Teaching our children, and some advice for writers. Suppose your child is eager to tackle a difficult subject–ancient Greek, for example–but you know his reach exceeds his grasp? The challenge is to support the child’s curiosity...
Aspiring screenwriters take note: A surefire requisite for breaking into the business has, and will likely always be, a love of words—fat, buttery words, like ones the Marx Brothers writer Robert Pirosh wrote about in his 1934 letter to MGM. This is...
Starting this year, Scripps National Spelling Bee contestants not only have to spell words correctly. A controversial new rule means they’ll have to answer vocabulary questions, too. Also, when it comes to reading text, do you prefer...
Gronk the data, heard by Chris in San Diego in the medical-device business, is probably a mishearing of grok, the verb meaning to understand deeply. Robert A. Heinlein coined grok in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land, and it later became...
What do you say when you answer the telephone? On the NPR science blog, “Krulwich Wonders,” Robert Krulwich notes that hello did not become a standard greeting until the Edison Company recommended the word as a proper phone greeting...
Martha argues in favor of the serial comma, citing a recent newspaper caption: “The documentary was filmed over three years. Among those interviewed were his ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson and Robert Duvall.” How’s that again? This...