“What are you interested in? Games and all that?”
“Well—video games. Like Age of Conquest? Yakuza Freakout?”
He seemed nonplussed. “What about school, then? Favorite subjects?”

In this conversation between the narrator, Theo, and his older friend, Hobie, from Donna Tartt’s brilliant new novel, The Goldfinch, what does the word nonplussed mean about Hobie? It’s one of those words often used to mean precisely the opposite of its dictionary definition. [Read more…]

Multiple exclamation points, often inexplicably inflected with question marks and preceded by all capital letters, have become a common mode of expressing excitement, urgency, and, probably more often than not, ego. “SAVE THE DATE!!!!!” reads a familiar subject heading on an email. “ORDER NOW!!!!! WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!!!!!” urges a typical advertisement for a product that’s probably languishing in a warehouse somewhere, hardly in jeopardy of running low. “Maybe we can have lunch next week!!!?!! I’ll let you know tomorrow!!!?!” one co-worker responds to a query from another about her availability for a meeting. Is the reader to take the seemingly random question mark in each case as a sign of the writer’s uncertainty over whether she truly will be available next week and / or will know about her availability tomorrow? Or is a rogue question mark a slip of the finger in the flurry of typing fast or, alternatively, a means of separating some exclamation points from others for emphasis? [Read more…]

This is the launch of a blog that will touch on grammar, usage, etymology, phrasing, idioms, and other aspects of language. As a writer and a college writing and literature teacher, I’m obsessed with precision in expression, as well as with clarity and elegance. What follows are thoughts about those matters, beginning with a word or two about grammar. [Read more…]