Word Wiseguy This newspaper feature arose out of a series of discussions I enjoyed with a like-minded Wordsmith named Rob Kyff. We developed many more of these columns but only these eight survived the black hole of time. I can’t recall who wrote which and I believe a third writer also contributed to the project. […]
Who Said That?: The Remarkable True Stories Behind the Most Memorable Quotes in the English Language This book was one of my more successful titles though when it was published by Random House is contained only about half of what I had prepared. I was promised a sequel but that never happened because the editor […]
What’s the Difference?: A Guide to Commonly Confused Words, Ideas and Things This book never got off the ground because it took too long to piece together. But it contains some great entries and so it is worth preserving here. For a long time I become a lightly obsessed with clarity in verbal communications. I […]
Palindromes A palindrome is a word, phrase, or a bit of doggerel, maybe even a complete (but usually nonsensical) sentence that contains letters that read the same frontward and backward. In other words, they are mirror-images of consecutive letters. Logophiles have been creating them for years and their results are both fun and oddly endearing. […]
The Avant-Garde Prima Donna is a name I gave to a collection of foreign words and phrases that are commonly used in the English language. Many are so common they have entered the vernacular but most don’t know the sources or original meanings. So I compiled this list as I found them in my reading, […]
THE CONFUSED QUOTE BOOK is a compilation of funny and ironic statements made by both famous and infamous people…ad a few unknowns as well as long as they were made in ear shot of Gwen Foss, who is responsible for it. Gwen is a virtuoso list and quote compiler who I had the pleasure of […]