In response to our conversation about pangrams, those sentences that use every letter of the alphabet at least once, Sarah McCall sent us this advice: Just mask up and be extra careful that you don’t quit always sanitizing everything. This is...
Whatever Roget’s Thesaurus may have you believe, sinister buttocks is not a synonym for “left behind.” But a growing number of students are blindly using the thesaurus, or Rogeting, trying mask plagiarism. And it’s not...
The language of restaurant menus. Need a dictionary to get through a dinner menu? Research shows the longer the description of a particular dish, the more expensive it will be. Plus: What’s the best way to use a thesaurus? DON’T —...
voice writing n.— «In the US, court reporters have abandoned stenotype machines, whose keyboards use chord-like combinations to represent sounds, for a technique called voice writing. The “writer”—really a speaker—repeats...
snuba n.— «For an unusual type of underwater exploration in the Red Sea try what the Israelis call snuba. It’s a combination of scuba diving and snorkeling. Divers, who must be at least 8 years old, wear fins and a mask but breathe...
gangloading n.— «Yesterday I joined 14 students in the altitude training chamber at the Eighty-ninth Physiological Training Flight at Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland. Wearing helmets and oxygen masks that covered...