By Allan Metcalf. Yes! That’s the good word (complete with exclamation point) from the progressive city of Boulder, Colo. Last week the Boulder Public Library announced: An art project called, “Yes!” by artists R&R Studios based in Miami, was selected by a public art selection panel on March 31. More...

By Ben Yagoda. An interesting Slate piece a few months back by Matthew J.X. Malady noted many Twitter users’ disdain for commas. It’s not just a matter of being frugal with punctuation in order to fit a thought into 140 characters. Punctuational minimalism has emerged as one of the hallmarks of casual online style—social media, texting, commenting, message boards. One inescapable example, which I’ve previously discussed, is the sea change in email greeting from “Hi, Name” to “Hi Name.” This is by no means exclusively the province of kids and illiterates. I recently came on this comment on the philosophy blog LessWrong: “Anyway [no comma] yes [no comma] I can see that teleological capture is problematic. However [no comma] I can’t do away with it completely.” (Exceptions to the minimalism rule are ellipses, question marks, and exclamation points, which have spread online like Asian carp in a predator-free freshwater ecosystem.) More...

By Geoffrey Pullum. English is becoming a global lingua franca not just for trade, industry, aviation, research, and entertainment, but also for higher education. We scarcely needed the conclusions of a new research report by the department of education at the University of Oxford in collaboration with the British Council, released Wednesday, to tell us that. More...

By Anne Curzan. It’s graduation season, a time when we celebrate the academic accomplishments of students. At this moment when we are celebrating learning, I think it is important to remember the importance of not always knowing—a message I had the opportunity to share a few years ago at a high-school commencement in Cleveland. I wanted to share part of that speech here in hopes that it might be meaningful for some of this spring’s high-school graduates and students already in college. More...

By Ilan Stavans. Fede, a Venezuelan student of mine, whenever he greets me, starts with “Epa, Ilan.”
Epa is an interjection, an expression of emotion, that is, frankly, almost impossible to translate. In English, what Fede means is a combination of hey, whoa, and howdayado, that is, a slangy form of greeting as well as a manifestation of surprise. More...

By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Access to What and for Whom? A Closer Look at Parent PLUS Loans”
Author: Awilda Rodriguez
Organization: American Enterprise Institute’s Center on Higher Education Reform
Summary: This report offers context on the hotly debated federal Parent PLUS loan program, which allows parents to borrow up to the full cost of college attendance minus other aid for dependent undergraduate students. The report uses the Title IV loan-volume report for 2012-13 to analyze colleges that have large disbursements in the program, and data from the most recent National Postsecondary Student Aid Study to analyze the demographics of borrowers. More...

By Charles Huckabee. South Carolina State University, said last week to be a month away from “financial disaster,” won a state board’s approval on Wednesday to borrow $6-million to help meet its payroll and pay other bills, according to reports by two South Carolina newspapers, The State and The Times and Democrat. More...