Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

It's the news from your friends at "A Way with Words"!

In our latest episode, we discussed "pore" vs. "pour," "you're" vs. "your," "West Coast" vs. "Eastern seaboard," African-American proverbs, the word "sanction," and Faulknerian adjectives. Listen:

https://waywordradio.org/eastern-seaboard-west-coast/

From Down Under: The editors of the Macquarie Dictionary have gotten around to their choice for the 2010 "Word of the Year." It's "googleganger," defined as "a person with the same name as oneself, whose online references are mixed with one's own among search results for one's name."

http://bit.ly/f3p3TC

We continue to be fascinated by how e-readers are changing the way people read. The New York Times reports that youngsters' use of electronic books is booming:

http://nyti.ms/eo4geR

True, some of our best friends are architects. But we still enjoyed this take in Slate on architectural jargon, "A Discourse on Emerging Tectonic Visualization and the Effects of Materiality on Praxis":

http://slate.me/ewwupb

A study of deaf Nicaraguan children who use their own sign language suggests that language is key to understanding numbers, New Scientist magazine reports.

http://bit.ly/fCFwik

Finally, as part of our ongoing "Save the Serial Comma" campaign, we note this sentence from a recent Toronto Star article on the Tower of London. The story's here:

http://bit.ly/ie4sjv

And the sentence reads:

"At night, with the castle dimly lit by spotlights and the cobblestones dark, it's easy to let your imagination wander to picture the kings and queens who walked here and the historic figures who died on Tower Green, including two of King Henry VIII's wives, Sir Thomas More and Lady Jane Grey."

We'd rather not let our imaginations wander quite that far, thank you very much.

If you see another good example of Serial Comma Deficiency, please send it our way!

Cheerio,

Martha and Grant
Co-hosts of "A Way with Words"
https://waywordradio.org
words@waywordradio.org

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