We’re back with another batch of silliness to get you through the week. With any luck, these will give you a chuckle when you need one the most. Enjoy! Solidus Editorial Solutions can help make your copy spark, radiate, and glow. So when we’re on the case, be sure to wear protective gloves and [...]
On a recent trip to Las Vegas, my fiancé – a nurse – and I were strolling along the famed Strip, and I, a veteran of Las Vegas vacations, was pointing out items of interest to her. When we reached the Treasure Island hotel and casino, I pointed to the sign out in front, which [...]
I’m endlessly fascinated by words. Of course I am, words are my bread and butter. I love the fact that in the English language there are three ways to spell two and two ways to spell one, and that there’s a really long word (sesquipedalian) which means “long word.” But what I’ll never understand is [...]
I read Tropic of Cancer during my senior year of college, and I have a confession to make: I didn’t like it. Not even the dirty parts. You may think that this doesn’t warrant a confession, but I felt really guilty about not enjoying an acclaimed piece of literature. I also hated The Electric Kool-Aid [...]
A good friend of mine almost always says that she is going to “check the weather” instead of saying that she is going to smoke a cigarette. If people don’t know her, they usually get this bewildered look on their faces and sort of glance out the window. When she is at work, she says [...]
Anyone familiar with folk legend John Henry knows of his famous race against the steam-powered hammer. Okay, maybe you don’t know a thing about it, but don’t feel bad — I thought the legend was about Paul Bunyan until I did some digging. John Henry worked as a “steel-driver” — a man tasked with hammering [...]
I think of myself as a worldly woman, but I heard about something a couple of weeks ago that was entirely new to me: grammar fetishes. Apparently, some people find themselves sexually excited when their partners talk like a thesaurus, or they become aroused when their grammar is corrected, or when they correct the grammar [...]
A study undertaken by the Spelling Society claims that Americans are worse spellers than the British. Apparently, more than half of the surveyed Americans were unable to spell the words “embarrassed,” “liaison,” and “millennium,” among others. In response to this, some American experts are blaming the problem on high school dropout rates; others argue that [...]
Do you know who the Igs are? I didn’t. I do now. But there’s no reason for me to call them the Igs. Because I’m not from Philadelphia. I had no idea that there was so much colorful slang just a little to the south and west of Boston. I knew that they call a [...]
Scientists at the University of Reading completed a study that identified which are the oldest words in the English language and which modern words are likely to go the way of the hypodiastole. That’s a little editing joke. No one uses the hypodiastole punctuation mark anymore. Get it? No? Moving on, then.
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