I overheard a guy going on to his friend about how long Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson was. “I get it!” he said with exasperation. “It’s about numbers.”
Schmetterlingsaufspiesser. Continue reading
I overheard a guy going on to his friend about how long Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson was. “I get it!” he said with exasperation. “It’s about numbers.”
Schmetterlingsaufspiesser. Continue reading
Some people just love to use the dictionary as a stick to beat others with. “It’s in the dictionary!” is perhaps a yardstick, and “It’s not in the dictionary!” is more like a nightstick or baseball bat.
I think you will understand if I shindle back at that attitude. Continue reading
People have opinions about the serial comma (also called the Oxford comma). Sometimes very strong opinions. So I sat down with my lunch, some Cheerios, and a Martini to tell you the truth.
Tagged clarity, grammar, Oxford comma, punctuation, serial comma, style, video
Yes, of course you can say “Oktoberfest,” and however you say it is going to be close enough, especially if you’re holding a stein or two. But how about Weltschmerz, Zeitgeist, Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, Götterdämmerung, Wunderkind, gemütlich, Weissbier, and dunkel? (By the way, nouns are compulsorily capitalized in German, but adjectives aren’t.) Watch my latest video to find out!
It’s orange, except when it isn’t. And it’s big, except when it isn’t. But when it’s big, it can be very big, and it can keep getting bigger and bigger, sometimes until it’s too big and it just breaks right open. Hazards of competitive growing! Continue reading
This word is marginal at best.
“This word,” Samuel Johnson wrote in an explanatory note, “is, I fancy, peculiar to the learned Hooker.” And which learned Hooker would that be, which erudite textworker? We get some idea with the quote Johnson appends for further amplification: Continue reading
Hammock. From a Cherokee word meaning ‘to dump abruptly on the ground.’
No, no, I’m kidding. It’s from English ham plus mock and first meant ‘to make fun of a pig.’ Continue reading
This article was first published on The Editors’ Weekly, the blog of Editors Canada.
There are times when you want to make your prose more lively – if not flagrantly flippant then at least glancingly gleeful. Your words could land with a thump or splash or flit by with a twirl, but they must be sprightly. You want to write like a child. Well, no, not like a child – children aren’t very good writers; their sense of sentence structure is a bit squishy and scrawny – but like a child would write if a child had the skill of an adult. You want to be extra expressive. Continue reading
Posted in editing, language and linguistics, writing
Tagged editing, genres, phonaesthemes, phonaesthetics, writing
Some people, you just don’t know what is going on in their heads. Continue reading