Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Language
When did shall go out of fashion as the first person marker for the future tense? Or was it ever in fashion? This month in the Lounge we look at the career of English's most mismanaged modal.
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Jan Freeman, language columnist for the Boston Globe, has published a fascinating new book: an expanded edition of Write It Right, Ambrose Bierce's 1909 volume on English usage, "deciphered, appraised, and annotated for 21st-century readers." We caught up with Jan to ask how Bierce's century-old language peeves have held up, and what his work tells us about current usage struggles.
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Wendalyn Nichols, editor of the Copyediting newsletter, offers useful tips to copy editors and anyone else who prizes clear and orderly writing. Here she looks at why a seemingly simple rule of English, whether to use a or an as an indefinite article, can cause confusion.
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Blog Excerpts
Early WOTY Nominees
The early nominations have been posted for the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year selection. ADS members who specialize in following language trends, including Visual Thesaurus executive producer Ben Zimmer, have submitted their lists of nominees. Read all about it here.
As we bid farewell to the strangely nameless first decade of the 21st century, University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron takes a look back at the lingo that enlivened the last ten years.
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The National Museum of Language near Washington, D.C. is putting together an exhibit on the role of the War of 1812 in the development of American English, as we approach that war's bicentennial (or bicentenary, as they still say on the other side). In the Lounge we've been exploring ideas with the museum, and this month we wanted to share some of our findings.
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Visual Thesaurus subscriber "Curious Cat" has struck a nerve. Commenting on a Word Routes column last month about annoying words, "CC" wrote:
Continue reading...My bugbear: "No problem" in response to "Thank you" in restaurants. "You're welcome" is disappearing in this context. I assume that my business is not a problem.
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