Did you hear about the new doctor doll? Guess what it operates on. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Punny Riddle Bordering on Malpractice” Hey Grant, did you hear about the new doctor doll? The new doctor doll? No. You wind it up...
Cassandra, who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, wonders about the rules for how to punctuate titles such as Professor and Doctor. Growing up in South Africa, she was taught that, in contrast to practice in the United States, the titles Dr, Mr, and...
Decisions by dictionary editors, wacky wordplay, and Walt Whitman’s soaring verse. How do lexicographers decide which historical figures deserve a mention or perhaps even an illustration in the dictionary? The answer changes with the times. •...
Say you’re introducing someone to a married heterosexual couple, and both members of the couple are physicians. What titles should you use? “This is Dr. and Dr. Jones”? Dr. and Mrs.? What if one holds Ph.D.? What if both hold doctorates? This is...
Brand names, children’s games, and the etiquette of phone conversations. Those clever plastic PEZ dispensers come in all shapes and sizes—but where did the word PEZ come from? The popular candy’s name is the product of wordplay involving the German...
A customer-service representative from Seattle, Washington, is curious about the phrases people use as a part of leave-taking when they’re finishing a telephone conversation. Linguists who conduct discourse analysis on such conversations say these...
