Recently Virginia ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, meaning the amendment was finally approved by enough states to become law — if it hadn’t missed the deadline by nearly four decades, that is. While it will be up to the courts to decide whether or not the ERA goes into effect given that gap, at least […]

Are there words that bother you? Lots of them bother me, and I’m willing to bet that there are quite a few that bother you too. They may not be all that strange, and they’re not even necessarily bad words — except for maybe some profanities — but, for whatever reason, some common words just […]

Do you ever find yourself at a loss for words? If so, there’s a book for that; it’s called the dictionary. Continually updated, the dictionary, whether you access it on paper or online, is always there, telling us exactly how we should speak. Or does it? The whole thing came to a head back in […]

Words are wonderful. Each can be a world of its own, carrying great significance, multiple (sometimes conflicting) meanings and fascinating lineage. Their use – sometimes a single word – can prompt a spectrum of emotions from anger to mirth to confusion. Confusion and language have gone hand and in hand from the first grunt uttered […]