Jennifer Miller frequently writes for the “New York Times” style section and has also written novels, but for “Mr. Nice Guy,” she teamed up with her husband, Jason Fiefer, who is the editor-in-chief of “Entrepreneur Magazine.” The novel draws on both authors’ extensive experience in the magazine world and has been described as “The Devil Wears Prada” meets “Sex in the City.”

In this interview, we talked about how the semicolon (of all things!) brought these two together, why they both love and overuse the colon, what it’s like to work as a writing team, which parts of the novel are based on real excesses in the magazine industry and the authors’ own writing travails, and more. 

You can listen to the entire interview by clicking the player or by finding the podcast on any podcasting app, but if you prefer to read it, we also have a complete (rough) transcript.

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Recently, I was listening to an episode of the Planet Money podcast, titled “Trump vs. Red Tape,” and after the hosts had said the phrase “red tape” for what felt like the 50th time, I started wondering where we get it. 

Red Tape

Why do we call bureaucracy “red tape”?

It turns out it’s pretty simple. In the 1500s, Charles V, the king of Spain and the Holy Roman Emperor, started tying red string or ribbons, also known as “tape,” around administrative documents that were especially important and needed quick attention. It worked well, and the practice quickly spread to other royal courts throughout Europe. (You may remember in the “Duck Tape or Duct Tape” episode we also talked about strips of cloth being called “tape.”)

You can think of the first example in the Oxford English Dictionary, from 1658, as foreshadowing how red tape would come to be something of a problem because it’s about a red-taped bundle being lost:

A Little bundle of Papers tied with a red Tape, were lost on Friday last was a seven night, between Worcester-house and Lincolns-Inn.

Whoever those belonged to was already having his or her project derailed by a problem with red tape! Or at least related to a red-taped bundle.

“Red tape” has been used to describe cumbersome bureaucracy since the 1700s, and I particularly like this example from “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens (1850):

Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.

And…

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Click the player to hear the interview. This is a summary of the topics we discussed.

Language Influences Memory

We talked about two new studies suggesting that language can influence people, at least in small ways, and we talk about Neal’s previous article that includes an anecdote about how people in some cultures have an east arm and a west arm instead of a right and left arm.

Word order predicts a native speakers’ working memory. The language we speak affects the way we process, store, and retrieve information. via “Science Daily”

Our language affects what we see. A new look at “the Russian Blues” demonstrates the power of words to shape perception. via “Scientific American”

One Form, One Meaning (OFOM)

Neal and Mignon have both noticed that when there are two spellings of a word (such as “gray” and “grey” and “whoa” and “woah”), some people will assign different meanings to them. For example, people have repeatedly commented that they think “gray” and “grey” are different colors. Neal says linguists know this as the “one form, one meaning” concept, a name given to it by Arnold Zwicky. To paraphrase another linguist, Dwight Bolinger, if two words seem to be synonyms, speakers are drawn to make up stuff in order to preserve OFOM.

Neal explains why he thought suckers and lollipops are different when he was young. 

Universities Are Cutting Foreign Language Programs

Foreign language programs are being cut at an alarming rate. According to CNN, citing a report by the Modern Language Association, “651 foreign language offerings had been terminated between 2013 and 2016,” and we find that discouraging because learning foreign languages helped both of us develope a better understanding of English grammar.

Squiggly, Aardvark, and Fenster

We reveal the origins of the…

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Click on the player to hear the whole interview.

Benjamin Dreyer’s book, “Dreyer’s English,” became a surprise bestseller and is already on its fifth printing just two weeks after the publication date. Dreyer, vice president, executive managing editor and copy chief of Random House, worked on the book for years, and it shows. The kernel of the book started with a New Year’s resolution to write every day and developed into a modern blend of “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” and “Words into Type” (Dreyer’s favorite style guide) that allows Dreyer’s entertaining voice and many years of copy editing expertise shine through.

