Mark Pack is addicted to writing Amazon reviews. But what are they really for?... I first started writing book reviews purely for my personal benefit: to help me remember more about the books I had read. Even now, with the subsequent explosion of online reviews, the aspects of a book I ... Read More...
Internet
This automated poetry-writing computer system is so good that most readers 'strongly prefer' its verses to those of Shakespeare. Or at any rate, that's what its creator claims. Jonathan Law investigates... On a bone-cold day in March the Wikiworm brought us some much needed cheer by digging out “The Bookseller/Diagram Prize ... Read More...
The internet has revolutionised the lexicographer's ability to find authoritative information, says Jonathon Green. So why do so many still reject authority...? It is a truth universally acknowledged that the ever-expanding aggregation of digitized information that we shorthand as ‘the Net’ has changed the game. All the games. Being no doubt ... Read More...
On Thursday Tony Blair stated that it was important to ‘de-escalate’ matters in Gaza. I’m not sure if he coined the word but I’d not encountered it before. In that night’s Question Time two panellists also spoke of ‘de-escalation’. Fascinating, the irrepressible urge to coin, to fill in ever tinier ... Read More...
An encounter with the man behind the web's 'go-to lexicon' leads Jonathon to wonder whether the very nature of dictionary-making is under threat... Other than in his own adopted third persona, and the occasional reference to Mr Meades who is a friend as well as a minor deity (a fact currently ... Read More...
This week Mr Slang tries to penetrate the world of 'edgy'... Edge. Perfectly respectable word. From Old English ęcg. Means edge, point or corner. There it is in Beowulf. The corner sense has vanished (still exists in German ecke) but the rest march on. On edge: tetchy, nervous. Thence edgy. Kipling ... Read More...
ZMKC recalls an early experience of being too creative for a 'creativity-first' school, and explains how it has influenced her career as a blogger... When I was about nine I began exchanging letters with a girl called Paula who was in the year above me at my funny little Froebel school. I don’t ... Read More...
Dabbler co-editor Brit has been profiled at the legendary Normblog here. Brit is the second Dabbler to be granted the mighty interweb honour. You can read Gaw's Normblog profile here. ... Read More...
As well as being the theatre critic for the Evening Standard and an occasional television presenter, Henry Hitchings is one of the leading authors on language and cultural history. His book The Secret Life of Words won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and his other acclaimed works include Who’s Afraid ... Read More...
Toby Ash (neither the author nor the subject of this post but another) Dabbler Correspondent Toby Ash needs to get some Bar Mitzvah guilt off his chest, thinks we are all only a couple of keystrokes away from ruination and has a top tip for cashing in on Hanukkah. A few years ... Read More...