Users of Amazon's e-reader, the Kindle, can not only highlight their favorite passages, they can see what everyone else is highlighting. University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron ponders the consequences.  Continue reading...

Did you grow up speaking English in America or Canada? Then you can take part in an ambitious online project to gather information about the many diverse accents of North American English. All you need is a computer with a microphone, and your voice can be heard!  Continue reading...

Word Routes, the regular column by Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer, was selected as one of the Top 100 Language Blogs of 2010, in a worldwide competition hosted by bab.la and Lexiophiles. Language blogs were nominated and then ranked according to user votes and other criteria. Check out the whole list here.

Computational linguist David Bamman has created a fascinating new website called Lexicalist. By analyzing Twitter and other social media, he has mapped the U.S. according to what people are talking about, and how they're saying it. Bamman explains how the project came together in a guest Language Log post here.

Thanks to Chatroulette, the ridiculously popular website that pairs random strangers around the world for webcam conversations, we have a new verb in English: to next. Two language-related blogs explain what it means.  Continue reading...

I'm a writer, not a videographer. But every once in a while I like to mix things up a bit. I fell upon the idea of creating my own video about writing thanks to Gretchen Rubin, and her blog The Happiness Project. On her truly marvelous site, she features two works she calls one-minute movies. Truth be told, her films are each a bit longer than a minute, but they inspired me.  Continue reading...