English Language

The only literary work about punctuation I'm aware of is an odd early story by Anton Chekhov called "The Exclamation Mark." After getting into an argument with a colleague about punctuation, a school inspector named Yefim Perekladin asks his wife what an exclamation point is for. She tells him it signifies delight, indignation, joy and rage. He realizes that in 40 years of writing official reports, he has never had the need to express any of those emotions.

Does it matter when someone gets a quotation wrong? Our linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the question.

In 2017 alone, Merriam-Webster added more than 1,000 words to its dictionary. Noah Webster himself might have struggled to define these new English terms — such as binge-watch, humblebrag, photobomb, NSFW, truther, face-palm and listicle.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg tracks the evolution of the word "protest."

Geoff Nunberg on speaking with hands.

Our resident linguist looks at the differences in the language used to describe Republicans and Democrats.

At the end of each year, our linguist Geoff Nunberg gives us his word of the year.

The Senate version of the immigration bill includes a clause proclaiming English the national language and calling on the federal government to preserve and enhance the role of English. Our linguist, Geoff Nunberg, isn't sure this is a good idea.

How the media reports on crude language when a public figure is caught using it on tape. . . for instance Donald Trump.

Alien, illegal, undocumentated, immigrant — the debate over immigration policy is also about the words used by the various sides. Linguist Geoff Nunberg says the language of immigration has been controversial for as long as immigration has been an issue in American life.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the derogative words used to describe many of Donald Trump's supporters - words like hillbilly, white trash, and redneck, and what those words say about class conflict.

Political analysts have been dividing the country into red states and blue states for several elections now, but it's only in the last year or two that the distinction has really caught on with the media and the public. As our linguist Geoff Nunberg points out, the odd thing is that the new usage seems to reverse the traditional political meanings of red and blue.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the proper terminology for describing white-collar fraudster Bernie Madoff, from the Dickensian "scoundrel" to the plebeian "scumbag."

The French are having a huge cultural row over some spelling changes the government is about to put into effect. It leads our linguist Geoff Nunberg to wonder why we never have controversies over spelling like the French do. Why do we insist on putting up with a spelling system that everybody acknowledges is a chaotic mess?

Linguist Geoff Nunberg says it's fitting that the Scripps National Spelling Bee is broadcast by ESPN. (And, by the way, a thamakau is a kind of canoe used in Fiji.)

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the roots and resonance of the latest tech buzzword to catapult into the mainstream. "Disrupt" may be ubiquitous now, but could the term be on the eve of a disruption?

Wikipedia editor Bryan Henderson has made it his crusade to edit out the phrase "comprised of" in more than 5 million articles. While his quest is harmless, it shows that zealots can dominate the Web.

Scott Saul's new book, Becoming Richard Pryor, describes how Pryor went from being raised by a grandmother, who was a bootlegger and madam, to being a transformative figure in entertainment.

Nobody knows what was in the president's cup when he saluted the Marines last month, but it became known as the "latte salute." Do people still use "red" and "blue" when discussing a cultural divide?

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century evokes another famous tome with "capital" in its title, and makes comparisons inevitable.