Free Republic

Critics have called Margalit Fox's new book, The Riddle of the Labyrinth, a paleographic detective procedural. It follows the story of the laborious quest to crack a mysterious script, unearthed in Crete in 1900, known by the sterile-sounding name Linear B. Fox, an obituary writer for The New York Times, is good at bringing the departed to life. In The Riddle of the Labyrinth, she tells the story of Alice Kober, a classics professor at Brooklyn College, who worked alone over decades and discovered the essential grammar of Linear B, only to die in 1950 before she could complete her...

In a perfect world, students might be judged by their ideas alone -- not by whether they write "you're" or "your." But that isn't the world we live in.It happens every time. As I hand the test out to my middle school students, one of them will invariably look up, pencil at the ready, and ask, "Does spelling count?" Let's ignore the fact that my students should know better than to even ask this question in the first place. I've answered it more times than I care to remember, usually in the fall of the new school year, and it...

Many brilliant people have some communication weak spots. Unfortunately, the reality is that written communication is a big part of business, and how you write reflects on you. Poor spelling and grammar can destroy a professional image in an instant.Even if your job doesn't require much business writing, you'll still have emails to send and notes to write. And if you're looking for a job, your cover letters and resumes will likely mean the difference between getting the interview or not.Bad grammar and spelling make a bad impression. Don't let yourself lose an opportunity over a simple spelling or grammar...

If he becomes governor of Colorado, Tea Partier Dan Maes will remind citizens that "freedom originates in a Supreme Ruler of the Universe," according to his Web site. In her campaign materials, New Jersey congressional candidate and Tea Partier Anna C. Little rhapsodizes the "inalienable rights by our Creator, among them Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" and touts strict border control as "the first step in the process of regaining control of our Republic." As you read these sentences, your first question is surely: Why do these and other Tea Party candidates hold the rules of capitalization in...

A reading coach in California sent me this question: “I would like to know how you respond to teachers who are married to sight-word drills and describe their rationale as, ‘Well, there are just so many words that don't follow any rules.’” My answer is a longish rumination and probably not for the casual reader. But if you’ve wondered what Sight Words, Dolch Words, and the rest are really all about, this is a good place to start. Remember, our Education Establishment has spent 80 years promoting what I believe is a hoax and a crime, and in the process...

I want to remove a useless letter of the alphabet. Why is there a "Q"? Why does it have an unearned spot in the alphabet? The most useful letters of the alphabet are all front loaded. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP the slackers of the crowd are all stuck in the back as an afterthought, i.e. WXYZ. Where does the self rightous, 10 point Scrabble letter "Q" get off slipping into line before RSTUV? Did they know the bouncer? Notice Q's accomplice U garnered a cheap 1 point role in Scrabble to facilitate Q's infiltration into the language. If I have my way we...