words" from the gun debate here.

  3. Blog Excerpts

     Getting the Vocab Right in Historical Dramas: Does It Matter?
    Wed Feb 27 00:00:00 EST 2013
    On the NPR program "Fresh Air," Berkeley linguist Geoff Nunberg turned to a topic that is one of our favorites: assessing the linguistic accuracy of period dramas, whether it's Downton Abbey, Mad Men, Lincoln or Argo. In an age obsessed with authenticity, Nunberg argues, we often choose to nitpick over the wrong details.

  4. Lesson Plans

     Introducing Students to Literary Nonfiction
    Tue Feb 26 00:00:00 EST 2013
    This lesson introduces students to the genre of literary nonfiction and has them analyze the literary elements of a cell description in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

  5. Word Count

     The Power of Vague Qualifiers
    Tue Feb 26 00:00:00 EST 2013
    If writing teachers have any absolutely verboten, don't-go-there, not-on-your-life, no-no rule, it is: "Avoid vague qualifiers!" Yet in recently re-reading The Bulwark, Theodore Dreiser's last and perhaps greatest novel, I began to see a value in vague qualifiers that I'd never seen before.

  6. Word Count

     Forward-Looking: Ways of Telling the Future
    Mon Feb 25 00:00:00 EST 2013
    We have weather "forecasts," budget "projections," attempts at earthquake "predictions." Most dictionaries say those are all synonyms for one another. So why doesn't the nightly weather report call them "predictions" or "projections"?

  7. Contest

     The Visual Thesaurus Crossword Puzzle: February Edition
    Fri Feb 22 00:00:00 EST 2013
    It's George Washington's birthday, so this month's puzzle has a Washingtonian theme. Figure out the word chain and you could win a Visual Thesaurus T-shirt!

  8. Word Routes

     Letting "Sequester" Fester
    Thu Feb 21 00:00:00 EST 2013
    CNN Money has announced that it will "steer clear" of the word sequestration, along with its snappier cousin sequester, in reporting on Capitol Hill budget negotiations, branding it esoteric jargon. That might be a good move, considering that, according to a recent poll, two-thirds of voters don't even know what sequester means. How did we get saddled with this bit of Beltway lingo?

  9. Word Count

     Green-Eyed and Garrulous: Envy as a Vocabulary Builder
    Wed Feb 20 00:00:00 EST 2013
    Jan Schreiber, a noted poet, critic, and translator, writes: "It's an old phenomenon — reaching for the fancy word instead of the plain one, and coming up with a word whose meaning is not quite what the speaker intended. We often smile at those who, as H. W. Fowler memorably put it, 'go wordfowling with a blunderbuss.'"

  10. Word Count

     When Adverbs Fall Flat
    Tue Feb 19 00:00:00 EST 2013
    Adverbs end in -ly and modify verbs. At least, that's what we're taught in elementary school. It's a fair start, but we soon learn that adverbs are more complicated than the rule implies. For a start, adverbs can also modify adjectives, other adverbs, phrases, and clauses. And they don't have to end in -ly, either.
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