This post is not so much about words themselves, but how we communicate with — and without — words. Writers often make men and women characters interchangeable, using only physical attributes to tell them apart, forgetting that there are differences between the two species. (I know, men and women aren’t two different species, but you have […]
We all have a list of words and phrases that we’d just as soon cut from the language. I already talked about giving 110%, 24/7, and coeds, but the following words and phrases are just as annoying and just as meaningless. Intestinal fortitude ties my guts into knots. I suppose with all the indigestible food that we […]
We all have a list of annoying words and phrases that we’d just as soon cut from the language. Here are some words I’d like to expunge, starting with a hundred and ten percent. If I hear one more person say he is giving a hundred and ten percent, I think I’ll scream or vomit or […]
My mother died almost exactly three years ago. To understand the humor rather than the pathos behind that sentence, I’ll have to tell you a bit about my mother. She spoke with perfect diction, in unstilted, unaccented English, and she loved words and word games, especially the kind of game where you take a word […]
