By now, most school districts around the country have begun another academic year. Many students complete their writing assignments on computers, but such technological wonders as a spell checker, formatting tools and a pop-up dictionary/thesaurus don’t seem to be helping high school graduates succeed at writing. Consider this recent news item from The Huffington Post: […]
Do you get frustrated when other people misuse apostrophes, or are you a misuser yourself? Do you agree that “reading is the gateway to whatever we want to do” and that “nothing leaves a bad first impression like a poorly written or poorly punctuated email”? And do you simply enjoy words because they’re words? If […]
“Weird Al” Yankovic, king of pop-song parodies, has done more for the English language this week than some teachers do in a year. To promote his latest album, Mandatory Fun — which contains parodies of Pharrell’s “Happy” (“Tacky”), Lorde’s “Royals” (“Foil”) and Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” (“Handy”) — “Weird Al” is in the midst of releasing eight […]
I hate typos, but we’re all guilty of making them. What really frustrates me, as a writer and editor, is seeing completely inexcusable typos. Near downtown Madison, Wis., for example, a restaurant illuminates a fluorescent sign every single night that reads: “Immediate Seatnig.” Lately I’ve noticed typos in one public place where they should never be: […]
