Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers.
QuickAndDirtyTips.com
Five-time winner of Best Education Podcast in the Podcast Awards. Grammar Girl provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing and feed your love of the English language. Whether English is your first language or your second language, these grammar, punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Apr 2, 2026 • 35min
The 3,000 hidden colors of the dictionary, with Kory Stamper
Kory Stamper, former Merriam-Webster editor and author of True Color, explores the quirky world of color names. She recounts odd dictionary definitions, the web of cross-references like “begonia,” and the clash between color science and commercial naming. Conversations cover Pantone, Munsell mapping, archives that reshaped entries, and why even “gray” and “grey” can be treated as different colors.
Mar 31, 2026 • 14min
Denim: Secret place names hiding in plain sight. Why the principal is more than your pal.
A playful tour of toponyms reveals hidden place names behind denim, jeans, sherry, cantaloupe and more. The episode also untangles principal versus principle with a simple memory trick for spelling and job-title usage. Expect language history, surprising false place-name stories, and a quick familect anecdote about sampling food.
Mar 26, 2026 • 19min
The crossword puzzle's role in World War II and the fight against Nazism.
Natan Last, author and crossword historian best known for Across the Universe, explores the early rise of crosswords and their crafted aesthetics. He recounts the 1920s cultural backlash, library bans, and how New York Times puzzles during World War II were used to boost morale and push back against Nazism. He also links the puzzle craze to modern communal rituals like Wordle.
Mar 24, 2026 • 18min
Feghoots: Groan-worthy story puns. How your brain stores words.
They explore feghoots, those tiny stories built to end in groan-worthy puns and where they came from. They look at famous writers and cartoon examples that use punny payoffs. They explain the mental dictionary: how the brain stores words, retrieves them in milliseconds, and why tip-of-the-tongue moments happen. They touch on therapies and apps that help with word retrieval.
Mar 19, 2026 • 23min
The ‘Tale of Two Dictionaries,’ with Peter Sokolowski
Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large at Merriam-Webster and dictionary historian, traces the word "dictionary" to a 1502 Latin work by Calepino. He explores how that book became a pan-European reference and spawned early English and French dictionaries. The talk follows links to Shakespeare, the Mayflower, Reformation-driven vernaculars, and the rise of monolingual dictionaries.
Mar 17, 2026 • 13min
Why leprechauns are shoemakers. The March equinox versus the vernal equinox.
A quirky dive into why leprechauns became shoemakers, tracing folk etymologies, Old Irish roots, and a Roman Luperci theory. A linguistic stroll through equinox, Chaucerian usage, the term equilux, and why the March equinox is often used instead of vernal. A brief cosmic note on the first point of Aries shifting into Pisces.
Mar 12, 2026 • 13min
'Mini' and 'factoid' don't mean what you think, with Jess Zafarris
Jess Zafarris, author and cohost of Words Unraveled who digs into word origins. She reveals how miniature once meant a red pigment, why factoid originally meant a non-fact, and how hello rose to fame via the telephone. She also traces odd name twists behind gasoline and explains methods for researching etymology.
Mar 10, 2026 • 18min
Is the Academy Awards singular or plural? Writing about time.
A lively dive into whether the Academy Awards should be treated as singular or plural and how to avoid awkward number agreement in sentences. A practical look at writing times, from a.m./p.m. styling to noon and midnight recommendations. Clarifies time-zone labels like GMT, UTC and Zulu, and flags common time redundancies to cut. Fun familect moment about the word "Lou."
7 snips
Mar 5, 2026 • 39min
Mapping the American Tongue: The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), with Joan Houston Hall
Joan Houston Hall, linguist and longtime editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English, guides a tour of American regional speech. She describes how DARE documents folk words, maps local pronunciations, and collected recordings from 1,002 communities. Short, vivid stories illustrate quirky regional terms, fieldwork methods, and how dialect maps reveal surprising linguistic landscapes.
Mar 3, 2026 • 17min
The history of the octothorpe. Sir Fragalot and sentence fragments. Dribzle.
A playful dive into how the # symbol gained its many names and a few rival origin tales. A whimsical character, Sir Fragalot, helps explain why sentence fragments happen. Practical quick tests for spotting fragments are offered. A family word, dribzle, gets a charming story about how household language sticks.
