A site to help make English grammar more understandable without dumbing down either its significance or its usage.
I’m not sure when he wrote the first edition of his A Short History of Financial Euphoria, but the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith updated it in 1990 following the stock market crash of 1987 and then the savings and loan meltdown of the late 1980s. Those times seem tame compared to what’s transpiring now. Unfortunately, [...]
I’d probably have had an easier time figuring out how to spell the winning word in this year’s National Spelling Bee than I would in spelling the winner’s name. Laodicean, meaning lukewarm to politics, was the deciding word for Kavya (phonetic and easy) Shivashankar (actually, pretty phonetic as well), the 13-year-old winner. Actually, I take [...]
I recently picked up a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking by the late and absolutely great chef Julia Child in preparation for a book I was and still am considering to write While I’ve tried, so far, one of her recipes–the first one, in fact, for Potage Promentier (potato-leek soup)–what truly impresses [...]
In more obfuscation and lawyerese, Obama and his stormtroopers have now exorcised reality from the English language. Instead of "war on terror" or "war on terrorism," they’re using "overseas contingency operations," and instead of "acts of terror," they’re referring to "man-caused disasters." George Orwell would be proud, in a negative sort of way, of course. [...]