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RECENT COLUMNS
Can you relate?
The rise of a Hollywood-ism; plus, going R-free.
The rules
Improve your spelling in a million handy steps.
Seeing the future
We've been 'looking to' for a long time (Boston Globe)
Is ’mourning’ broken?
All the mournful headlines got Sarah Jensen, a writer and editor, wondering about the way the verb is used. “Should this properly be ‘mourn the death of’?” she asked in an e-mail.
Mighty likely
“I may finish the project today.” “I might finish the project today.” Which one is a more optimistic prediction?
Turning up volumes
Book publishing is in trouble? You wouldn’t know it from the pile of new language books and the publishers’ promises of more to come. (Boston Globe)
More than friends
What it means to be ‘an item’ (Boston Globe)
Fade away
Retiring a tricky subjunctive
The truth about consequential
Is it serious, or snarky?
Way in
How an informality has climbed into English (Boston Globe)
Vive la difference
What’s so bad about ‘different than’? (Boston Globe)
Anymore!
The spread of a regional quirk (Boston Globe)
See through
Should we demand a literal ‘transparency’?
Falling short
The ambiguity of ‘needs to be’ (Boston Globe)
Massive attack
It seems like just about anything can be massive these days, says reader Joe Walsh - even things that have no mass at all. (Boston Globe)
Aggravating!
A verb that vexes (Boston Globe)
The issue with issues
Or is ‘problem’ a problem? (Boston Globe)
Thou shalt not worry about it
For a while there, it looked as if the Internet's chief contribution to English usage would be misinformation, spread farther and faster than ever before. (Boston Globe)
Countdown
One less thing to worry about (Boston Globe)
Specious origins
New books about language myths, slang, and more (Boston Globe)
Unusual suspects
When phrases give up the ghost
Hello, gobsmacked
Greeting the vocabulary's new arrivals (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe)
Special sauces
New ways to end well (Boston Globe)
Clever horses
Unhelpful advice from 'The Elements of Style'
Strait up
Not just dire? Maybe. (Boston Globe)
Active resistance
What we get wrong about the passive voice. (Boston Globe)
Prepossession
Beware an accidental insult.
Carrot unstuck
The debate over the 'carrot' and 'stick' saying. (Boston Globe)
The unkindliest cut
When a compliment hides an insult. (Boston Globe)
History of a cliche
Who was the first to hit the ground running? (Boston Globe)
Confirmed
Sometimes the real question isn't the one we're asked. (Boston Globe)
Warm cooler
Why is that beer jacket a 'koozie'?
The language dustbin
Some advice doesn't age well. (Boston Globe)
Rule by whim
Sometimes usage edicts are just arbitrary. (Boston Globe)
Stoppeth, already
Learning to love bogus archaisms. (Boston Globe)
Speaking volumes
Books for the word lover on your list. (Boston Globe)
Needless words
The case for a bit of verbal padding. (Boston Globe)
We are not bemused
Or are we? A word's dueling meanings. (Boston Globe)
#@!*
What makes language 'foul'?
Dem'crats
Behind the party's changing labels.
Don't feel badly
A time-worn phrase gets knocked around. (Boston Globe)
Singular challenge
Maybe "they" is becoming OK.
Buzz factor
Annoyed by catch phrases? Chill out. (Boston Globe)
The great 'scape
Everything's a landscape now. (Boston Globe)
A girl called 'it'
Choosing the right pronoun for children.
What a mess
The fluid meaning of 'meltdown.' (Boston Globe)
Pause and effect
The quiet generosity of the semicolon. (Boston Globe)
Original copy
Oxymorons that aren't. (Boston Globe)
Can you? Yes
Answering your own questions.
Bitter edge
Should we lay off "on the cusp"?
Sex and the semicolon
The punctuation mark that makes men tremble. (Boston Globe)
License revoked
Can bad language punditry be stopped? (Boston Globe)
Steep thoughts
Can a troop withdrawal be "precipitous"? (Boston Globe)
Full-dress English
What's formal usage, anyway? (Boston Globe)
Modern angst
The new guise of a word we love to fret over. (Boston Globe)
Skadoosh!
The story behind the word of the summer.
