Ammon Shea

How language “mistakes” have come to be accepted as correct—or not.

How language “mistakes” have come to be accepted as correct—or not.

Ammon Shea's new book, "Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation," is a celebration of grammatical sins of sorts. He says that new words, with new meanings and new rules of gr...

“Unfriend” is the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2009 word of the year, while “distracted driving” was the pick at Webster’s. Ammon Shea, author of Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (Perigree, 2008) and Mike Agnes, editor in chief of Webster’s New World College ...

Word-obsessed writer Ammon Shea explains why he spent a year reading every word of the Oxford English Dictionary. In Reading the OED he reveals what he discovered along the way.