In this interview, we talked about 

• How Benjamin found his voice.
• Benjamin’s reaction to some out-of-context coverage of the book.
• What he does as a copy chief.
• House styles.
• Why his book largely ignores AP style.
• Some of our favorite tidbits from the fabulous section on fiction writing.
• His unusual pet peeves.
• How book design has evolved to accomodate digital marketing.
• Why the paper used for his book jacket is called “gritty Capote.”
• The story behind the title of the book.
• Why “glamour” still has a U in American English even though most similar words have lost their U.

Click the player above to hear the whole interview or click through to read the entire (rough) transcript.

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One of our recent advertisers, The Real Real, made me think of a cool language thing that’s been on my radar for a few years but that I haven’t covered yet. It’s the doubling of words to show that something is, well, real. I think the first time I heard it was in this ad for the 2015 Ikea catalog: The announcer describes the print catalog as a “book-book.”

Introducing the 2015 Ikea catalog. It’s not a digital book or an ebook, it’s a book-book. The first thing to note is no cables. Not even a power cable. The 2015 Ikea catalog comes fully charged and the battery life is eternal. 

He goes on to talk about tactile technology—turning the page with your finger—and how the content comes preinstalled. It’s fabulous. My husband and I both loved it, and because he prefers print books, and I usually prefer ebooks, to this day we still use “book-book” a lot in our house when we’re talking about his books or when I get a physical book in the mail. “Ooh look! You got a book-book!” (It might be a stretch for Ikea to consider its catalog a book, but the point that they were talking about a physical publication was still abundantly clear.)

‘Milk-Milk’

Then, a couple of months ago, the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. was debating whether it would allow producers to use the word “milk” for products like almond milk and soy milk. According to CNBC, people are drinking a lot more of these kinds of plant-based milks, so the dairy industry has spent more than $2 million lobbying this year, which I imagine could be a reason the FDA is suddenly worried that consumers are being misled about the nutritional value of these non-dairy “milk” products. 

And the way I immediately thought about that story was that the FDA was considering limiting the word “milk” so producers could only use it to refer to “milk-milk.” In other words, the original liquid people think of when they think of milk. From what I understand, a law was passed in the EU in 2017 that does stop marketers from using the word “milk” for what some people refer to as—the word fun never stops—“cow-nterfeits.”

Contrastive Focus Reduplication

But doublets like “book-…

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I’ve been interviewing authors for the podcast lately, and one question we always ask is what words give them trouble, and I think more than half of the authors—successful, and in many cases New York Times bestselling authors—more than half of the authors say they can’t spell “bureaucracy,” so if you struggle with it, don’t feel bad. You’re not alone. It’s just a tough word.

First, let’s stipulate that most people don’t have a problem with the “cracy” part at the end. We’re familiar with that from “democracy,” “theocracy” and so on.

So we need help with the “bureau” part.

If you trace it all the way back to Latin, “bureau” shares a root with “burro”—the donkey. Weird, right? The relationship a little convoluted, so I won’t go into it for our purposes, but it’s easy to imagine that a bureaucrat not helping you from behind a desk is a stubborn donkey, a stubborn burro who won’t help you. And “burro” is a lot easier to spell: B-U-R-R-O.

Now, imagine that donkey not only stubbornly not helping you, but also putting on perfume while ignoring you and not helping you. A stubborn burrow putting perfume behind its ears. “Eau de obstruction.” How rude! 

This part might be a little tougher, but anyone who has shopped for perfume should have encountered phrases like “eau de toilette” and “eau de cologne.” The spelling of that “eau” part is what’s in the middle of “bureaucracy.” So imagine a stubborn burro dotting perfume behind its ears, and take the “bur” part from “burro,” (B-U-R) and the “eau” part from “eau de obstruction.” (E-A-U) Add a “cracy” on the end, and you have “bureaucracy.” 

It may seem silly—I know it does!—but I used to never be able to spell this word, and I’ve gotten it right every time since I came up with that little story, so I hope it helps you too.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

Mignon Fogarty is Grammar Girl and the founder of Quick and Dirty Tips. Check out her New York Times best-seller, “Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing.”

