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Blog Excerpts

How Old is "@"?

The now-familiar symbol "@" is nearly five centuries old: it shows up in a 1536 letter from an Italian merchant. (Back then it was used to indicate a unit of measure, the amphora.) The New York Times Bits blog has more.
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Have you browsed through a dictionary (the kind printed on paper) lately? If you have, the publishers of it are probably glad you did, while being aware that you may be part of a dying breed. This month the Lounge is the first of a two-parter examining some implications of dictionary-making in the digital age.  Continue reading...
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Blog Excerpts

What's So Bad About the Passive?

Linguist Geoff Nunberg questions the aversion to the passive voice inherited from Strunk & White. Listen to his "Fresh Air" commentary or read an extended transcript.

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Blog Excerpts

A Million Words? Not So Fast...

Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer explains to Washington Post Book World why the claim that English is adding its millionth word lacks credibility.

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Blog Excerpts

How Words Get Made

Forbes.com is running a special report on neologisms — all about how and why new words enter the language. And the Visual Thesaurus family is well-represented, with featured articles by editor Ben Zimmer and contributor Mark Peters.  Continue reading...
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Mayor Richard M. Daley, Jr., has proclaimed today, William Shakespeare's 445th birthday, Talk Like Shakespeare Day. (Or should that read, "Mayor Richard II hath proclaimed"?) But as University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron points out, we don't actually know how Shakespeare talked.  Continue reading...
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While most of us view April 15th as the day the tax man cometh (and our income goeth), it marked a more auspicious occasion in 1755. That was the day Samuel Johnson published his massive two-volume, 42,773-word dictionary of the English language. Mim Harrison, founding editor of Levenger Press, takes a look back.  Continue reading...
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