The Atlantic Wire, “Do We Really Need to Shorten the Word ‘The’?”

July 5, 2013

Arit John, “Do We Really Need to Shorten the Word ‘The’?” (The Atlantic Wire, July 5, 2013)

This may very well be the first time someone has decided to advocate on behalf of the. Linguist and language columnist Ben Zimmer told The Atlantic Wire that, while he could think of similar campaigns to popularize ‽ (aka the interrobang, that very unpopular combination of question mark and exclamation point) as well as marks to denote sarcasm, no one has ever tried to shorten the before. And probably for good reason. “I’m not sure that this is something that people are crying out for,” Zimmer told us in a phone interview Friday. “People seem to be just fine using the word the.”

Read the rest here.

Previous post:

Next post: