It might be the grooviest new holiday since Burning Man: Hippie Christmas is the annual festivity surrounding the end of the college school year, when students leave perfectly good clothing and household goods by the curb or the dumpster because...
An election official in Arcata, California, wonders how the “/” symbol should be pronounced on ballots for the visually impaired. The symbol is becoming more and more popular as a kind of conjunction. In the U.K., they call it a stroke, or virgule...
You wouldn’t say the NASA launched a space shuttle, or you watched March Madness on the CBS. Similarly, initialisms like NSA and FBI are sometimes said without the article, especially by insiders. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
There are some words we just love to mispronounce, like “spatula” as “spatular,” which rhymes with “bachelor.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Intentional Mispronounciation” Do you remember that program that we did quite a while...
Is there a visual difference between grey and gray? The grey spelling is more common in the UK; gray is more common in the U.S. Many feel that grey has a delicate, silvery tint, while gray is more opaque, perhaps with warmer tones of red or brown...
What’s the correct pronunciation of crayon? Is it cray-on? Cran? Crown? Here’s a dialect survey map that shows the distribution of these pronunciations. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Regional Pronunciations of Crayon” Hi, you...