Wherein the Greeks know rosemary gives you that extra edge when taking an exam—especially when you wrap it around your head. Brain freeze: whether it’s cold-stimulus headache or simply forgetting someone’s name (leading to such heartfelt greetings as “Hey there…yooooouuuuuu…great to see ya!”), everyone hates it when our brains seize up. This has led over … Read More
Red Red Wine
Wherein Americans know nothing is more refreshing than a bathtub claret. A classic scene in I Love Lucy depicts Lucille Ball stomping grapes for wine while touring Italy and getting into a grape-slinging, body-smooshing brawl in the wine vat (I love almost as much the complaint of Uncle Junior in The Sopranos that homemade Italian … Read More
I Love You Period
Wherein medieval scribes used dots to make texts easier to read…unless they were confusing readers with a game of dots and boxes. Punctuation marks are a tremendously important part of typeface design. To mention only monospaced fonts, the difference between “curly” quotation marks and “straight” ones (which look like little ticks around sentences) can make … Read More
Don’t Cha Stop
Wherein the Greeks master the art of avoiding—or causing—the awkward pause. With the possible exceptions of grammar geeks arguing over the Oxford comma, or people criticizing using two spaces to begin a sentence (as someone who learned to type using an IBM Selectric II, it took me a while to adapt to using one space … Read More
