All Verbal Energy

'Kiev' still makes sense as the way to refer to the troubled capital, but that may change.

That wildly popular online New York Times dialect quiz illustrates, among other things, how rooted our word choices are in the environment we live in.

People used to say, "It snew last night" or "It's snowen all week" – and not so long ago

A review of a 'best books of the year' list reveals just how essential a particular mark of punctuation is to book titles.

Academics have a term for those phrases we use to soften well-meant criticisms – or to position ourselves when we want to deliver a real zinger.

In his new memoir, 'Little Failure,' Gary Shteyngart captures the almost physical love of language that leads him to a career as a writer.

An old word used in a new way gets the nod as the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year for 2013.

Why isn't a meteorologist someone who studies meteors, and other questions from a cold snap.

A visit to an online archive of newspapers of the 17th and 18th centuries shows how bloglike many of them were – for good or ill.

To deal with a tricky issue you run across repeatedly, find a good simple example of it handled correctly, fix it in your mind, and then use it as a model for dealing with trickier instances of the same issue.

The origin of the word may point to the wisdom of breaking up your ambitious 2014 plans into reasonable parts.

A competition intended to identify 'curatorial talent' points up a new use for an old word.

Research sheds new light on why paper still has an edge over e-readers.

Last month's court decision upholding the legality of the Google Books search engine also kept a powerful research tool available to the public.

A court decision in favor of the mass digitization of libraries is an occasion to consider how technology has transformed the copy desk.

The Monitor’s language columnist admits grudging admiration a wonky but useful term that covers a lot of important 'stuff.'

During a brief lull between federal financial crises, a look at the vocabulary of playing for time.

How do transit agencies and other similar entities manage to 'serve' more people than even live in their areas?

Washington is at loggerheads and the GOP isn't sure of its 'ask.'

We all know about signaling a joke when writing, especially online, but sometimes we need to signal that we really mean our words at face value.