When to ‘whoomp’ WHO WOULD HAVE thought, with the old media giants keeling over like Disney’s overheated dinosaurs, that a journalistic inside joke would become the talk of the twitterverse? But so it is. A month after the Fake AP Stylebook began tweeting parody usage and style tips - “ ‘Teaspoon’ and ‘tablespoon’ measure volume. ‘Coffee spoon’ measures life” - it has thousands ... (Page K2, 847 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Nov 22, 2009

Can you relate? “RELATABLE - WHAT IS that?” demanded the subject line of Christina Thompson’s e-mail. The message itself took a calmer tone. Thompson, who edits the Harvard Review and teaches writing and editing, has been hearing the word more and more often, she said, to describe “something one can relate to, as in ‘it’s a very relatable book.’ (Page K2, 854 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Nov 8, 2009

Point taken “NOT TO PUT too fine a point on it, the Roundabout’s revival of ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ is the worst-sung musical I’ve ever seen on Broadway,” wrote Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal of the new production. (Page K2, 825 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Oct 25, 2009

MORE OFTEN THAN not, the only thing a language maven can honestly say about a new usage is, “might as well get used to it.” Look at “I could care less,” which has vexed literal-minded listeners for decades. In his column at Visual Thesaurus last week, Ben Zimmer showed that the phrase has been gaining on its virtuous twin, “I ... (Page K2, 845 words)By: Jan Freeman Globe Correspondent|Date: Oct 11, 2009

Several of the past week’s tributes to language columnist and pundit William Safire, who died last Sunday, referred to him as a language arbiter. John McWhorter, in Forbes magazine, noted that he and his fellow linguists “were not Safire fans. His take on language was that it is something to be policed rather than observed.” (Page K3, 881 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Oct 4, 2009

IN LAST WEEK’S NEWS, the United States was ”looking to move on” in its relations with Britain, Yahoo was looking to improve the search experience, Harrah’s was looking to dump debt, and Vladimir Sobotka was looking to make a big impression at the Bruins training camp. (Page K2, 816 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Sep 27, 2009

Is ‘mourning’ broken? “World leaders mourn Ted Kennedy.” “Hollywood mourns Swayze.” “Friends and family mourn Michael Jackson.” All the mournful headlines got Sarah Jensen, a writer and editor, wondering about the way the verb is used. “Should this properly be ‘mourn the death of’?” she asked in an e-mail. (Page K2, 827 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Sep 20, 2009

“I may finish the project today.” “I might finish the project today.” Which one is a more optimistic prediction? (Page K2, 824 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Sep 13, 2009

Turning up volumes Book publishing is in trouble? You wouldn’t know it from the pile of new language books and the publishers’ promises of more to come. (Page C10, 824 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Sep 6, 2009

More than friends In the era of spill-it-all social networking, can we still describe a possibly amorous couple as an item , or is such discreetly winking terminology out of date? Chuck Eisenhardt of Arlington, after using the label in a Facebook posting several months ago, wrote to ask whether it was appropriate there, and where it had come from in the first ... (Page C4, 855 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Aug 30, 2009

Fade away What we talk about when we talk about grammar is hardly ever actual grammar - the way we put words and sentences together in English. Most of the time, it’s new words, or new meanings for old words, that grab our attention. But earlier this month, John Carroll - who teaches at Boston University and blogs at Campaign Outsider - ... (Page C2, 808 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Aug 23, 2009

“Is Wendy’s hamburger way better than fast food?” asks reader Don Moody of Pittsburgh. “Is GoToMeeting.com way better than meeting face-to-face?” And is this advertising use of way correct English? (Page C2, 791 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Aug 16, 2009

SOMETIMES I PURPOSELY choose a usage some readers may disapprove of - an only in a position sticklers might call suboptimal, a bigger than me where some prefer bigger than I. It’s not that I’m being provocative - I’m just writing naturally - but after years as a copy editor, I tend to notice when I’m taking what some would ... (Page C2, 825 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Aug 9, 2009

