Your Halloween treat: five tricky word pairs
This English language of ours is devilishly tricky. For your Halloween reading pleasure, here are five especially ghoulish word pairs. If you use these words properly, you’ll win the respect and...
View ArticleBaseball, football, and just the right choice of words
As we embark on the first baseball season in 68 years without Vin Scully behind the mic, thank goodness we still have this classic comedy bit from George Carlin. I have a writerly purpose in sharing it...
View ArticleCreate your story — and choose the right ingredients
Seth Godin took me to school. Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t realize it. But his April 11 blog post sounded like a direct rejoinder to my earlier piece: Just the right choice of words. Here’s what Seth had to...
View ArticleSassy and also substantial
We’re having “a national conversation about language.” So said Peter Sokolowsky, a lexicographer for Merriam-Webster Dictionary, during an interview last week on CBS This Morning. A national...
View ArticleDazzling their giddy readers
Back in 1946 an unnamed editor at the Saturday Evening Post had a bone to pick with the then-current Second Edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary. Specifically, he (given the era and the...
View Article7 words you can’t say at CDC
According to its mission statement, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an agency of the U.S. government, “increases the health security of our nation.” It does so primarily in two...
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