Today is National Grammar Day, established in 2008 by Martha Brockenbrough. This year Mignon Fogarty, a.k.a. "Grammar Girl," is presiding. Here are some links to get you into the spirit.

National Grammar Day

Your Role in National Grammar Day

Ragan's Grammar Day Contest

Who Cares About National Grammar Day?

You're right on the money if you guess that this month's Lounge has something to do with nouns. Specifically, we've been digging up data on these very three nouns — person, place, thing — as a result of hearing a news snippet on the radio a few weeks ago, when a speaker characterized a situation as "a Kumbaya thing." Huh? What exactly is a Kumbaya thing?  Continue reading...

I've been seeing a lot of You lately. Not specifically you, dear reader, but You, the second-person advertorial. Yes, after years of talking about us, marketers have taken a shine to You. And they're eager to tell You just how important you are to their business.  Continue reading...

Earlier this month on Blog Excerpts we featured Alexandra D'Arcy's OUPblog post, "Ode to a Prescriptivist," which drew a sharp dichotomy between linguistic descriptivism and prescriptivism (personified by D'Arcy and her stern grandmother, respectively). D'Arcy's post inspired Stan Carey, a professional editor from Ireland, to write a typically thoughtful post on his blog, Sentence First.  Continue reading...

Michael Lydon, a well-known writer on popular music since the 1960s, has for many years also been writing about writing. Lydon's essays, written with a colloquial clarity, shed fresh light on familiar and not so familiar aspects of the writing art. Here Lydon looks at how writers from Shakespeare to Tolstoy have understood the power of bringing opposites together.  Continue reading...

Just in time for the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, linguist Neal Whitman has been thinking about a phrase that seems to guarantee victory: win-win situation. What does this "no-lose" proposition really mean?  Continue reading...