Geoffrey Nunberg

So Longhand: Has Cursive Reached The End Of The Line?

It's word-of-the-year time again. Collins Dictionary chose "Fake news" and Dictionary.com went with "complicit." Others have proposed #metoo, "alternative facts," "take a knee," "resistance" and "snowflake."

If you're into counterculture kitsch, you might want to check out the nostalgia-themed resort hotel at Walt Disney World in Florida. It features a "Hippy Dippy" swimming pool, surrounded by flower-shaped water jets, peace signs and giant letters that spell out "Peace, Man," "Out of Sight" and "Can You Dig It?"

Linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the sentence by Jane Austen most quoted, and most misunderstood.

The only literary work about punctuation I'm aware of is an odd early story by Anton Chekhov called "The Exclamation Mark." After getting into an argument with a colleague about punctuation, a school inspector named Yefim Perekladin asks his wife what an exclamation point is for. She tells him it signifies delight, indignation, joy and rage. He realizes that in 40 years of writing official reports, he has never had the need to express any of those emotions.

Does it matter when someone gets a quotation wrong? Our linguist Geoff Nunberg considers the question.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg tracks the evolution of the word "protest."

Geoff Nunberg on speaking with hands.

Our resident linguist looks at the differences in the language used to describe Republicans and Democrats.

At the end of each year, our linguist Geoff Nunberg gives us his word of the year.