No Straw MenEnlightened discourse proscribes arguments that are weak or imaginary, like straw, set up only to be confuted summarily.

Sprachgefuhl

In high school, I developed a deep-seated passion for words. I studied the dictionary. I made word-of-the-day notecards. I employed highfalutin, esoteric language in essays. And I e-mailed a lot of questions to Merriam-Webster, the Modern Language Association, and the Chicago Manual of Style.

Publishing this correspondence has long been on my to-do list. Today, I’m delighted to report that I’m now in the process of crossing this task off the list. Here are a few posts I recently published on my other blog, Sprachgefuhl:

• How does “suasion” differ from “persuasion”?
• How does “racialist” differ from “racist”?
• What does “QED” mean?
• How does “entitle” differ from “title”?
• How does a “justice” differ from a “judge”?