Visit Barbara Wallraff’s blog, at barbarawallraff .theatlantic.com, to see more commentary on language and to submit Word Fugitive queries and words that meet David K. Prince’s need. Readers whose queries are published and those who take top honors will receive an autographed copy of Wallraff’s most recent book, Word Fugitives. More
Barbara Wallraff, a contributing editor and columnist for The Atlantic, has worked for the magazine for 25 years. She is also a weekly syndicated newspaper columnist for King Features and the author of Word Fugitives (2006), Your Own Words (2004), and the national best-seller Word Court (2000). Her writing about language has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Wilson Quarterly, The American Scholar, and The New York Times Magazine.
Wallraff has been an invited speaker at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the National Writers Workshop, the Nieman Foundation, Columbia Journalism School, the British Institute Library of Florence, and national or international conventions of the American Copy Editors Society, the Council of Science Editors, the International Education of Students organization, and the Journalism Education Association. She has been interviewed about language on the Nightly News With Tom Brokaw and dozens of radio programs including Fresh Air, The Diane Rehm Show, and All Things Considered. National Public Radio's Morning Edition once commissioned her to copy edit the U.S. Constitution. She is a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel. The Genus V edition of the game Trivial Pursuit contains a question about Wallraff and her Word Court column.
I'm so sorry to have been out of touch for the past month. In that time I've taken on a new assignment in an undisclosed location - which, sadly, means I'll continue to be out of touch for the foreseeable future. Of course, as the events of recent months may have already brought home to you, the future is not foreseeable. This is true of the future that led to this blog and of the one that has now led to its suspension. I can't help assuming it will remain true… More »
Watching Tyler Hinman win the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, yesterday, may not be as riveting as watching championship basketball, or even golf -- but the mood is definitely the same. The crucial clues were "Basic," 8 letters = Alkaline.and "Item in stocks," 4 letters = Bone.Blogger Eric Berlin has written a report of the finals that does make them seem riveting. How appropriate that a contest about words comes even more vividly alive in words than it… More »
I just discovered the rather hilarious site? blog? Celebrity English, which critiques the speech of the likes of Billy Bob, Angelina, and Jessica. It's much funnier for being absolutely deadpan: Billy Bob has made an error in parallelism. His second sentence contains a list of items that are not all the same grammatical structure.Dead-on, too, in its analyses of the celebrities' grammar. Even so, I would have preferred "are not all" in the sentence I just quoted… More »
I've been busy trying to wear out "Speechwars" since my colleague Jim Fallows posted an entry about it yesterday, to help us all prepare for President Obama's State-of-the-Union-equivalent speech.The New York TImes has been busy with the same thing, to judge from the interactive graphic on its online front page. (Sorry, I don't see how to link to the graphic itself in any permanent way.) The Times shows you the relative use over the years of all the obvious,… More »
Comments on my previous entry expressed doubt about the correctness of the grammar of "I would like to thank ..." when it means "I am now thanking."Don't worry -- it's fine. By way of explanation, I've hunted up highlights from an e-mail exchange I had in 2006 with Joe Pickett, the editor of the American Heritage Dictionary, in which I asked for his thoughts on a closely related point.Me: Here's a question I'm trying to answer:Harold Shaw, of Penobscot, Maine,… More »
That thoroughly ordinary staple of awards ceremonies demonstrates something curious about English -- and probably many other languages too. Namely: If you'd like to thank someone, why don't you? Um, I just did.In "I would like to thank...," "would like to" means "I'm doing it even as I speak." But you won't find that meaning of in dictionaries -- at least, not anywhere you can find it, in any recognizable form. I believe this is called an "implicit performative… More »
Re the March word fugitive, about a name for the "interminable" period one can spend contemplating the audiovisuals that cycle endlessly behind a DVD's main menu while one waits for someone else to come sit down, reader Tom Noe writes:Imagine having to come up with a new name for a geologic period: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7223663.stm Fugitives fans, don't get overexcited. Scientists have a name for the current period. They're calling it the… More »
David K. Prince, of Lansdowne, Pa., writes, "Often my wife and I will decide to watch a DVD, and then she will delay coming to sit down, thereby subjecting me to the repeat-loop sounds and visuals of the DVD's main menu. What's the word or phrase for this interminable experience?" Post a comment if you have an idea for the word that David Prince needs. If you hope to be quoted in The Atlantic and earn indisputable bragging rights, please sign in with your full… More »
