WHATS GOIN ON AT ST MARYS WALK? OR WATERSTONES? OR VONS?
JENNY GROSS WRITES IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 10, 2024, “An English Town Drops Apostrophes From Street Signs. Some Aren’t Happy.” “Malcolm Wood, an English teacher in North Yorkshire, … Continue reading
DISSIN’ FOR FUN
BACK IN OCTOBER 2022, MY BOOK REVIEW of Colin Jarman’s Barbed Quotes: Mudslinging, Backstabbing, and Celebrity Dishing offered only one quote concerning politicians. I guess I thought Trump would just … Continue reading
FONTS CAN SAVE TREES
“HARPERCOLLINS MADE A TINY TWEAK to its Book Design—and Has Saved Thousands of Trees as a Result,” reports Elizabeth Segran in the Fast Company website, April 2, 2024. What’s more, … Continue reading
DIALECTS THAT I’VE HEARD, LIKE, Y’KNOW
A RECENT WORDS TRIVIA WEBSITE “Top 6 English Dialects That Sound Like Different Languages” got me thinking of dialects I have known. Here are tidbits gleaned from the Words Trivia … Continue reading
LLM HALLUCINATING: AN A.I. PARLOR GAME
ROBERT CRAWFORD’S ARTICLE “After the British Library Cyberattack,” London Review of Books, April 4, 2024, is an excellent—and humorous—imagining of A.I. It follows up on the lamentable October 2023 British … Continue reading
CELEBRATING LATE-19TH-CENTURY LITERARY ART
“THE VOGUE FOR LITERARY POSTERS,” Leah Greenblatt writes in The New York Times, April 5, 2024, “burned briefly, beginning in 1893 and lasting not much more than a decade.” And … Continue reading
SHAKESPEARE’S WORDS
THE Words Trivia website offers “5 Ways Shakespeare Changed English That You Never Knew.” I add these Shakespearean tidbits to “Bereft of Insults?,” “Shakespeare’s Vocabulary,” and “OP Shakespeare,” this last … Continue reading
THE OED IS COOKIN’—IN JAPANESE
THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE adds 23 Japanese words in its latest update. Ella Creamer reports this in The Guardian, March 27, 2024: “More than half of … Continue reading
THE BENETTON FORMULA 1 TEAM: REBELS—YOU’RE TELLING ME!?
JOURNALIST EXTRAORDINAIRE JUDY STROPUS alerted me to a new book Benneton Rebels of Formula 1, by Damien Smith, Foreward by Pat Symonds, Evro Publishing, 2023. Amazon lists it. I surely … Continue reading
HISTORICAL (HYSTERICAL) PUNS
THE WORD GENIUS WEBSITE RECENTLY OFFERED “Historical Puns That Can Still Make You Laugh.” I works for years with R&T Editor John Dinkel, punster extraordinaire, so my standards are high. … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 