Martha and Grant offer gift recommendations for language lovers: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, by Guy Deutscher. OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, by Allan Metcalf. Lost in...
Pity the poor typeface designer, always seeing anachronisms in movies and television. Imagine how painful it must be watching a World War II movie only to see a document printed in Snell Roundhand Bold, a font invented in 1972. Here’s typeface...
“They shot the white girl first.” That’s how Toni Morrison’s novel, Paradise, begins, and it’s a great example of an irresistible first line. Martha shares others sent in by listeners. She also reads from a Michael...
Need to type something in Linear B or Mayan? Want to make Japanese emoticons? Now you can. Grant explains why the release of Unicode 6 has many typescript aficionados doing the happy dance. This is part of a complete episode.
Grant shares some favorite bad first lines from novels. This is part of a complete episode.
Grant and Martha talk more about the challenges dictionary editors face when trying to define numbers and colors. This is part of a complete episode.