The Ladylike Language of Letters
Letters reveal how language changes. They also offer a peek into the way people--especially women--have always constructed their private and public selves.
To Cope with Digital Distraction, Embrace Digital Neurodiversity
The internet is changing our brains. Our columnist suggests that maybe this isn't such a bad thing.
The First Native American to Receive a Medical Degree
Susan LaFlesche Picotte was first Native American to be licensed to practice medicine in the U.S. She opened her own hospital, but didn't live to run it.
What a Paragraph Is
On the controversial directive that a paragraph must contain a topic sentence, an idea that theorists, writers, and students have questioned for decades.
What Congress Should Know About the Internet
Facebook's privacy and ad preferences settings are a privacy placebo: they trick us into feeling a little better, but they don't treat the underlying disease.
Better Writing Begins with the Right Tools
Word processing software has not only changed the way we write; it's changed the way we read. It pays to think about what we want from our writing tools.
6 Tips about Academic Writing for #AcWriMo
November is Academic Writing Month. We’ve gathered six helpful tips for your scholarly writing—with academic citations of course.
Fighting Words With the Unabomber
Some of the world's most baffling criminal cases were solved thanks to some seemingly harmless point about language. Take the Unabomber, for example.
Very British Villains (and Other Anglo-Saxon Attitudes to Accents)
What do peoples' accents really reveal about them? The villainous British accent crystallizes the love-hate special relationship between the US and the UK.
“What’s a life, anyway?” Remembering E. B. White
E.B. White was born on this day in 1899, and in lieu of a proper celebration—a lobster dinner ...