Tagged: language

  This morning's panelists are WAMC's Ray Graf, David Guistina, and Joe Donahue.

In this abbreviated panel we're asking listeners to call in with their language pet peeves.

    Natalie Goldberg, teacher and author of Writing Down the Bones, joins us to talk about her new book: The True Secret of Writing: Connecting Life with Language.

She offers writing guidance learned from years of teaching and practice in the second part of the hour.

    In 1973 in the offices of The Atlantic Monthly in Boston, a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor that encouraged him.

After much success they have written the new book, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, which explores three major non-fiction forms: narratives, essays, and memoirs.

  The founding fathers felt that coining words and creating new uses for old ones was part of their role in creating a new American culture and language, distinct from the prescriptive King's English.

Ever since, American presidents have enriched our vocabulary with words, phrases, and concepts that we have since put to general use. Acclaimed lexicographer Paul Dickson has compiled the first collection of new words and lexical curiosities originating on Pennsylvania Avenue.

His new book is Words from the White House: Words and Phrases Coined or Popularized by America's Presidents.