Strikeout

After a recent rewatch of the 2005 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” I realized a couple of things. First, the language used in this film, while typical of the period the book was written in, is exceptionally striking.

It seems that words present a peculiar and unexpected kind of irony. We rely on them to communicate effectively in a variety of situations, but countless times over, they confuse, frustrate and fail us.

There are even more ways to talk about sex than ways to have sex. Here’s a quick and dirty linguistic breakdown of a few creative sexual euphemisms from literature and film.

These little symbols might seem small, but they carry with them centuries of history and some pretty big personalities. Which punctuation marks hold a special place in your heart?

It was a Wednesday night in 2006, and in Ms. Weingarden’s third-grade class, Wednesday nights were reading nights. In my family, these were tense at best.

In a dark corner of the Daily Cal office, a copy editor is dreaming ...

There is a curious satisfaction in putting pen to paper (especially when that pen is a Muji 0.38mm — try it, it’ll change your life).

As a copy editor, I know that typo-riddled content that needs after-the-fact correction simply could not have been reviewed by many people — in all likelihood, it was not reviewed at all.

Copy editing keeps content reliable, and part of why is it so alarming to see a nationwide trend of publications laying off their copy editors.

I’ve always been struck by how odd language is — how meaningless combinations of speech sounds can be strung together in meaningful ways to somehow create an infinite possibility of phrases.