Let me begin with a thought experiment. Imagine a college linguistics professor whose first-born child is just beginning to learn to speak. Imagine now that this professor speaks to the child in the same way as lectures or talks with students and colleagues. (Ignore the unlikeliness of this happening; it's a thought experiment.) Imagine that instead of using baby talk with the child, this professor lectures at home about what idiosyncratically characterizes baby talk—slower r

Entrepreneurs the world over capitalize on talk of a self-made fortune, much of which was won by selling courses on how you too can create self-made wealth (with the help of this $499 course, of course). I myself am not so much a fan of this bit of "Entreprenglish"—the peculiar language spoken by otherwise unemployed individuals who want to be seen as wildly successful. And there are a few reasons motivating my disdain for that language, but I'll only focus on one for the mom

For a first post, it made sense to write an Introduction, in a double sense. This piece introduces readers both to Wordplay and to me. That is, I want to say what Wordplay will be by way of an autobiography of how the site came to be. I studied philosophy in undergrad before moving into theology for graduate school, so I didn't become an "editor" through the usual means of majoring in English Literature or English Composition. Nevertheless, both programs revolved around text,