The word versus can be abbreviated any of several ways. In legal contexts in the United States, it’s usually abbreviated as v., as in Supreme Court decisions on Brown v. Board of Education or Roe v. Wade. In less formal situations, such as...
Barbara Kingsolver’s book Demon Copperhead is a retelling of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield set in today’s Appalachia. Martha shares memories of a long-ago visit to Kingsolver’s family farm in Virginia, where they...
Jeff in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is married to a woman from Barcelona who grew up speaking British English. She pointed out to him his use of the word of with the preposition off, as in Take the book off of the table or Let’s get off of the...
How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese typewriter looked like a small table under a huge disk with more than 4,000 characters. A new book chronicles...
Puzzling over the New York Times Spelling Bee, Jordan in Cheyenne, Wyoming, played the word pipped, but was surprised that the game disallowed it. He remembers hearing the word in stories about the historic 1954 Miracle Mile race between Sir Roger...
Paul from Omaha, Nebraska, says as a result of watching the College World Series in that city, he and his son wondered when sports announcers started using the word cheese to describe a pitcher’s fastball, and such variants as throwing cheese...