Mark Twain famously said that he’d never write “metropolis” for 7 cents when he could write “city” for the same fee, and it stands as good advice for writers looking to make economical word choices. This is part of a...
My postillion has been struck by lightning is one of many lines found in foreign language phrase books that have no real purpose. Mark Twain complained about the same thing in his essay, “The Awful German Language.” This is part of a...
Voice recognition technology is making it easier than ever to dictate text rather than write it. Richard Powers, author of the 2006 National Book Award winner The Echo Maker, wrote most of that book by dictating it into a computer program. Of...
A caller says her relative always used an interjection that sounds like sigh for the equivalent of “Are you paying attention?” The hosts suspect it’s related to s’I, a contraction of says I. This expression open appears in...
Ding! In this week’s episode, Mark Twain would be pleased. Reports that it’s the end of the line for the typewriter have been greatly exaggerated. Well, slightly anyway: it’s not the horseless carriage return yet. Martha and Grant...