word usage

(Newser) - Let me ask you this: Would a story that unpacks a list of tiresome words and phrases be impactful or a nothingburger? Worse, could it just be fake news? Northern Michigan's Lake Superior State University on Sunday released its 43rd annual List of Words Banished from the Queen's...

(Newser) - Ruthless about grammar? Got Google Chrome? This plugin , highlighted at Yahoo , could figuratively solve all your problems. The "Literally" browser extension gets rid of the pesky incorrect uses of "literally" that litter the Internet, replacing them with "figuratively." According to the extension's developer, "that'...

(Newser) - Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist William Safire died today outside Washington, the paper reports. He was 79 and suffered from cancer. A onetime speechwriter for Richard Nixon, Safire, a self-described "libertarian conservative," used his background as a reporter and love for English usage to punch up his...

(Newser) - Nowadays, Google is just about as good a reference as the Oxford English Dictionary—or better, Julia Angwin writes in the Wall Street Journal. Type in a misspelled word, and the search engine corrects it. What’s more, Google will display a trove of up-to-date articles using the word, something...