Anymore! I SPENT LAST WEEK in Ohio, catching up with family, and the very day I arrived, my mother said something like this: “We get our fresh vegetables at Schild’s anymore.” (Page D2, 809 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Aug 2, 2009

AT LEAST ONE reader had a problem (or maybe just an issue) with a word I used in last week’s column. I said that I preferred P-town as the short form of Provincetown, rather than Ptown or P’town, because it was conventional and also “transparent” - that is, the pronunciation was easily inferred from the spelling. (Page C2, 820 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Jul 26, 2009

Falling short Last week’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor were as bland as the pundits had predicted. But one news report did offer a bit of linguistic titillation. NPR’s Ari Shapiro, commenting on Sotomayer’s opening remarks, said, “I don’t think she went out on a limb {hellip} The statement was much shorter than it needed to be.” (Page C2, 816 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Jul 19, 2009

Massive attack It seems like just about anything can be massive these days, says reader Joe Walsh - even things that have no mass at all. Especially in the broadcast media, he e-mailed, he hears massive “in all manner of contexts - massive protests in Iran, massive tornadoes on the Weather Channel, massive heart attacks - having nothing to do with the ... (Page C2, 817 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Jul 12, 2009

Aggravating! ARMCHAIR EDITORS HAVE been hard at work over at After Deadline, the New York Times blog covering usage errors, since the latest editing quiz was posted last Tuesday. The new batch of questions includes a fairly typical range of goofs and gaffes, some subtle and some not: subject-verb agreement, whom for who, a rare instance where none really must be ... (Page K2, 830 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Jul 5, 2009

THE WORD issues bothers a fair number of people, including reader David Devore, who recently sent me a link to a language complaint in the Times of London - along with the warning, “watch out for escaping steam.” And indeed, the Times letter writer was at the boiling point. “In the media, in the pub, at the bus stop,” fulminated ... (Page C2, 820 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Jun 28, 2009

Now you see it... In the 10 years since I first fielded readers’ complaints about the phrase go missing, the British import has continued to spread in American English. It has also continued to irk some people: Grammar Girl, for instance, called it her audience’s peeve of the year for 2008. She added this advice to journalists: “Went missing actually isn’t wrong, but it ... (Page C2, 833 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Jun 21, 2009

Turns of phrase A few weeks ago, language blogger Brian White learned a new meaning of chauvinist when his mother, a proud Philadelphian, used the word to describe herself and her hometown loyalism. (Page K2, 850 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Jun 14, 2009

For a while there, it looked as if the Internet's chief contribution to English usage would be misinformation, spread farther and faster than ever before. Remember "Life in the 1600s," that catalogue of just-so stories purporting to explain phrases like "raining cats and dogs" and "sleep tight"? Then we had the women-talk-more-than-men myth, and now we await the "millionth word" ... (Page K2, 833 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: Jun 7, 2009

Making decisions can be anxiety-provoking, as many of us knew in our guts even before Barry Schwartz wrote "The Paradox of Choice." Even in the little decisions of language, we recoil against too much freedom; if a pair like hanged and hung or further and farther arrive on our doorstep, looking like identical twins, we find ways to differentiate them: ... (Page K3, 845 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: May 31, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, Joe Eskenazi of SF Weekly published a blog item headlined "Why Must Bike Activists Continue to Roll Over the English Language?" His beef: The T-shirt slogan "One Less Car." He thinks it should be "One Fewer Car." And even the leaders of San Francisco's bike coalition agree; yeah, we know it's wrong, they told Eskenazi. (Page C3, 850 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: May 24, 2009

Conundrum of the week: If you hear of a language myth for the first time only when you're learning that it isn't true, have you added to your store of knowledge, or just further encumbered your already overtaxed memory? (Page K2, 832 words)By: Jan Freeman|Date: May 17, 2009