A San Diego woman is bothered by the convention of addressing envelopes to Mr. and Mrs. John Smith. Shouldn’t we also include the woman’s first name?
For her, it’s more than just a theoretical question: she spends a lot of time sending thank-you letters for nonprofit fundraising. So she’s wondering, what’s the best way to address them so as not to offend potential donors? Her question provokes a lively exchange about grammar, etiquette, and feminism.
Listen to the minicast:
How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes lots of words borrowed or adapted from French. Such linguistic mixing often happens when languages brush up against each other and speakers reach...
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
