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Not your average flock of birds
A "museum" of cedar waxwings (Photo credit: wburris) Interesting how bird people are often also word people. As I wait for the Cornell Lab to post the Day Two ballot in its “March Migration Madness”...
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Not your father’s Search Engine Optimization
The train has left the station. Today’s ABCs of journalism require a Ph.D. in SEO: the science of applying tags or keywords onto digitally delivered stories so that readers get their Googly eyes on...
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Fashioning AP style: You read it here first
AP Stylebook editor Darrell Christian outlines this year’s edition’s additions. I feel like Steve Martin in The Jerk: “The new phone books are here!” Except for me it’s the new Associated Press...
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‘Needless to say’… but I’ll say it, anyway
Fill in your speech bubble with your own communication crutches. People tell me I’m a good listener. At least, that’s what I hear. Been noticing many of us have pet phrases punctuating our speech, like...
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‘Women and children first’ is so 1912
A nice guy holds the door for me at work … so that I could take the picture. This generation is real big into taking pictures.Something stunning happened at work today. Outside the elevator, a young...
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Big news at USA TODAY: Sandy swiped our ‘A’
At about 3:52 p.m. ET, we in the newsroom heard a loud crash, and ran to the window. That’s the dropped ‘A’ there, in the flower bed below. Collective “gsp.” It appears we could be reduced to: US...
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Sandy and the Dangling Crane
We create our own disasters sometimes. Whose bright idea was it to leave a crane erected like the gallows over NYC yesterday, for instance? Did they not get the memo about the worst storm of the...
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No power? More power to ‘The New York Times’
Some good news to come out of Superstorm Sandy’s rampage on New York City: Newspapers are selling again. Selling out. According to USA TODAY breaking news reporter and colleague Melanie Eversley: … The...
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Home, James (A short story)
(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is pretty much a transcription of a dream I had recently.) She could have taken the train. Her friends all told her so, those snoopy friends who dared advise her. How ghastly,...
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We each carry the burden of sexual abuse calamities
Cassy outside the Free Library of Philadelphia, where the eBook containing her essay — and all of its contributors — were celebrated. When we checked our daughter Cassy into a four-story hotel next to...
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The Daily Urinal Journal: Who knew?
Exploiting a new niche market: A veritable pee palace! So what ELSE has been going on in men’s restrooms all these years I’m not privy to?! It has come to my attention that at my favorite Mexican...
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Living in an age of telepathy
The age of communicating via telepathy is upon us, and its name is Twitter. Long ago and far away, news was dictated by “the public’s need to know.” Journalists had to sift through all the facts...
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5 out-of-fashion terms that somehow still fit
Design and fashion shape language in ways most people don’t stop to notice. Here are a few dated concepts that somehow have survived the test of evolving styles and technology. 1. Hat tip. On the...
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Bird was not always the word
The etymology of “bird” is fraught with mystery and/or typos. In Old English, the word for bird was “fugol,” while “bridd” applied to all nestlings. In Middle English, “byrde” applied to all young...
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In search of The Word Detective
“The Word Detective” has gone missing! That beloved site run by Evan Morris on the Web since 1995 has not posted an update since October, and instead of dissecting words he told of battling primary...
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That’s what s/he said
A PRO’S VIEW: I’M PRO-GENDER-NEUTRAL PRONOUNS As a copy editor at USA TODAY, I was asked by our editor in chief last summer what I thought about the Pfc. Bradley/Chelsea Manning case. Not so much what...
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5 ways poetry doth rock
A friend this week shared a poem as her Facebook status, resolved that 2014 would be the Year of Viral Poetry. The game went: “Like” it and she would assign you a poet. Thus tagged, you must plunge...
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