Did Facebook and Twitter break the world? We used to be nice to each other (at least face to face) and we managed to disagree without throwing punches (mostly). Have we lost civility forever? It’s those darned crazy kids these days, and their shoot-em-up video games,...
See that? I haven't written a thing and already it looks like I goofed. The marketing geniuses for the new movie Emma. decided to put a period in the title. So it's Emma., not Emma. Emma.. See that? It's nearly impossible even to write about. Still confused? The issue...
Adjectives describe something in more detail. A green car. A first job. A compound adjective isn't any fancier, it just takes two words to do one job. A blue-green car. Some first-hand experience. Really, we intend it to be a single descriptor—one word, really—so we...
"America", a fully-working solid gold toilet, created by artist Maurizio Cattelan, is seen at Blenheim Palace on September 12, 2019 in Woodstock, England. In September 2019, Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, installed a solid gold toilet. Two days...
Before we went to the Moon, we went to Venus. Sort of, anyway. We sent an unmanned probe there in 1962 to have a look around. Venus welcomed Mariner 2 on December 14, 1962, with a brisk 760 degree day. But that's nothing compared to the heat generated when its...
This screen shot came from our local TV station. Take it from me: if you're giving advice about spelling and quality, maybe you should spring for a proofreader. That said, I had to look up "counterfeit" to see whether it was spelled correctly. That word looks wrong...
National Public Radio shared an interesting story about the redesigning of Helvetica. By far, Helvetica is used more often than any other face, so why redesign? Technical reasons, mostly to do with changing times. It's a great story, but not for here. Whew, what a...
Words matter. You want to get it right. So when it comes to ketchup versus catsup, which should you be using? Ketchup. See? See? I can get to the point. But I'm still going to ramble on about all the fun background bits. Like this, from our Department of Repetitive...
I got an email from my beloved Alamo Drafthouse movie theater. A new location was about to open, right in my neighborhood. Hooray! Right after that email, I received this emergency follow-up: Just as an update, the $5 tickets was a miscommunication and we will be...
About one in twenty manuscripts we receive starts with a "Forward." That makes sense because at that point it's the only direction you can go in the book, unless you want to read the title page again. The problem is that it is wrong. Where are we going with this?...
"Mick" is Michael Campbell, a book designer, graphic artist and writer. His humor column, The Dumpster, closes every issue of Food & Spirits Magazine. Author of Are You Going To Eat That?, and the new 2017 book of seventy hilarious all new essays, Of Mice and Me.