In an article in The Atlantic magazine, humorist Mark Twain quoted a sing-songy bit of doggerel about conductors punching railroad fares that illustrates how colored paper has long been used to encode information. This is part of a complete episode.
As ubiquitous as social media and blogs have become, people are still reading long form journalism! Grant shares some great ways Twitter has enabled the spread of long essays from sources like The Atlantic and Wired. In addition, services like...
Hi, ho! Lots of “Behind The Scenes” news from “A Way with Words” this week, but first: In this week’s episode, we discuss “burrito babies” and other college slang. Also, “overegging the pudding,”...
What’s your choice for 2010’s word of the year? Mama grizzly? Starwhacker? Who could forget vuvuzela? Martha and Grant discuss the five-oh in Hawaii 5-0, and whether the tagline “I approve this message” is grammatical. Also...
A reader of The Atlantic magazine is surprised to find that they’re not capitalizing letters in headlines the way they used to. This is part of a complete episode.
Toward vs. towards: is it more correct to say “toward an object” or “towards an object”? Well, which side of the Atlantic are you on? This is part of a complete episode.