Jennifer Howard

This is a week to be grateful. I’m grateful for many things, including libraries. I like to visit them. I like taking my kids to them. I like writing about them. It makes me sad whenever I hear that a library has to cut staff or services or that it can’t buy the materials it wants to share with its patrons. I’m sorry when I read that public libraries are caught in the middle between publishers and Amazon. These are not flush and easy times for many libraries. You’ll get no argument from me on that point. So here’s a… Read more...

You wouldn’t guess it from my wardrobe, but I subscribe to Lucky magazine. Is it worth the $12 bucks a year? You bet! Forget the fashions—I read Lucky for the prose stylings. For instance, the October issue has me asking: Are mustard-colored trousers really “huge for fall”? (Is this good news for plus-size women?) Can a lip balm be “adorable”? Is “glowify” an actual verb? Lucky’s editors are masters of the to-die-for compound modifier. A tote is “intriguingly organic, touchably matte.” Skinny tweed trousers are “distinctly autumnal.” Hair is “sexily unstudied.” (I especially like that one. Dropout chignons, anyone?) Oh,… Read more...

One of the occupational hazards of journalism is that you become dependent on certain words and phrases. There’s “says,” unavoidably. At least it’s short and unobtrusive enough to be glossed over by a reader, even if it turns up dozens of times in a story. Shorthand and economy are useful things when you have a tight deadline and tighter space to fill. When you write about certain fields, you also come up against the rhetoric deployed by those who work in that field. Business reporters encounter this a lot. Think of all the bizspeak kicking around—“low-hanging fruit,” anyone? Every walk… Read more...

It occurred to me the other day that it’s become refreshing to hear someone drop a good old-fashioned cliche. Put the cart before the horse. Make a mountain out of a molehill, please. Let the wheels come off the wagon. (Just don’t throw me under the bus.) Why? I think it has to do with the virtualization—ugly word, sorry—of everything. Spend too much time pondering abstractions like “knowledge production” and “the dissemination of research” and you begin to long for something concrete to hang onto. Phrases that used to feel worn smooth, like rubbed-out pennies, have texture again, if you… Read more...

It’s the sound of word lovers mobilizing to save their favorite bits of under-used English from the dustbin of diction. From the Times (U.K.): Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book. Translation: These words are being booted out of Collins’s dictionary to make room for words that everybody still uses. You can help. The Times… Read more...

A new, occasional feature for those I-got-the-diction-blues days, which get more frequent the more time I spend online. Today’s entries: access, process, networked, friend (as a verb)…. Read more...