All Verbal Energy
Ukraine and the politics of transliteration'Kiev' still makes sense as the way to refer to the troubled capital, but that may change.- Accents that put us all over the mapThat wildly popular online New York Times dialect quiz illustrates, among other things, how rooted our word choices are in the environment we live in.
- An alternative vocabulary of winterPeople used to say, "It snew last night" or "It's snowen all week" 鈥� and not so long ago
- The colonization of our book titlesA review of a 'best books of the year' list reveals just how essential a particular mark of punctuation is to book titles.
Teed off about 'tee-ups' and 'performatives'Academics have a term for those phrases we use to soften well-meant criticisms 鈥� or to position ourselves when we want to deliver a real zinger.- Copper letters, granite walls, concrete languageIn his new memoir, 'Little Failure,' Gary Shteyngart captures the almost physical love of language that leads him to a career as a writer.
- Because they said so, that's whyAn old word used in a new way gets the nod as the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year for 2013.
The copy editor who came in from the coldWhy isn't a meteorologist someone who studies meteors, and other questions from a cold snap.- A browse through the newsstand of centuries pastA visit to an online archive of newspapers of the 17th and 18th centuries shows how bloglike many of them were 鈥� for good or ill.
- Grammar advice 鈥� on sale cheap after holidays!To deal with a tricky issue you run across repeatedly, find a good simple example of it handled correctly, fix it in your mind, and then use it as a model for dealing with trickier instances of the same issue.
The paradox of our New Year's resolutionsThe origin of the word may point to the wisdom of breaking up your ambitious 2014 plans into reasonable parts.
Really? We're all curators now?A competition intended to identify 'curatorial talent' points up a new use for an old word.- Finding our way in the landscape of booksResearch sheds new light on why paper still has an edge over e-readers.
- Making these United States safe for NgramsLast month's court decision upholding the legality of the Google Books search engine also kept a powerful research tool available to the public.
Copy-editing in the Age of GoogleA court decision in favor of the mass digitization of libraries is an occasion to consider how technology has transformed the copy desk.- Digging for 'infrastructure' in the OEDThe Monitor鈥檚 language columnist admits grudging admiration a wonky but useful term that covers a lot of important 'stuff.'
- Kicking the can down the roadDuring a brief lull between federal financial crises, a look at the vocabulary of playing for time.
Billions and billions served?How do transit agencies and other similar entities manage to 'serve' more people than even live in their areas?- The vocabulary of standoffWashington is at loggerheads and the GOP isn't sure of its 'ask.'
- Being unironic in the age of the WebWe all know about signaling a joke when writing, especially online, but sometimes we need to signal that we really mean our words at face value.