The whether report
Do you see what Grammar Girl sees? (Boston Globe)
When girls are 'guys'
Can guys, if they're plural, be dolls? (Boston Globe)
Remember the Alamo
To understand "line in the sand," you need to know that the sand is incidental - it's the line that's essential.
Let's office!
If we all enthusiastically took up officing, we would eventually embrace the word.
No to appeasement
The word "appeasement" made its obligatory election-season appearance.
(5/31/08)
'Optic' nerve
Political-speak takes a techie turn (Boston Globe, 5/27/08)
Just so
A walking tour of bogus language history (Boston Globe, 5/11/08)
The think thing
What do we have coming, exactly? (Boston Globe, 5/4/08)
Gut check
Is that a lump in your stomach - or a void? (4/27/08)
What, me worry?
English isn't getting any dumber (4/20/08)
Pony up
In her Wall Street Journal column in February, Peggy Noonan celebrated the then-thrilling primary ride, writing of loving the "brunt force of it." (4/13/08)
The mullet strategy
It's more than a bad haircut
Almost unique
What's wrong with 'one of the only'? (3/23/08)
Over 'involved'
The Monday news flash, as relayed by a radio announcer, was startling: Eliot Spitzer, Democratic governor of New York and former crusading attorney general, had admitted he was "involved with a prostitution ring." It's an euphemism that raises more questions than it answers (3/16/08)
Hey, Kool-Aid
The sloshing sound isn't just your imagination: If you follow the news, you've probably noticed the rising tide of references to "drinking the Kool-Aid." (3/9/08)
Grammartini
A day to toast precision -- and tolerance (By Jan Freeman, 2/24/08)
Stormy weather
How 'Nor'easter' became standard, even though we don't talk that way. (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 2/17/08)
Hoodwinked
Is Obama speaking in code? (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 2/10/08)
Sign language
It's not easy being clear (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 2/3/08)
Next times
Can we agree on a day to meet? (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 1/27/08)
The whole story
Is one half equal to the other? (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 1/20/08)
Off base
A business blogger was quoted in the Globe, a couple of weeks ago, on his company's approach to "building concepts based off insights and observation." (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 1/13/08)
Heartbroken
"One of my pet peeves is 'he died of an apparent heart attack,' a reader and former newspaperman wrote recently. (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 1/6/08)
Burning question
"Huckabee's meteoric rise has reset expectations for Romney" in the Iowa presidential caucuses, a Washington Post report observed last week. (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 12/30/07)
Prii, Prix, Priora{hellip}
What's the plural of Prius? When asked that last spring, I dredged up some remnants of high-school Latin and guessed "Prioria." But recently, a couple of corrective e-mails have drifted in. (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 12/23/07)
Star-crossed language
There were no injuries in the fire that destroyed a Cape Cod restaurant in October, the Globe reported, but "two firefighters were treated for exertion, according to Joe Carrara, deputy fire chief in Bourne." (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 12/16/07)
Variety show
In its recent review of the Met's reopened Oceanic galleries, The New York Times noted that the people of the Pacific Islands have spoken "about 1,800 different languages." (Boston Globe) (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 11/25/07)
Knight moves
During his pre-Veterans Day visit to Washington, French President Nicolas Sarkozy awarded the Legion of Honor to seven American veterans who served in France during World War II. (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 11/18/07)
Lawn needs cut
Charlie Berthoud moved to Pittsburgh five years ago, but he and his family are still having a bit of trouble with the local lingo. (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 11/11/07)
End games
So it's official: According to last Sunday's New York Times , the word vajayjay - launched into the mainstream last year by "Grey's Anatomy" and embraced by Oprah - is the friendly new term for the female genitals.(Boston Globe, 11/4/07) (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe)
Do the math
ACCORDING TO A wire report in the Globe last month, a proposed geothermal power plant in New Hampshire "would emit 35 times less carbon dioxide per kilowatt" than traditional coal-fueled plants. (By Jan Freeman, Boston Globe, 10/21/07)
Entirely wrong
"NOT AVAILABLE IN all areas," the ads for new cable and phone services say, warning potential customers that their neighborhoods may not yet be wired for all the bells and whistles.
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