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Click on the player to hear the entire interview.

Paula Brackston writes a successful book series that started with the New York Times bestseller “The Witch’s Daughter,” and now she’s embarking on another series with her new book, “The Little Shop of Found Things.” The new series is set in Wiltshire country in England and follows the story of Xanthe as she uses her gift for connecting with the history of objects to travel through time. In this first book, Xanthe travels back to 1605 to solve a mystery that involves a chatelaine.

Despite the fact that the books have fantasy elements, Brackston says she still does a lot of research to make sure all the historical elements are accurate, and she talks about using language stragetically to set a tone for her books. “When I’m writing 1605,” she says, “obviously, people speak very differently. I can’t have them speaking exactly as they would have because it would be hard work for the reader, so I have a stylized version, and it’s the same when I’m doing the descriptive writing whether it’s in the present day or the past. I’m trying to give a flavor of that time, a sense of something other, something historical, something different, and I think you can’t really do that using everyday words too much.”

Here’s an example from the first paragraph of the book:

It’s a commonly held belief that the most likely place to find a ghost is beneath a shadowy moon, among the ruins of a castle, or perhaps an abandoned house where the living have fled leaving only spirits to drift from room to room. To believe so is to acknowledge but half a truth, for there is a connection with those passed over to be found much nearer home. Every soul that once trod this brutal earth leaves their imprint upon the things that mattered to them.

Brackston’s characters’ names also lend a mysterious feel to the book. For example, the main character, Xanthe, gets her name from a Greek word that means “the golden one” or “fair haired.” Brackston says, “I like the sound of it. I like the look of it on the page. I liked the fact that it wasn’t going to get muddled up with anybody else.” She adds, “To see the shape of the word is quite interesting to me. I like that.”

Brackston laughed as she described her career and getting her first novel published. “I was one of those overnight successes that takes about 10 years.” “The Witch’s Daughter” was first picked up by a small British publisher and then discovered by Peter Wolverton, an editor at Thomas Dunne at St….

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

Click on the player to hear the entire interview.

Paula Brackston writes a successful book series that started with the New York Times bestseller “The Witch’s Daughter,” and now she’s embarking on another series with her new book, “The Little Shop of Found Things.” The new series is set in Wiltshire country in England and follows the story of Xanthe as she uses her gift for connecting with the history of objects to travel through time. In this first book, Xanthe travels back to 1605 to solve a mystery that involves a chatelaine.

Despite the fact that the books have fantasy elements, Brackston says she still does a lot of research to make sure all the historical elements are accurate, and she talks about using language stragetically to set a tone for her books. “When I’m writing 1605,” she says, “obviously, people speak very differently. I can’t have them speaking exactly as they would have because it would be hard work for the reader, so I have a stylized version, and it’s the same when I’m doing the descriptive writing whether it’s in the present day or the past. I’m trying to give a flavor of that time, a sense of something other, something historical, something different, and I think you can’t really do that using everyday words too much.”

Here’s an example from the first paragraph of the book:

It’s a commonly held belief that the most likely place to find a ghost is beneath a shadowy moon, among the ruins of a castle, or perhaps an abandoned house where the living have fled leaving only spirits to drift from room to room. To believe so is to acknowledge but half a truth, for there is a connection with those passed over to be found much nearer home. Every soul that once trod this brutal earth leaves their imprint upon the things that mattered to them.

Brackston’s characters’ names also lend a mysterious feel to the book. For example, the main character, Xanthe, gets her name from a Greek word that means “the golden one” or “fair haired.” Brackston says, “I like the sound of it. I like the look of it on the page. I liked the fact that it wasn’t going to get muddled up with anybody else.” She adds, “To see the shape of the word is quite interesting to me. I like that.”

Brackston laughed as she described her career and getting her first novel published. “I was one of those overnight successes that takes about 10 years.” “The Witch’s Daughter” was first picked up by a small British publisher and then discovered by Peter Wolverton, an editor at Thomas Dunne at St….

