Before her biography Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (Bookshop|Amazon), Katherine Rundell was better known as a writer of children’s books, including The Girl Savage (Bookshop|Amazon) and Rooftoppers (Bookshop|Amazon). The latter...
The Oxford comma is the comma before the final item in a list, which led Gabrielle’s third grader to a fine question: if Oxford is a famous school in England, is the comma its mascot? Oxford University doesn’t really have one, but the family’s...
thrashing n.— Note: Perhaps related to the British noun “thrash,” which means “a party.” «Evidence gathered from the social networking site led proctors at the university to collect five times as much money this year over last for a practice known...

