by Melanie Scheller | Dec 1, 2023 |
“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me” … unless the words happen to be in the form a curse. In fairy tales and blockbuster movies, curses have the power not only to break people’s bones but to poison their wells,...
by Melanie Scheller | Nov 17, 2023 |
My father died when I was ten years old. Other than a photograph or two, I have only a few tangible objects that connect me to him. One thing I do have is his thesaurus. Those of you born before the dawn of the Age of Google may think that I inherited my...
by Melanie Scheller | Nov 3, 2023 |
In the old days, we had to look in a dictionary if we wanted to know the meaning of a word. Dictionaries weighed as much as a small whale and had approximately 47 bazillion pages of teeny-weeny print. If you didn’t already know how to spell the word, you were...
by Melanie Scheller | Oct 20, 2023 |
If you’re reading this, you owe a debt of thanks to Johann Gutenberg. No, Gutenberg never built a website. He couldn’t write code. He wouldn’t know a microchip from a chocolate chip. But if he hadn’t invented the printing press, the chances are...
by Melanie Scheller | Oct 6, 2023 |
I love similes. If you’re not a former English major or a word enthusiast by nature, you might think I’m talking about a new yoga pose or perhaps a trendy salad ingredient. Perhaps you vaguely remember the word simile from a long-ago English class. To...
