A man from Fort Smith, Arkansas, says his Canadian wife is baffled by his pronouncing the word cement as CEE-ment. Stressing the first syllable of such words as police, insurance, umbrella, and vehicle is an occasional feature of Southerners’...
Insure in the US Constitution’s preamble, as in to insure domestic tranquility, isn’t a mistake. Tim from Nashville noticed that modern usage often reserves insure for financial protection against loss and ensure for making certain something...
We’re almost finished! We’re in the three-day final stretch of our 2011 campaign to support some of our necessary fixed costs. Read about it here. Can you help? Give a tax-deductible donation now! You can also send your donations by...
Bavarian Chalet. Mushroom Basket. Moose Point. Who in the heck comes up with the names of paints, anyway? Martha and Grant ponder that mystery. They also explain why those annoying emails go by the name spam. And Grant explains the difference...
Martha shares the term “hit and giggle”, a bit of sports slang term she picked up while working as an announcer at this year’s Mercury Insurance Open tennis tournament. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Hit...
An insurance fraud investigator in Milwaukee wonders if he’s correct to use a semicolon immediately after the word “however.” Grant suggests that the word and the punctuation mark should do a do-si-do. This is part of a complete...

