Is Paul reticent about attempting to ride his unicycle in public, or is he hesitant to do that? You’ll find the answer right away when you hit the Play button this week, but keep listening to hear about other commonly confused terms. We’ll be covering more such expressions in future podcasts.

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This week we discuss the decline of the period as a punctuation mark and delve into the interesting history of the word bug.

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Last week we talked about words some of us would like to do without. This week we discuss words some of us would like to see more often.

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This week we talk about words some of us would like to do without. Our verdict: If you don’t like them, don’t use them.

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This week we continue our conversation at the crossroads of politics and literary criticism. It turns out there is some vocabulary worth knowing in this area, including cosmopolitanism, interrogation, formalism, and several others. This all relates to the Common Errors in English Usage Web site, too, in interesting ways.

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This week we continue talking about the language of politics—this time focusing on how it is used to discuss literature.

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This week we talk with Paul Brians about the language of elections, including politicians’ propensity to use “we” when they really mean “I.” Paul also explains how Bernie Sanders, a socialist, has taken advantage of the way conservatives in the U.S. have used language for the past several years. Other topics include a couple of misused terms from Common Errors in English Usage and the way the media cover political campaigns.

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This week on the show Chris Waigl joins us to discuss more about eggcorns (see also episode 30) and her work putting together The Eggcorn Database, a great resource for finding examples of this type of error. Chris also tells us about her background in science and language, and we talk generally about attitudes toward making mistakes in language.

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This week we discuss the meaning of the word “theory,” which was recently reported on by Carl Zimmer in The New York Times.

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This week we discuss a kind of error known as an eggcorn. The term was coined by Geoffrey Pullum, who explains. After that, Paul Brians runs down some examples from Common Errors in English Usage.

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