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Typos: Performance vs. Competence

Can you get away with calling a misspelled word a typo if you didn’t know how to spell it in the first place? One variety of mistake is called a performance error, where the goof is somehow related to the machine or keyboard. A competence...

Burrito Baby

More and more college students are getting pregnant — with burrito babies. Grant talks about new terms for “a full stomach” and other examples of campus slang. Also, is it safe to play on the macadam? And: overegging the pudding, what it...

A Few Pickles Short of a Jar

“A few pickles short of a jar,” “a few peas short of a casserole,” “two French fries short of a Happy Meal”—this week, Martha and Grant discuss these and other full-deckisms, those clever ways to describe someone...

Headline Capitalization

A reader of The Atlantic magazine is surprised to find that they’re not capitalizing letters in headlines the way they used to. This is part of a complete episode.

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