Category: Uncategorized
The 55 dirty words you can’t say on broadcast television
Brian Lowry at Variety writes about the 55 dirty words you can’t say on broadcast television, according to the Parents Television Council.
Kick the can
Rob Kyff at the Hartford Courant explores the phrase “kick the can,” which seems to be a largely political expression meaning “to put off a decision.”
Ich Bin Ein New Yorker
Anna Steegmann, now an English-language novelist living legally in New York City, writes about what it was like to be an illegal German immigrant, struggling with the language and life in the city.
Hoax, satire, or a mistake?
At Defective Yeti, Matthew Baldwin jabs a few people in the eye for misusing the word hoax.
Win the Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction!
On the web site for our radio show A Way with Words, my co-host and I are giving away a copy of Jeff Prucher’s book, The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. All you have to do is invent three collective nouns. Make them wow!
Two hours of Canadian vowels this weekend
Test The Nation: Watch Your Language is a two-hour linguistic and lexical contest pitting teams of Canadians against each other. It airs this weekend on CBC. Until the show airs, try out their mental gym, though be warned that an uncomfortable number of answers are disputable. Dear Hollywood: please rip off this television idea for…
British newspaper holds on to “arse”
Even though the British newspaper the Guardian has a larger online readership in the US than it does in the UK, readers’ editor Siobhain Butterworth says that British spellings and usage are still preferred by the paper. The paper’s style guide editor says, “We are a British newspaper, US readers recognise this and seem comfortable…
Typographical errors: the bane of the hurried man
There are few things that brace one’s humility quite so well as sending an email with a profound typographical error in it to 1800 people.
Names for the @ symbol
According to The Forward, the @ symbol is referred to as “shtrudel” in Hebrew. Yes, just like the pastry roll we call a “strudel” in English. The article was written as a correction to William Safire’s column of August 19.
Miskol/missed call: English in the Philippines
Michael Tan writes in the Asian Journal Online about some of the ways in which English, both American and Singaporean, are influencing Filipino speech.