Some similes from Grenville Kleiser’s 1910 phrasebook Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases still feel like tiny bits of poetry. Among the keepers: like footsteps upon wool for treading lightly, the sky was like a peach, and the wonderfully damp quaking...
Are your nightstand books all over the place? Why not stack ’em into a bookmash? A bookmash is a kind of found poetry formed from book titles! And we all know that honesty is the best policy. But does that mean you should correct the grammar of your...
You’re in a business meeting. Is it bad manners to take out your phone to send or read a text? A new study suggests that how you feel about mid-meeting texting differs depending on your age and sex. Grant and Martha offer book recommendations...
A TV meterologist in Morehead, Minnesota, wonders about the word sky. Is it incorrect to use it in the plural? We often refer to the skies over a large area, as in “the skies over Kansas.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...
Looking for a book to read with the kids, or maybe a guide to becoming a better writer? Why are leg cramps called charley horses? And where’d we get a phrase like pie in the sky? If you happen to be tall, you’ve no doubt heard plenty of...
Skyscraper makes literal sense once you picture a head scraping the sky, the image Alice in Carlsbad, California saw when comparing herself with her cat. Before it meant a tall building, skyscraper referred to the topmost sail on a sailing ship...