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

Click on the player to hear the entire interview.

Paula Brackston writes a successful book series that started with the New York Times bestseller “The Witch’s Daughter,” and now she’s embarking on another series with her new book, “The Little Shop of Found Things.” The new series is set in Wiltshire country in England and follows the story of Xanthe as she uses her gift for connecting with the history of objects to travel through time. In this first book, Xanthe travels back to 1605 to solve a mystery that involves a chatelaine.

Despite the fact that the books have fantasy elements, Brackston says she still does a lot of research to make sure all the historical elements are accurate, and she talks about using language stragetically to set a tone for her books. “When I’m writing 1605,” she says, “obviously, people speak very differently. I can’t have them speaking exactly as they would have because it would be hard work for the reader, so I have a stylized version, and it’s the same when I’m doing the descriptive writing whether it’s in the present day or the past. I’m trying to give a flavor of that time, a sense of something other, something historical, something different, and I think you can’t really do that using everyday words too much.”

Here’s an example from the first paragraph of the book:

It’s a commonly held belief that the most likely place to find a ghost is beneath a shadowy moon, among the ruins of a castle, or perhaps an abandoned house where the living have fled leaving only spirits to drift from room to room. To believe so is to acknowledge but half a truth, for there is a connection with those passed over to be found much nearer home. Every soul that once trod this brutal earth leaves their imprint upon the things that mattered to them.

Brackston’s characters’ names also lend a mysterious feel to the book. For example, the main character, Xanthe, gets her name from a Greek word that means “the golden one” or “fair haired.” Brackston says, “I like the sound of it. I like the look of it on the page. I liked the fact that it wasn’t going to get muddled up with anybody else.” She adds, “To see the shape of the word is quite interesting to me. I like that.”

Brackston laughed as she described her career and getting her first novel published. “I was one of those overnight successes that takes about 10 years.” “The Witch’s Daughter” was first picked up by a small British publisher and then discovered by Peter Wolverton, an editor at Thomas Dunne at St….

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

Click on the player to hear the entire interview.

Paula Brackston writes a successful book series that started with the New York Times bestseller “The Witch’s Daughter,” and now she’s embarking on another series with her new book, “The Little Shop of Found Things.” The new series is set in Wiltshire country in England and follows the story of Xanthe as she uses her gift for connecting with the history of objects to travel through time. In this first book, Xanthe travels back to 1605 to solve a mystery that involves a chatelaine.

Despite the fact that the books have fantasy elements, Brackston says she still does a lot of research to make sure all the historical elements are accurate, and she talks about using language stragetically to set a tone for her books. “When I’m writing 1605,” she says, “obviously, people speak very differently. I can’t have them speaking exactly as they would have because it would be hard work for the reader, so I have a stylized version, and it’s the same when I’m doing the descriptive writing whether it’s in the present day or the past. I’m trying to give a flavor of that time, a sense of something other, something historical, something different, and I think you can’t really do that using everyday words too much.”

Here’s an example from the first paragraph of the book:

It’s a commonly held belief that the most likely place to find a ghost is beneath a shadowy moon, among the ruins of a castle, or perhaps an abandoned house where the living have fled leaving only spirits to drift from room to room. To believe so is to acknowledge but half a truth, for there is a connection with those passed over to be found much nearer home. Every soul that once trod this brutal earth leaves their imprint upon the things that mattered to them.

Brackston’s characters’ names also lend a mysterious feel to the book. For example, the main character, Xanthe, gets her name from a Greek word that means “the golden one” or “fair haired.” Brackston says, “I like the sound of it. I like the look of it on the page. I liked the fact that it wasn’t going to get muddled up with anybody else.” She adds, “To see the shape of the word is quite interesting to me. I like that.”

Brackston laughed as she described her career and getting her first novel published. “I was one of those overnight successes that takes about 10 years.” “The Witch’s Daughter” was first picked up by a small British publisher and then discovered by Peter Wolverton, an editor at Thomas Dunne at St….

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

Click on the player to hear the entire interview.

