The Electric Typewriter
Great articles and essays by the world's best journalists and writers.by Maria Konnikova
British English, American English, Noah Webster English, or New Yorker English? Let’s just pick one and stick with it.
by Jim Behrle
The first step is to stare at a blank piece of paper for a while. This is actually a helpful step. Like the way Michelangelo stared at a block of stone for a while and then figured out that there was a man with a strangely small penis inside of it…
by A.J. Jacobs
I’ve blurbed so many books that they fill a bookcase. The exact number? Hard to say, but certainly in the triple digits.
by David Foster Wallace
Just about every important word on The Best American Essays 2007’s front cover turns out to be vague, debatable, slippery, disingenuous, or else ‘true’ only in certain contexts…
by Tom Bissell
DISCUSSED: Nerdily Private Dreams, Species of Outsider, Manifesto, The Housing Works Incident, Populists, Writing in Plain English, Connections, Raw Authenticity, Alienated Socioeconomic Posturing, Injustice, Selling the Sacred, Art and Death.
by Jared Diamond
Some written languages are a precise reflection of speech, while others, like english, are a complete mess. Is this alphabetical evolution? Or the unequal application of logic to literacy?
by Jim Behrle
So you didn’t win a Nobel Prize in Literature this week. I know, it’s total bullshit. You totally deserved it. But you might just be a calendar year away from getting the recognition you so obviously deserve. Let me show you the way.
by Stephen Pinker
When it comes to political speech, we are living in a free-speech utopia, but when it comes to certain words for copulation and excretion, we still allow the might of the government to bear down on what people can say in public.
A Tetw reading list
How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard - Not reading is our main way of relating to most literature, find out how to make the most of your ignorance.
Tense Present by David Foster Wallace - In one of his finest essays, DFW reviews a dictionary of English usage, thereby tackling everything from democracy and free will to racism in academia.
The Rise of the Essay by Zadie Smith - Why do novelists write essays? And what excatly is an essay these days?
Words by Tony Judt - One of the very best essayists refelcts on his relationship with words.
The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’ by Tom Wolfe - Who put the ‘I’ in journalism? Tom Wolfe seems to think it was him and his friends.
Own Your Own Words by Steven Johnson - The ubiquity of Google has made it easy to gain control of a word or phrase, what effect is this new power having?
A Linguistic Big Bang by Lawrence Osborne - “For the first time in history, scholars are witnessing the birth of a language, a complex sign system being created by deaf children in Nicaragua.”
Cyber-Neologoliferation by James Gleick - A guided tour through the strange world of the lexicographer.
The Language of the Future by Henry Hitchings - A fascinating look at how English is mutating as it becomes the world’s lingua franca.
Printed Words, Computers, and Democratic Societies by Irving Louis Horowitz - This essay from 1983 looks forward to the advent home copmuting and the “videotext revolution”.
by Jack Hitt
Linguists now estimate that half of the more than 6,000 languages currently spoken in the world will become extinct by the end of this century. In reaction, there are numerous efforts to slow the die-off.
