What makes a good Amazon book review?

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...

Dabbler Diary – Hotdog-stuffed Crust

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...

Urban Dictionary: The Folly of Crowds

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...

Out on the Edgy

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...

The Pleasure of Pointlessness

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...

What’s in a name? The perils of email

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...