ARCHIVE:
The Good Word
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Vowel Movement
How Americans near the Great Lakes are radically changing the sound of English.
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False Fronts in the Language Wars
Why New Yorker writers and others keep pushing bogus controversies.
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No More Chinks in the Armor
The Jeremy Lin controversy suggests it’s time to retire the phrase for good.
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Questioning the Inca Paradox
Did the civilization behind Machu Picchu really fail to develop a written language?
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The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash
Modern prose doesn't need any more interruptions—seriously.
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The Rise of "Logical Punctuation".
The period outside the quotation marks is not a copy error.
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Wikipedia's "Macaca" Problem
The user-generated encyclopedia makes George Allen's faux pas seem more clear-cut than it really was.
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Research in the Crib
What happens when language scientists use their own children as test subjects?
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What David Foster Wallace Circled in His Dictionary
A complete list, courtesy of the Ransom Center.
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The New Klingon
Without so much as a dictionary, Avatar fans are learning how to speak Na'vi.
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Tiger Woods Does Not Have 11 "Mistresses"
His many paramours aren't committed enough to merit that term.
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If You Seek Amy's Ancestors
Britney Spears didn't invent the dirty pun in her new song title. She stole it from Joyce and Shakespeare.
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Who Checks the Spell-Checkers?
Microsoft Word's dictionary is old and outdated. Here's how to fix it.
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