Content tagged language
Blog Entries
“Placeholder names are words that can refer to objects or people whose names are either irrelevant or unknown in the context in which it is being discussed.” … gulfstream/2441
Steven Pinker: Linguistic, historial and sociological aspects of swearing. Many good points in here, e.g. “To hear nigger is to try on, however briefly, … gulfstream/2339
Explanation of the Chinese system of writing, by way of imagining that English were constructed in the same way. (Something similar: the documentation … gulfstream/2343
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. Includes sections on The Bible (the handwriting on the wall), proverbs (he who laughs last, laughs best), idioms … gulfstream/2349
The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks. I’m a bit trouble that I find it very much impossible to read these the way the signwriters intended, … gulfstream/2363
Story on a well-placed semi-colon on some MTA signage is currently the most frequently emailed story at the Times! gulfstream/2397
“When’s it due back?” “The day after tomorrow.” gulfstream/1703
“How vanilla became shorthand for bland.” I hate hate hate it when I get a milkshake with no flavour when I ask for a vanilla milkshake. … gulfstream/1813
“A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia.” gulfstream/1824
Spotting the fake: the (new) New Oxford American Dictionary contains a copycat-busting fake word starting with E. gulfstream/1826
What the “@” sign is called in different countries. gulfstream/1839
Apparently, “literally” has been used for emphasis for ages. gulfstream/1871
OED-compiled word FAQ. They want to call CamelCase medial capitals though, which so isn’t gonna work out. gulfstream/2022
“How Brazilian soccer players get their names.” The one-word names are mostly nicknames; defenders are much more likely to be known by their full … gulfstream/2088
“Weasel words are words or phrases that seemingly support statements without attributing opinions to verifiable sources. Weasel words give the force … gulfstream/2159
Google whines about “google” turning into a verb that means “to search the internet,” urges customers to stop using it like that. (There must … gulfstream/2182
Flickr Photos
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Japanese Roots
good long article on the history of japan, in the jared diamond style (how technological developments affect destiny)
Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Review: Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler
AskOxford: What are the plurals of 'octopus', 'hippopotamus', 'syllabus'?
X Marks the Baseball Team - Why the White Sox aren't the White Socks. By Daniel Engber
HeiDeas: Beyond embiggens and cromulent
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Lost in translation
3quarksdaily: reflection on the house style of the nytimes
Dangerous words
writing for the web: words to not use
Placeholder name - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gallery of ''Misused'' Quotation Marks
hasn't been updated since 2000?
Locale::Maketext::TPJ13 -- article about software localization - search.cpan.org
the difficulties of translation "I scanned 12 directories." and "Your query matched 10 files in 4 directories."
TNR Online | What the F***? (1 of 3) (print)
Yingzi
explanation of written chinese by way of imagining if english were written like chinese
Webmaster Help Center - Duplicate content
"use top-level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content"
A Vote for Latin - New York Times
Philip B. Corbett -- Talk to the Newsroom -- The New York Times -- Reader Questions and Answers - New York Times
nytimes switches to "DVDs" (from "DVD's")