Paula Brackston writes a successful book series that started with the New York Times bestseller “The Witch’s Daughter,” and now she’s embarking on another series with her new book, “The Little Shop of Found Things.” The new series is set in Wiltshire country in England and follows the story of Xanthe as she uses her gift for connecting with the history of objects to travel through time. In this first book, Xanthe travels back to 1605 to solve a mystery that involves a chatelaine.

Despite the fact that the books have fantasy elements, Brackston says she still does a lot of research to make sure all the historical elements are accurate, and she talks about using language stragetically to set a tone for her books. “When I’m writing 1605,” she says, “obviously, people speak very differently. I can’t have them speaking exactly as they would have because it would be hard work for the reader, so I have a stylized version, and it’s the same when I’m doing the descriptive writing whether it’s in the present day or the past. I’m trying to give a flavor of that time, a sense of something other, something historical, something different, and I think you can’t really do that using everyday words too much.”

Here’s an example from the first paragraph of the book:

It’s a commonly held belief that the most likely place to find a ghost is beneath a shadowy moon, among the ruins of a castle, or perhaps an abandoned house where the living have fled leaving only spirits to drift from room to room. To believe so is to acknowledge but half a truth, for there is a connection with those passed over to be found much nearer home. Every soul that once trod this brutal earth leaves their imprint upon the things that mattered to them.

Brackston’s characters’ names also lend a mysterious feel to the book. For example, the main character, Xanthe, gets her name from a Greek word that means “the golden one” or “fair haired.” Brackston says, “I like the sound of it. I like the look of it on the page. I liked the fact that it wasn’t going to get muddled up with anybody else.” She adds, “To see the shape of the word is quite interesting to me. I like that.”

Brackston laughed as she described her career and getting her first novel published. “I was one of those overnight successes that takes about 10 years.” “The Witch’s Daughter” was first picked up by a small British publisher and then discovered by Peter Wolverton, an editor at Thomas Dunne at St….

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips

Click on the player to hear the entire interview.

Paula Brackston writes a successful book series that started with the New York Times bestseller “The Witch’s Daughter,” and now she’s embarking on another series with her new book, “The Little Shop of Found Things.” The new series is set in Wiltshire country in England and follows the story of Xanthe as she uses her gift for connecting with the history of objects to travel through time. In this first book, Xanthe travels back to 1605 to solve a mystery that involves a chatelaine.

Despite the fact that the books have fantasy elements, Brackston says she still does a lot of research to make sure all the historical elements are accurate, and she talks about using language stragetically to set a tone for her books. “When I’m writing 1605,” she says, “obviously, people speak very differently. I can’t have them speaking exactly as they would have because it would be hard work for the reader, so I have a stylized version, and it’s the same when I’m doing the descriptive writing whether it’s in the present day or the past. I’m trying to give a flavor of that time, a sense of something other, something historical, something different, and I think you can’t really do that using everyday words too much.”

Here’s an example from the first paragraph of the book:

It’s a commonly held belief that the most likely place to find a ghost is beneath a shadowy moon, among the ruins of a castle, or perhaps an abandoned house where the living have fled leaving only spirits to drift from room to room. To believe so is to acknowledge but half a truth, for there is a connection with those passed over to be found much nearer home. Every soul that once trod this brutal earth leaves their imprint upon the things that mattered to them.

Brackston’s characters’ names also lend a mysterious feel to the book. For example, the main character, Xanthe, gets her name from a Greek word that means “the golden one” or “fair haired.” Brackston says, “I like the sound of it. I like the look of it on the page. I liked the fact that it wasn’t going to get muddled up with anybody else.” She adds, “To see the shape of the word is quite interesting to me. I like that.”

Brackston laughed as she described her career and getting her first novel published. “I was one of those overnight successes that takes about 10 years.” “The Witch’s Daughter” was first picked up by a small British publisher and then discovered by Peter Wolverton, an editor at Thomas Dunne at St….

Keep reading on Quick and Dirty Tips