The recent news that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is banning employees from working at home has caused a flurry of commentary in the media and among workers in the Internet industry. One aspect of the issue is how such a decision affects content producers. Banning telecommuting is a heavy-handed strategy. The rationale for the policy … Read more
The question of how to refer to one of the most integral artifacts of modern civilization illustrates the value of synonyms: The word a writer uses to refer to a car can assign value to that object and help the reader gauge nuances of the writer’s tone. Car is a perfectly suitable, utilitarian word, but … Read more
When we refer to something suggestive of William Shakespeare’s works, why do we write Shakespearean (or, seldom, Shakespearian) rather than Shakespearesque? Why is an epic tale labeled Homeric rather than Homerian? What’s the difference between Christian and Christ-like? Is there a method to the madness of these suffixes? The transformation of surnames into adjectives is … Read more