More Blog Posts

Have you properly marveled at how many words of Shakespeare (whose birthday we celebrated this week) are now a part of your everyday English? It’s not just household words that the Bard contributed; he also coined a number of common phrases.

To solve the gallimaufry, unscramble these six words coined by Shakespeare. Use the letters in the X’d spaces to form the Shakespearean phrase that answers the clue for the final puzzle.

m y l o g o =  ...

The A.M. Best Company is seeking a senior associate editor/writer to join its news division and the staff of its insurance trade journal, Best’s Review, in central New Jersey. Established in 1899, A.M. Best Company is an international credit-rating organization that produces in-depth reports and ratings for and about the insurance industry.

The senior associate editor will write business news features for print, audio, and video; manage contributed columns; build a news beat; and report breaking news.

This full-time, onsite position requires 5 years’ work experience in a deadline-driven environment; ability and accuracy in...

But what care I for words? Yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.

As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 5

Yesterday was William Shakespeare’s birthday (observed). That he was baptized on April 26, 1564 (making it likely that he was born sometime this week), is among the few facts we know about his life. April 23 has been celebrated as Shakespeare’s birthday since the late 1700s. It is possible that date was chosen because it’s also the date Shakespeare died in 1616 and the opportunity for poetic symmetry was too good to pass up. April 23 is also St. George’s Day, however, so it could have been a choice governed by logistics -- it seems sensible to use the...

Which sentence would you write:

All the examples are drawn from published works.

All of the examples are drawn from published works.

A lot of fuss is made over whether of is included after all. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (DEU) lists several early-twentieth century usage guides that want to excise all instances of of after all, while modern guides dictate of before a pronoun. Where we once might have said “all us,” we now say “all of us.” Occasionally you’ll see the likes of “She gets tired of all us men” (The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey), but these instances are usually restricted to fiction or informal speech.

There’s...