A Quebec listener asks: In the phrases it’s a girl, or it’s raining, what exactly is the it here? It’s called the weather it or the dummy it, and it serves a placeholder inserted to make the sentence function grammatically. This is...
A pitch-in is Indiana’s preferred term for a potluck dinner, as Sabrina learned after moving to Indianapolis from Seattle. When classmates announced a pitch-in, she didn’t know what they meant, and friends from Ohio and family in the South were...
Death of the Typewriter Ding! In this week’s episode, Mark Twain would be pleased. Reports that it’s the end of the line for the typewriter have been greatly exaggerated. Well, slightly anyway: it’s not the horseless carriage...