There's nothing like a brand new car. They're clean and shiny. The seats are free from stains and potato chip crumbs. The carpet isn't caked with dirt or piled high with fast food bags. And of course, there's that great smell. Unfortunately, the newness wears off. This reality of car ownership will never feel more harsh than the first time you walk outside and find a ding in one of your formerly pristine doors. The thing you have to remember is that "ding" used to be a much more violent action

A listener recently wrote to us with a seasonably appropriate question. Tom from Grand Rapids asks: "I feel really passionate about supporting farmers and eating locally grown produce.

Written instructions are clearly written down, and oral instructions are clearly spoken. That leaves us with the question, what are verbal instructions? And just what does verbal mean anyway? Weekend Edition host Rebecca Kruth remembers being a little confused by "verbal" back in high school when her classmates started talking about the SAT. "I didn't understand what the verbal portion of the exam was. I thought, 'Oh, is that part of the exam where they talk?' I didn't take the SAT, so I didn't

A listener recently wrote an email about how everyone in her industry says "hone in" instead of "home in." "Does this equivocation mean that it’s perfectly That’s-What-They-Say acceptable to understand ‘hone in’ as ‘home in,’ and to hear it without cringing?” she asked. Our own Professor Anne Curzan had already put a lot of thought into “home in” and “hone in” before we received this email. In fact, she admits that knowing which was correct used to be a point of pride.

If you say something is coming down the pike, that means it's going to happen sometime soon. But what is this "pike" you speak of? The answer might be found in your summer travel plans. Especially if you're from Michigan and you understand that summer just isn't complete without a trek down the Ohio Turnpike for a day at Cedar Point. So, "pike" in "coming down the pike" is simply a shortening of turnpike. That got us wondering though, where does "turnpike" come from? For starters, it's old.

It sure seems like when something is done, it should also be finished.

Some of our best questions come from our listeners.

In December 2015 the Washington Post announced it was finally dropping the hyphen from "e-mail," two years after the New York Times and four years after the Associated Press Stylebook . While it's surprising that the Post waited so long to let go of a hyphen as obsolete as America Online's free trial CDs, the decision itself wasn't unprecedented.

How many dashes is too many? For some of you — especially those who are writers — that may be a rhetorical question.

OK, have you ever stopped to think about how many times in a single day you say "OK"? If you're like millions of others around the world, that number is probably more than you can count on your fingers and toes. The ubiquity of "OK" is undeniable. It's used as a noun, a verb, an adverb, an interjection and a signal of agreement, not to mention the basis for one of the most famous self-help books of all time . Believe it or not, we're coming up on the 178th anniversary of "OK," so we thought we'd