Thursday - February 11, 2010

It turns out that no one likes the word "homosexual" but they okay with "gay." (Hey! It's a chant!) @4:12 PM 14

Friday - December 4, 2009

Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: Sister, You're A Poet  @12:10 PM

So last Sunday I read an op-ed in the Times, where some dude argues in favor of Catholic priests saying Mass, while facing the direction opposite of the congregation. Now, this op-ed was most wacky to me not because of anything inherently awkward about facing away from the people you're talking to. (But, yes.) Or because Kenneth J. Wolfe assumes that there is very much of a congregation these days not to face. (Ha, I think.) But because I remember learning back in high school that the Catholic Church had already reversed this practice once before. READ MORE 9

Tuesday - November 24, 2009

Dissing, punting, sussing, gussying, grousing: the Times' associate managing editor for Standards does not approve. @12:50 PM 3

Tuesday - October 20, 2009

Should We Repeal "No Homo"?  @2:40 PM

Negating the negatory: "If the point of 'no homo' is truly, as Weiner argues, to slowly make hip-hop less heteronormative, censoring 'no homo' can only speed up the term's intended progress. Why not encourage rappers to express alternate interpretations of masculinity without an easily deconstructed verbal safety net?" 12

Monday - August 17, 2009

How A "C-Word" Becomes A [C-Word]  @10:40 AM

The Guardian's ombudsman examines the paper's use of profanity: "'Fuck', for instance, has made an appearance 470 times this year already, and the more taboo C-word has cropped up in 61 items. These profanities are more frequent in the culture and music sections than elsewhere and they nearly always appear, in speech marks, when someone else's words are reported. The Guardian's editorial code says: 'There is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes.' Complaints about inappropriate language usually concern breaches of this part of the code in columns written by contributors, but the front-page C-word story, on 25 July, which reported Jeremy Clarkson's not-for-broadcast remarks about the prime minister to a Top Gear studio audience, was in line with editorial policy." The C-word, for the record, is "cunt." 5

Tuesday - August 11, 2009

Gay Marriage Trouble: What Do You Call Your Old Name?  @2:20 PM

Q. "When two men get married and one takes the other's last name (rather than creating one of those hyphenated thingies), how do you refer to his former last name?" A. "Slave name." 11

Tuesday - July 28, 2009

Irish Syntacticians Reach Collective Climax Over Van Morrison Profanity  @4:23 PM

Yes, finally, someone has dealt with Van Morrison's request to fans that they "Fucking shut the fuck up." The answer begins with this thorny issue: "The main syntactic problem is to determine whether the fuck is being used as an pleonastic (semantically empty) direct object of shut or as a pre-head modifier of the preposition phrase (PP) headed by up." OMG I KNOW. 4

Thursday - June 25, 2009

At Least Two 'WaPo' Reporters Don't Actually Understand English  @3:20 PM

Writers at the Washington Post, including Hank Stuever, have taken South Carolina governor Mark Sanford to task for his use of language in yesterday's HIGHLY ENTERTAINING and totally wacko press conference. They wrote: "Note all the passive constructions, the avoidance of first person." Actually, this is wildly inaccurate on both counts, writes Mark Liberman: "I count 180 tensed verbs, of which I can find only four instances of grammatical passive voice." Oh it goes on! I would get all up in this but I didn't go to no college and I'm not very good on parts of speech. 6

Wednesday - June 24, 2009

The Invention of 'Ms.': 1901!?  @1:54 PM

"Every one has been put in an embarrassing position by ignorance of the status of some woman." —the Springfield (Mass.) Sunday Republican of November 10, 1901. 5

Friday - June 19, 2009

Persian For Beginners  @11:15 AM

Google now offers a Persian option on its Translate page to help you better keep up with the fast-moving events in Iran. I just tried it, and while it is somewhat rudimentary, it translated the first Twitter message I found—"متشکرم اندرو سالیوان برای عط سبز "Ùˆ وبلاگ شما—as "I was not going to protest until I saw that Andrew Sullivan turned his blog green in solidarity," which seems about right. 8