Language - The Atlantic Wire

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Topic: Language

Geeks Are Still Being Bullied By Dictionaries

Just in time for Geek Pride day, some folks on the Internet have started to get a little defensive over the term "geek," as they should, since lots of official language arbiters still consider it a derogatory term.

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 22, 2012

Auto-Correct Is Not Ruining Spelling

Today in studies that claim the Internet is ruining our lives, the BBC informs us that auto-correct and spellcheckers have turned us into a bunch of illiterate idiots.

Comments | 1,292 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 11, 2012

Let's Fix Allllll Our .... Email Punctuation Problems

When we tried chilling out on our email exclamation mark usage, in an attempt to wean ourselves off our addiction, we noticed some other punctuation crutches we've developed.

Comments | 1,139 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

May 7, 2012

Smackdown: Is There a Right Way to Speak English?

In this week's New Yorker we learn of two competing schools of language scholars: The stodgy, old-school prescriptivists, who think there should be set rules for speaking and writing English, and the more liberal descriptivists, who aim to describe rather than dictate how we should speak.

Comments | 1,064 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Mar 14, 2012

The Slang Chinese Bloggers Use to Subvert Censorship

They call it the Grass Mud-Horse lexicon, and, lucky for us language lovers, the China Digital Times just started a recurring word of the week feature to go along with its catalog of the slang China's bloggers use to subvert government censorship.

Comments | 2,737 Views