|
|
Last week, the New York City Department of Education stirred up controversy by issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) listing fifty words to avoid on the standardized tests used by the city's schools. These were not the dirty words that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that George Carlin could not say on the air, but innocuous ones like dinosaurs, birthdays, aliens from outer space, rap, and rock 'n' roll. A school spokesman told the New York Post that the words could "evoke unpleasant emotions in the students."
Continue reading...
Click here to read more articles from Word Count.
Emotional transport is not a regular feature or goal of popular music, which seems generally to be the aural equivalent of snack food. Popular tunes are littered with disposable lyrics. And yet every now and then, the language of a song can take you outside the confines of the three-minute window to something more enduring.
Continue reading...
Click here to read more articles from Language Lounge.
The latest issue of the literary magazine Lapham's Quarterly has as its theme " Means of Communication," and the closing piece, by VT editor Ben Zimmer, is a reconsideration of the thesaurus as a tool for modern writers. He finds many reasons to remain optimistic about the thesaurus as a reference work (and not just because of the Visual Thesaurus!). Read his piece here.
Click here to read more articles from Blog Excerpts.
Today is opening day for Major League Baseball, though the only game on the schedule is in far-off Tokyo, where the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics are beginning a two-game series. But let's cast our minds back to opening day a century ago. On April 2, 1912, in a Pacific Coast League game between the Portland Beavers and the Los Angeles Angels, a pitcher uncorked his "jazz ball" — and possibly helped set into motion a chain of events that brought the word jazz together with the music it named.
Continue reading...
Click here to read more articles from Word Routes.
Last week we brought you coverage of the 35th American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held in Brooklyn. But there was another wordy competition held in conjuction with the ACPT: the first-ever World Palindrome Championship. Here's a full report of the back-and-forth action from The Palindromist Magazine.
Continue reading...
Click here to read more articles from Blog Excerpts.
Writer and journalist Ben Gibberd is British by birth but has made his home in New York City. Here Ben shares his experiences of writing for the New York Times, which required him to make all manner of linguistic adjustments in order to write in an American (and Timesian) style.
Continue reading...
Click here to read more articles from Word Count.
Sunday, at long last, marks the return of the acclaimed television series "Mad Men." We're big fans of the show, but we also enjoy nitpicking about it. Read Ben Zimmer's Word Routes column about an anachronistic dictionary prop here, and about the historical accuracy of the dialogue here.
Click here to read more articles from Blog Excerpts.
|
Other Topics:
|
