Even the New York Times can get tripped up on the difference between gerunds and participles. In her Tip of the Week, Copyediting newsletter editor Wendalyn Nichols explains how a punctuation error in the Times is symptomatic of confusion about words ending in -ing.

In the outpouring of remembrances since the passing of Walter Cronkite on Friday, two polysyllabic words beginning with "a" have proved to be inextricably linked to "the most trusted man in America": avuncular and anchorman. It's hard to describe Mr. Cronkite without using one or the other, or preferably both.  Continue reading...

An odd moment in this week's confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor came when Senator Orrin Hatch questioned her about a case involving martial arts weapons commonly known in English as "nunchucks" or "nunchuck sticks." The exchange between Hatch and Sotomayor sounded like something you might encounter at a Bruce Lee fan club meeting, not in a high-profile Senate hearing.  Continue reading...

We've been talking to Paul Dickson about the new edition of his magnum opus, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary. Now, in honor of Major League Baseball's 80th All-Star Game, played tonight at Busch Stadium in Saint Louis, we present some all-star words from Dickson's dictionary.  Continue reading...

As Major League Baseball heads into the All-Star break, we're taking advantage of the mid-season breather to think about the rich language of baseball. We talked to Paul Dickson, the sport's great lexicographer, about the monumental Dickson Baseball Dictionary. Recently published in its third edition, the dictionary has grown into a thousand-page tome of unprecedented breadth and scope. In the first part of our two-part interview, Dickson explains how his dictionary encompasses the whole history of baseball, from the early days of "protoball" to the latest statistical advances.  Continue reading...

Teachers, looking to get students out of their seats and learning some new words? Try introducing pantomime as a vocabulary-enriching activity. As Beck, McKeown and Kucan point out in Creating Robust Vocabulary, "physically responding to words can promote connections to new word meanings."  Continue reading...