Authors often go through several working titles before settling on one. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (Bookshop|Amazon) was originally Trimalchio in West Egg, Trimalchio being an ostentatious nouveau riche character in an ancient Roman work...
Nathan in Raleigh, North Carolina, heard his grandfather, busy making Thanksgiving dinner for the family, describe the work as going steady by jerks. The expression means by fits and starts, with bursts of steady effort broken by pauses or...
In 1975, Annie Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Amazon|Bookshop). A few years later, she wrote an essay in The New York Times with advice for writers and artists, calling on them to observe...
A caller from San Diego, California, wonders about the proper way to pluralize analysis: is analysises ever correct? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Proper Plurals” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha. My name...
air-sparaging n.— «Drilling began in 1995 for wells to be used in a process, called air-sparaging, to clean out the coal tar contaminants.» —“Coal-tar cleanup took 20 years” by Mark Simonson Daily Star (Oneonta...
futurescoping n.— «The commission warned if Nottingham is to be a significant European city in the coming decades it must start planning now. The process, known to some as “futurescoping” has begun. Two events have been held...
