Public figures have often been notably coarse in private. But at a time when average Americans seem less able to speak ...

Based on its transcript -- here at the Washington Post site, oddly not yet in any obvious place at WhiteHouse.gov [Update: it's now on the White House page, here]-- Barack Obama's Notre Dame ...

The late Edwin Newman, author of two bestsellers on English usage, “Strictly Speaking” and “A Civil Tongue,” believed that all the flavor and color and eloquence of the English language are being ...

Eloquence is not the same as rhetoric. Eloquence isn’t even a distant cousin of rhetoric — it comes from a different family and has different eyes, hair, and gait. Long thought to be a subset of ...

What was the last great line you heard in a movie? Was it “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars” from The Social Network in 2010? Or “Shut up—you had me at ‘hello’” ...

Last week I began my discussion about what the election ought to teach us about us. I raised the issue of how this election is a teachable moment for all of us to reflect on the ways we disguise our ...