Archive

This essay is excerpted and adapted from No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men, out today from Regnery Publishing. When speaking of differences between men and...

One of the disappointing features of our controversies about biblical translations, the readings in the lectionary, the composition of our hymnals, sacred art in our churches, and gestures and...

Pope Francis has caused another round of cheering and dismay by calling for a “better translation” of the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Specifically, he says that the line...

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name,” says Jesus, “there am I among them.” It is the mark of a narcissistic age that people have come...

Reynard the Fox: A New Translationtranslated by james simpsonliveright, 256 pages, $24.95 A few weeks ago I found in my mailbox a brand-new, plastic-sealed, hardcover copy of Shakespeare’s complete...

I’ve waited to discuss the most important of our modal auxiliaries, the word that is the past tense of  will,  and also therefore the marker for our  conditional  tenses: ...

“Never begin a sentence with  and, ” my college freshmen have been told. This is another one of those rules that somebody must have dreamed up in a rage...

I like how hillbillies pronounce this relative pronoun:  hwut. It’s truest to the spelling and the history of the word. Wally Cleaver pronounced it that way, too. He said ...

“Never begin a sentence with  but. ” So my college freshmen tell me. They also tell me that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat (everybody...

The verb  wax,  meaning  to grow,  has only a few surviving uses in English. The moon  waxes  and wanes. And people  wax  . . . some adjective, usually describing...

You’d never believe how much time I spend with my college freshmen, unteaching them what they’ve been taught in high school. For instance, they tell me that you should...

There’s a new Bible translation that drives me nuts: “And he sent his servants to them, to gather the  produce  of the land.” How did that boring business-word get in...

Sometimes my college freshmen tell me that they use a thesaurus to find synonyms, so that they don’t have to use the same word all the time. Using the...

It may please some of my readers to learn that the word  whore  and the name  Cher  are etymologically related. But how? The first thing we need to clear out...

The Passive Voice is abused when the agent of the verb  is not general  and is indeed  of consequence,  but the writer wishes to obfuscate. Bureaucrats and politicians abuse the...