A television commercial for the laundry detergent Gain is getting under the skin of the grammatically minded. The commercial shows a man getting dressed and smelling his newly laundered shirt, as the announcer says, "Bill's mornings have never been gooder thanks to something amazing we've added to Gain." That one little word, gooder, has set off a storm of protests — which may be exactly what Procter & Gamble, the makers of Gain, are looking for.  Continue reading...

The editors of The Associated Press Stylebook recently announced some changes to the Bible of copy editors. Among their pronouncements: e-mail would lose its hyphen, and cell phone would lose its space. Merrill Perlman, who writes the "Language Corner" column for Columbia Journalism Review, gives us the full rundown.  Continue reading...

When the American Dialect Society selected app as the 2010 Word of the Year, it was a nod to the tech term's sudden ubiquity over the past year or two. And now it's more contested than ever with Apple locked in litigation with two rivals, Microsoft and Amazon, in an attempt to hold on to a trademark for app store. How did we get to the point where, as the Apple slogan goes, "there's an app for that" (regardless of whose store you buy it from)?  Continue reading...

Last week we presented an excerpt from Robert Lane Greene's fascinating new book, You Are What You Speak, tracing the origins of "language sticklers" back to the early days of English. In this second excerpt, Greene concludes his history of sticklerism with the recent success of the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.  Continue reading...

Robert Lane Greene, a correspondent for The Economist, has just published a thoroughly engaging book sure to fascinate all linguaphiles: You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity. In this excerpt, Greene argues that there has never been a "golden age" for English: fears of the language's demise have been with us for centuries, stoked by "sticklers" castigating the usage around them.  Continue reading...

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Obama administration is "urging protesters from Bahrain to Morocco to work with existing rulers toward what some officials and diplomats are now calling 'regime alteration.'" That sounds like a kinder, gentler version of regime change, which itself has a euphemistic ring to it. If President Obama came into office riding a wave of change, why is that word suddenly problematic?  Continue reading...