Teresa in Plano, Texas, noticed airport cancellation boards spelling the past tense of cancel both canceled and cancelled. In the United States, canceled with one l is usual, while British, Canadian, and many other English varieties typically use...
Our earlier conversation about sign language reminded Martha of this quote from Helen Keller: “Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that...
The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar. It was tense. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Grammar Joke” This email just came in from Jeff in Philadelphia. Ready? The past, the present, and the future...
What’s the proper past tense of the word text? Texted or text? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Texted vs. Text” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Good morning, this is Paris Romero in Fallbrook, California. Hello...
Stories From The Onion In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss not-to-be-believed articles about language from the satirical newspaper The Onion, including one headlined “Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense from...
What do you call that jarring sensation when you see a radio personality for the first time, and he looks nothing like what you expected? The hosts talked about it in a past episode. Listeners responded with more words for this phenomenon. This is...