Category: words

Of course, the officials say, books and article about how to strangle someone or how to escape handcuffs must be censored. But what about Angie Thomas’ young adult book The Hate U Give? What about The Bluest Eye or The Color Purple? (All have been banned in some prisons – some while Mein Kampf was allowed.) – NPR

Mantel says there are so many stories in the Cromwell trilogy that the books are like a pamphlet. But of course: “At a combined total of more than 2,000 pages – with [forthcoming book three] The Mirror & the Light accounting for nearly half of them – you couldn’t get much further from a pamphlet. ‘I’ve got quite amused at people suggesting I have writer’s block, you know. I’ve been like a factory!’ She also chafes at the suggestion that her latest book was delayed because she was reluctant to kill off Cromwell. ‘It’s not something I’ve ever said; it’s what people think I should have said. It’s this version in which the woman writer is sentimentally attached to her creation.'” – The Guardian (UK)

“No matter where I’ve worked, it has always been obvious that if everyone agreed to use language in the way that it is normally used, which is to communicate, the workday would be two hours shorter.” – New York Magazine

“This diagram, created by WordTips, breaks down the world’s 100 most-spoken languages by their roots (e.g., Indo-European for English and Spanish, or Sino-Tibetan for Mandarin) and by the number of native speakers and total speakers. The resulting chart helps reveal some interesting insights.” – Digg

Comedian Alexis Pereira writes a genuine essay about the bogus essay he posted to Twitter, written by an imaginary student and marked up in red pen by Pereira as an imaginary English teacher, and about how he then got to see Poe’s Law in action. – Vulture

Blackletter, or Fraktur (as it’s known in German), was used all over Europe during the Middle Ages and through the early years of the printing press. As the rest of the continent gave blackletter up, though, Protestant Germans held on to Fraktur (Roman type was Papist, you understand), and, by the early 20th century, the font had become a symbol of German-ness. You know where that led — and the association, even though it’s not really accurate, remains powerful to this day as the German alt-right rises. (includes text and audio) – 99% Invisible

The fan-fic phenomenon seems to have gotten its start in the wake of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with William Hogarth and Alexander Pope riffing on the adventures of Swift’s hero (and, in Pope’s case, his put-upon wife). Add to that Shamela, Henry Fielding’s lusty takedown of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded, and the genre is well and truly established. – The Atlantic

“All along, while standard American English was busy convincing everyone that it was a superior dialect, it’s Black English that’s been a true cultural and linguistic force in contemporary society. Standard English is in fact deeply indebted to this so-called impoverished speech. It’s Black English that has left its mark on the popular culture we participate in, sliding seamlessly into the language of art, music, poetry, storytelling, and social media. Perhaps no other variety of speech has been quite so significant, innovative, and influential to the development of standard American English.” – JSTOR Daily

Today, Wikipedia is the eighth-most-visited site in the world. The English-language version recently surpassed 6 million articles and 3.5 billion words; edits materialize at a rate of 1.8 per second. But perhaps more remarkable than Wikipedia’s success is how little its reputation has changed. It was criticized as it rose, and now makes its final ascent to … muted criticism. – Wired