In my "Apostrophe News" entry of a week ago, I said that I hadn't seen anyone point out that the city council of Birmingham, England, was following in the footsteps of the U.S. Board on Geographic Names when it banished apostrophes from street signs. That's because I didn't read Michael Quinion's discussion of the flap as carefully as it deserved.Quinion concludes: My impression is that fashion, the real difficulties that exist in some cases, and -- particularly… More »
Writing is awash in conventions: Start a sentence with a capital letter. End a sentence with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Don't hyphenate after an adverb that ends in "-ly." And on and on.All that stuff is my stock-in-trade. So I was delighted to discover (by way of reader Joel Blum, of Paris -- thanks, Joel!) that comic-book letterers have their conventions too: Point the balloon tail at the character's mouth. Use burst balloons only for… More »
Last week the city council of Birmingham, England's second largest city, decided to drop apostrophes from all local street signs. Henceforth it shall be "St Pauls Square," "Druids Heath," "Acocks Green," and so forth. The British papers and the Associated Press have expressed outrage, ridicule, or at least amusement. (I hope the lack of an apostrophe in the AP's headline, "Its a catastrophe for the apostrophe," is meant as a little joke.)I haven't seen anyone… More »
Much has been said about John Updike since his death, yesterday. I'd like to give him the opportunity to speak for himself. Here are some quotations. "Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.""Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered.""The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before and he does it without destroying something else.""Writing and… More »
Herewith some Word Fugitives responses I wish I'd had space for in the January/February issue of the magazine. What they were in response to was this: Michael McWatters, of New York City, writes, "I use a computer for the better part of my waking life, and I've noticed that certain repetitive keyboard tasks are making their way into my non-computer life. For example, I recently knocked a jar off the counter, and a little voice inside yelped, 'Command-Z!' (the… More »
As I noted in my previous post, the Times the other day gave us a contemporary, interactive, don't-need-a-long-attention-span point of entry into all the inaugural addresses of the past. But, sigh, sometimes isn't it wonderful to tag along with someone such as an expert on inaugural addresses as he ponders them? Thinking actual thoughts? Case in point is "So Help Me God," by Ted Widmer, a former presidential speechwriter, which ran in The American Scholar four… More »
I'm sorry I haven't posted anything yet today, but I've been having way too much fun with the "Inaugural Words" interactive graphic in the NY Times to think cogent thoughts. Or, really, I've been trying and failing to draw conclusions about the various Presidents from the words they emphasized in their inaugural addresses. Maybe others have had better success.Also, any bets on what will be the most-used word in Barak Obama's address tomorrow? More »
Reader Brian Clark writes:I have a two-year running dispute with my brother about the existence of the word 'hinky.' I had used it in a sentence, "Well, my car's brakes are feeling a little hinky." He did not believe in the word, so I bought him an unabridged dictionary, I believe American Heritage or some such, and hinky was not in there, but then I found a different one, Oxford maybe, and there was the word. So, who decides the veracity of words and how they… More »
To me, the future of the dictionary industry doesn't look much brighter than the future of the American auto industry. To be sure, people learning a language will continue to need dictionaries. And specialized dictionaries will remain useful. The Oxford English Dictionary, for a case in point, lays out the entire history of English before our eyes; it's a cultural treasure. (If, however, it were required to make money for its owners -- as most dictionaries now are… More »
Carolyn Haggis, of Oxford, England, writes, "I'm looking for a word for the items of clothing which sit perched on a chair in my bedroom, waiting to be reworn. They are not yet ready for the laundry bin (since I plan to rewear them), but they are no longer suitable for the wardrobe (which I reserve for clean clothes). I assume others keep their lightly worn clothes in a similar purgatory?" Post a comment if you have an idea for the word that Carolyn Haggis needs.… More »
My fellow Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates posted a couple of days ago about "conversate": is it a word or not? He interviewed Jesse Sheidlower, of the Oxford English Dictionary, and they had a good conversation, well worth reading. Jesse is a smart guy and a first-rate lexicographer. But one thing no lexicographer is likely to tell you is that we don't need dictionaries anymore to tell us what counts as a word. We can decide for ourselves.As Jesse said, what… More »
