Grant reviews notable words and phrases from 2017. One is path of totality, meaning the part of the earth completely covered in shadow when the moon blocks the sun. Another is milkshake duck, which arose from a tweet by Australian cartoonist Ben...
If you want to be a better writer, try skipping today’s bestsellers, and read one from the 1930’s instead. Or read something besides fiction in order to find your own metaphors and perspective. Plus, just because a city’s name...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle involves social media “books” that rhyme with the name Facebook. For example, Manfred von Richthofen, a.k.a. the Red Baron, posts on on what fancifully named social media outlet? This is part of a...
As Mark Twain observed, “The compliment that helps us on our way is not the one that is shut up in the mind, but the one that is spoken out.” Martha describes a compliment challenge her friends are taking up on Facebook, with happy...
Cindy from Descanso, California, heard fignature in New York for the wobbly signature made with a finger on a phone or card-reader screen. The blend of finger and signature has several spellings, including fingature and fingerature, plus the plainer...
Bill Cosby is perhaps the latest but certainly not the first celebrity whom the public has fallen out of love with over something terrible they did that went public. Is there a term for this kind of mass disenchantment with a celebrity? This is part...

