blogger's choice

As a previously avid follower of college basketball, I sometimes miss the single-elimination thrill of NCAA tournament season. Perhaps you know it by “March Madness,” a term that, prior to the 1980s, referred to high school basketball tournaments, especially those in my home state of Illinois. Happily, there’s a new tournament in town, uniquely capable of fulfilling a lapsed-sports-fan/lifelong-book-fan’s braketology needs: Book Madness.

It’s not enough to have a love of the Bard in your blood. Soon you may need to have a backup copy of his works stored in DNA.

The Word Warriors of Wayne State University invite you to help them rejuvenate our language by highlighting some under-used words that deserve more airtime. Calling them “eminently useful” and encouraging their use as a way to enrich the language, they’ve collected a long list of user-submitted words that are worthy of a usage boost.

 

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” —C.S. Lewis

That day may have come. In a sweet, 22-slide telling of the Little Red-Cap story [see the full text as a Project Gutenberg e-book], the Google homepage is the most recent celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

Just as good editing is often invisible in the end product, a typeface that isn’t noticeable as you’re reading is often the best indication of an appropriate choice. It blends with and disappears into the meaning of the words. It’s occasionally surprising, however, how negatively or positively we react to a certain typeface in a particular context.

If college basketball isn’t your thing but you still crave a little madness to finish out your March (and Jargon Madness didn’t give you enough bracket action to satiate that craving), you won’t want to miss today’s matchups in Out of Print’s second annual Book Madness tournament. 

A friend of mine texted me about a recent moment of “Wheel of Fortune pig Latin,” in which a contestant failed to solve the puzzle because she mispronounced one of the words:

I was supposed to find it humorous, but it stirred up one of my deepest editor fears: mispronunciation. 

By now I’m sure you’ve had the opportunity to see the recent McDonald’s commercials that use “Egg McMuffin” as a synonym for “gold standard,” “most impressive,” “highest quality,” etc. If you haven’t yet taken that opportunity, you can see it here: