Anecdotal Evidence

Occasionally I encounter a word so lyrical or amusingly grotesque in its pronunciation or specialized in meaning that I add it to the word m...

“Usually he took for his subjects those who failed in life and love. He wrote about the derelict and downtrodden, the old and bereft. Who wa...

Henry Oliver poses an interesting question: “What should be on a list of almost Great Books?” Consider it less a critical exercise than a p...

“It is extraordinary how jargon intimidates; how prone we are to dismiss as irrelevant or dated that which comes unpackaged in the cellophan...

I defy you to identify the writer being described:   “[A]ll he really wanted to do in company was to make jokes, to turn the world upside ...

Prophecy is best left to the prophets. Writers are not a notably prescient bunch. Too often, like the rest of us, they see only what they ho...

Austin Dobson in A Bookman’s Budget (1917) claims the longest sentence ever written in English can be found in William Hazlitt’s Spirit of ...