Now that I have your attention, I’d like to talk about dangling participles. This most famous of danglers is must-know stuff for any self-respecting smarty-pants. Not because the concept will help ...

The New Yorker published an article last November by staff writer Rebecca Mead on the growing popularity of podcasts. It began this way: “In 1936, Walter Benjamin, the German philosopher and cultural ...

That's what Mussolini's fascist bully boys poured down the throats of their political enemies, force-feeding them so much laxative that the treatment amounted to torture and, sometimes, death. I do ...

Recently, the Los Angeles Times described the movie "Dheepan" as being about Sri Lankan refugees trying to escape ''their violent past in France." That made reader Rod do a double-take. ''There's a ...

This most famous of danglers is must-know stuff for any self-respecting smartypants. Not because the concept will help your writing all that much. Many people write just fine without the first clue ...

My friend Peter Page builds high-rises. He knows that if he were to put a beam in the wrong place, the whole thing could come down. In a much less dramatic, costly and dangerous way, a misplaced word ...

I was sitting on my back porch, listening to the drumbeat of a summer downpour, when I heard a voice. With the next flash of lightning, I saw a man standing at my door. “Hey, Doc,” he said, “let me in ...