By Andy Thomason. Public and private colleges and universities alike expect tuition revenue to be relatively stagnant in the 2016 fiscal year, according to Moody’s Investors Service’s annual tuition survey. More...
13 décembre 2015
13 décembre 2015
To Affinity — and Beyond
By William Germano. Buzz Lightyear, the challenged but adorable astronaut of the Toy Story films, sets high goals for himself. To infinity — and beyond, he exclaims, as earnestly as an animated toy might hope to. More...
13 décembre 2015
‘People of Color’
By Geoffrey Pullum. It’s slightly surprising that The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, by Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly, still (even in the 2015 Kindle edition) turns its nose up at the phrase people of color:
people of color
Except in direct quotations, the expression is too self-conscious for the news columns. Substitute a term like minorities or, better, refer to specific ethnic groups – black and Hispanic authors, for example.
Some copy editors think the phrase has moved into the mainstream and should be welcomed. More...
13 décembre 2015
English and Its Undeserved Good Luck
By Geoffrey Pullum. In my post last week I cited a few ways in which English is unsuitable as a global language, and mentioned that its being one anyway is attributable at least in part to undeserved luck.
Of course, it wasn’t all luck. British imperialism and the African slave trade laid the foundations. Even today, with the empire gone, English has about 400 million native speakers, on all seven continents, and about a billion and a half use it for some purposes. More...
13 décembre 2015
The Unsuitability of English
By Geoffrey Pullum. Utrecht, Holland— My mission in this pleasant central Holland town: giving a keynote address at the 25th anniversary conference of Sense (originally the Society of English-Native-Speaking Editors, now a general professional organization of anglophone editors in the Netherlands) in the palatial surroundings of the beautifully restored 16th-century Paushuize. More...
13 décembre 2015
What Open-Access Publishing Actually Costs
By . In academe, ideas cost money. But how much?
Advocates for open-access journals say that academic research should be free for everyone to read. But even those proponents acknowledge that publishing costs money — the disagreement is over the amount. More...
13 décembre 2015
Why Early Etymologists Embarrassingly Err
By Allan Metcalf. You would think that someone closest in time and place to the emergence of a new word would be the best authority about its origin. More...
13 décembre 2015
Here’s Your Very Own ‘Merry’
By Allan Metcalf. Welcome to December! Yesterday was the first of the month, time for your Word of the Month: merry.
That’s right. As a member of the Word of the Month Club, you’re entitled to use this month’s word on any and every occasion. More...
13 décembre 2015
A Day in the Life of a Lexicographer
By Allan Metcalf. David Barnhart comes from a lexicographical dynasty. He and his late brother, Robert, have both been in the profession of making dictionaries, following in the footsteps of their famous father Clarence L. Barnhart, author of the Thorndike-Barnhart series of dictionaries. More...
13 décembre 2015
Giving Words
By Allan Metcalf. When I saw an article on Friendsgiving in The Wall Street Journal last week, I knew I had a topic for the day before Thanksgiving: giving words. A long list, that is, of words ending in -giving, like those two. More...
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