Lapidary prose is so elegant and precise that it’s worthy of being carved into stone. Lapidary comes from Latin lapis, meaning stone, and is related to the brilliant blue stone, lapis lazuli, and the word dilapidated, from a Latin word meaning...
If someone clapped out the rhythm of a song you knew, would you recognize it? It’s pretty unlikely, given what’s called the curse of knowledge. To the person with the song in their head, it’s obvious, but you can’t expect...
Steven Pinker’s new book, The Sense of Style, which Martha cites among her all-time favorite books about writing, has just the right message: don’t worry so much about the errors, because you’ll make them, and if writing...
If you’re a wine connoisseur, do you remember the moment when it really clicked for you, when you could comprehend and describe the flavors of a wine? In his essay Wine and Astonishment, Andrew Jefford contends that every wine writer and wine...