Barbara Wallraff
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.
Recent articles by Barbara Wallraff
In a Word
Laundry as lingua franca; flow stoppers.
In a Word
Mind control-alt-delete; liminal laundry.
Word Fugitives
Articles of agreement; dishwasher dictators.
In a Word
Eloquence contretemps; ages of fable.
Word Court
Wrong time to write right; expressing discretion.
Word Court
Plurals at the Pentagon; identifying flying objects.
Word Fugitives
Marking exes' spots; living in excess.
Word Court
Cut to the chase; dictionary dilemmas.
Word Fugitives
Baby making; turn off the phone!
Word Court
Rules of thump; settling the score.
Word Fugitives
Cringe benefits; mastering drykwondo
Word Court
By the pocketbook; "etymologic" debates.
Word Fugitives
Our cars, ourselves; affair-whether friends.
Word Court
The art of ant eating; another N word.
Word Fugitives
Toeing the line; Oh, no, you dishn't!
Word Court
Dubious distinctions; the F-word.
Word Fugitives
Mockingbird blu; technological no-how.
Word Court
Fast and unloose; late-model blues.
Word Fugitives
Kind husbands; the land of iTunesia.
The Romance of Big Sur
A visit to a rugged and beautiful California haven that is all the more lovable for its idiosyncrasies.
A Secret Caribbean
Marie Galante and Les Saintes are islands that the French have been keeping for themselves.
Assisted Hiking
Purists regard using a helicopter to reach luscious mountain locales as somehow unfair. Let them.
Peeping in Peace
Not only New England has fall foliage worth traveling to see—Canada's uncrowded Maritime Provinces do too.