“If you come to a fork in the road… take it!” Baseball legend Yogi Berra was famous for such head-scratching observations. What most people don’t realize, though, is that the former Yankees star often wasn’t the first...
Gary Provost, author of Make Your Words Work, made a career of offering great writing advice, including: “Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The...
We talked about passed away versus died on a previous episode, and got a lot of responses on our Facebook page saying that phrases like “I’m sorry for your loss” don’t do justice to the reality of what happened. This is part...
Remember a few years ago when Amazon introduced that mysterious device called a Kindle? People worried that electronic readers would replace traditional books. Turns out the death of the hardcover was greatly exaggerated. Also, the expression...
How did the word gay go from meaning lighthearted to homosexual? Also, why are elementary schools sometimes called grammar schools? Plus, imeldific, gone pecan, random Scrabble words, and the difference between borrow and lend. And the etiquette of...
Mary, from Royal Oaks, Michigan, says she once confused a friend by offering to relieve her of snow shoveling duties with the question, “Can I spell you?” This usage of spell, which refers to substituting for a period of time, has been...