-
March 1, 2025 by libroshombre
Rev. Martin Luther King pointed out that “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and …
Continue reading
Category: crime, criminals, government, punctuation, writing, writing badly, writing well
| Tags: appositions, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, E.B. White, Gretchenfrage, Martin Luther King Jr., Nazis, oxford commas, pronimos, Raymond Chandler, snark
-
March 31, 2023 by libroshombre
My handwriting’s always been bad, but these days it’s bordering on awful. Perhaps I’m channeling my inner Phoenician for …
Continue reading
Category: alphabet, handwriting, poetry, poets, wordplay, writing, writing badly
| Tags: acrostic, aleph, anagram, John Davies of Hereford, National Library Week, National Poetry Month, Sir John Davies, William Shakespeare
-
July 9, 2022 by libroshombre
There’s plenty that you and I don’t know. As expressed by Donald Rumsfeld in his typically tortured manner, “As …
Continue reading
Category: anatomy, animals, races, racism, spelling, vowells, word origins, words, writing
| Tags: autological words, BBC, chins, Donald Rumsfeld, griffonage, Louie Armsztrong, Satchmo, Sound-It-Out Speller
-
June 18, 2022 by libroshombre
“Foist,” “to introduce surreptitiously,” is a word I like, perhaps because librarians enjoy foisting books and information, albeit overtly, …
Continue reading
Category: libraries, railroads, trains, words, writing, writing well
| Tags: Anu Garg, crash vs accident, foisst, pedantry, portmanteaux, railroads, Rex Stout, stochastic terrorism, wordsmithing
-
April 23, 2022 by libroshombre
In “A History of Reading,” Alberto Manguel wrote, “At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of …
Continue reading
Category: Bible, book banning, censorship, e-reader, etymology, language, reading, word origins, words, writers, writing
| Tags: Archie Goodwin, Babar, Billy Budd, Billy Budd KGB, Dav Pilkey, Dr. Seuss, J. Edgar Hoover, Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout, ted geisel
-
January 16, 2022 by libroshombre
A recent online article, “The Language of Climate is Evolving From ‘Change’ to ‘Catastrophe’,” reminded me of the enormous debt …
Continue reading
Category: generosity, optical character recognition, proofreading, words, writing, writing well
| Tags: Jimmy Durante, ocr, project gutenberg, proofreaders, sic, typos
-
November 6, 2021 by libroshombre
“Doctors say that our thumb is our master-finger and that our French word for it, ‘pouce,’ derives from the Latin …
Continue reading
Category: essay, illness, pandemic, plague, translation, vaccination, writers, writing
| Tags: Benjamin Franklin, John Florio, Michel de Montaigne, smallpox, thumbs, William Shakespeare
-
January 2, 2021 by libroshombre
LIBRARIAN COLUMN Contact Greg Hill, 479-4344 December 31, 2020 Xenophon, the Greek mercenary and historian, left a fascinating account …
Continue reading
Category: ancient history, history, librarians, word origins, writing
| Tags: Anabasis, Greece, Landmark Ancient Histories, marginalia, mercenaries, Persia, Robert F. Strassler, Xenophon
-
September 10, 2020 by libroshombre
Some books really stick with you, and Harold Innis’ “Empire and Communications” is one of mine. It’s “a sweeping …
Continue reading
Category: communications, gossip, interlibrary loan, libraries, pubic libraries, writing
| Tags: Dunbar's number, Empire and Communications, Harold Innis, Nicolas Chamfort, Robert Dunbar
-
February 21, 2019 by libroshombre
LIBRARIAN COLUMN Contact Greg Hill, 479-4344 January 31, 2019 A recent Zippy the Pinhead comic strip reminded me of how …
Continue reading
Category: authors, books, libraries, literature, poetry, trees, Uncategorized, writing, writing badly
| Tags: Dorothy Osbourne, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, Joyce Kilmer, Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Cavendish
Hill of Books 