A new study finds that 20-somethings think it’s okay to text and read emails during meetings, and men are more likely than women to approve. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Phone Etiquette in Meetings” You’re listening to A Way...
Does capitalizing the pronoun I feel like aggrandizing your own self-importance? Timna, an English Composition professor at an Illinois community college, reports that a student refused to capitalize this first person pronoun, arguing that to do so...
Do you say terms like NBD, LOL, or BRB aloud in everyday speech? It sounds strange to hear spoken text lingo, but with all language, it’s only weird until it becomes the norm, and then we wonder how we did without it. That said, most of these...
The phrase “Oh, my goodness!” may be a dated way to express surprise or disbelief. A listener asks for a contemporary replacement. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Oh, My Goodness!” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello, this is...
Predictive text on cellphones can result in some amusing accidental substitutions. The word for that: textonym. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Textonym” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, how are you? Doing well. Who’s this...
What do you say if you have guests over and someone in your family has stray food left on the face? In some households, the secret warning is “there’s a gazelle on the lawn.” But why a gazelle? Also, this week: the term for a party to introduce...