AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: We continue our discussion with University of Delaware English Professor Ben Yagoda about his recent book called The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing. RS: He based th...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: What to call the homeless of Hurricane Katrina? RS: Some have called them refugees. We asked Oxford English Dictionary consultant Ben Zimmer for a history of this word. BEN ZIMMER...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster -- the catch of the day, terms from the sea. Lots of nautical expressions have washed ashore into everyday English. Alan Hartley researches them for the Oxford English Dictionary...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: Common Errors in English, from a professor who wrote the book. RS: Paul Brians began with a Web site. It got so popular, it led to a book called Common Errors in English Usage. No...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: metaphors and the mind. RS: Avi, if I say bulls and bears, what comes to mind? AA: The zoo? RS: Well yes, but I could also be talking about the stock market. In a bull market, sto...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: advice about talking to teenagers. RS: Our friend Ali the English teacher in Iran told us about a book called Raising Children with Character. AA: He suggested we talk to the auth...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: more of our discussion of gerunds and infinitives with English teacher Lida Baker. RS: A gerund, remember, is a verb ending in -ing but used as a noun. An infinitive is a verb wit...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: to be or not to be, or should there be an -ing? That is the question as we look at gerunds and infinitives. RS: To be, to run, to eat: the to indicates the infinitive form of the...

The show business trade paper Variety turns 100 this year, and it continues to vex and amuse its readers with a language all its own. In this slanguage, as Variety staffers have dubbed it, media giant Disney is known as the Mouse, a reference to its...

AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: more of our discussion of language in the American South. RS: We're talking with a woman in Alabama named Donna Akins. All she wanted was an answer to a grammar question. But we a...