I admire how you're putting together all these informative articles. As the former editor of a law journal (for more than a decade), I know how much work goes into assembling and editing all the pieces. Congratulations. Bryan A. Garner
I am pleased to be a contributor to The Vocabula Review, which is an important undertaking and one, by my reckoning, squarely on the side of the angels. Joseph Epstein
I learned about your publication from a friend at Dartmouth. I'm very impressed with it and the tone you set for it. David Grambs
I am exceedingly impressed with the job you are doing with The Vocabula Review. Richard Lederer
Dear Friend of the English Language,
Along with the evolution of language the thousands of neologisms that new technologies and new thinking have brought about, for instance there has been a concurrent, if perhaps less recognizable, devolution of language. The English language has become more precise for some users of it while becoming more plodding for others. Not a small part of this new cumbrousness is due to the loss of distinctions between words, the misuse of words, and other abuses of language.
That a U.S. presidential candidate can cry Is our children learning, an admired basketball star can use the word conversate, a well-known college professor can say vociferous when he means voracious, and another can scold a student for using the word juggernaut because she believes it means jigaboo is disturbing. The Vocabula Review strives to combat the degradation of our language.
Equally important, we celebrate its opulence and its elegance. The English language is wonderfully expressive and infinitely flexible. There are many thousands of words and many hundreds of ways in which to use them. The Vocabula Review seeks to promote the richness of our language.
In sum, The Vocabula Review battles nonstandard, careless English and embraces clear, expressive English. We hope we can encourage our readers to do as much.
Read more about TVR here.
Among the people who write regularly for Vocabula are Richard Lederer, Mark Halpern, Bill Casselman, Clark Elder Morrow, and John Kilgore, who also proofreads many of these pages.