Language

I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day… fifty the day after that… and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, complet

Sublimity refers to a certain type of elevated language that strikes its listener with the mighty and irresistible power of a thunderbolt. A sublime passage can be heard again and again with equal pleasure.

“Grammar is a fence that keeps the cows of chaos from trampling the flower bed of prose.”

—Benjamin Dreyer

For those unfamiliar with yinz—though I imagine if you’re currently reading this book, you most likely know what it means, albeit it’s becoming increasingly rare in usage—it’s simply the Western Pennsylvania second-person plural, the Pittsburgh equivalent of y’all down South or youse in Jersey and New York.

Close Enough

At some point this morning — I’ve already forgotten the context (it’s hot!) — I muttered “Close enough for government work,” and it occurred to me (not for the first time) that I have three such phrases in my quiver, identical in meaning and equivalent in usage (in other words, the choice on any given occasion is essentially random): “c