Contractions have been used in English since Elizabethan times, but conventions about their correct use go in and out of favor. Writing in 1899 in the monthly magazine Correct English, author and publisher Josephine Turck Baker advised that using...
What kind of book is most often requested by people who are incarcerated? The book that prison inmates ask for the vast majority of the time is a dictionary. These books, as well as thesauruses, prove useful for mastering reading skills, writing...
A nonprofit that promotes literacy in Reno, Nevada, held a spelling bee in which adult competitors were asked to spell words from books in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The author made up some of those words herself. But are they really words...
The first-ever “Word by Word” awards were presented by A Way With Words co-hosts Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett as part of a sold-out celebration at the San Diego Natural History Museum. To celebrate its tenth year of independent production...
A listener in Weathersfield, Vermont, remembers going on car trips as a young child and wondering why, toward the end of the day, her parents would be on the lookout for motels with “bacon seed.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
After you notice a certain word for the first time, chances are you’ll start seeing it all over the place. That’s known as the frequency illusion, coined by linguist Arnold Zwicky, and it happens because of confirmation bias. This is part of a...