In memoriam: Geoff Nunberg

The only literary work about punctuation I'm aware of is an odd early story by Anton Chekhov called "The Exclamation Mark." After getting into an argument with a colleague about punctuation, a school inspector named Yefim Perekladin asks his wife what an exclamation point is for. She tells him it signifies delight, indignation, joy and rage. He realizes that in 40 years of writing official reports, he has never had the need to express any of those emotions.

Middleborough, Mass., recently imposed a $20 fine for swearing in public. Linguist Geoff Nunberg says profanity makes hypocrites of us all.

Language commentator Geoff Nunberg tries to untangle the convoluted syntax of the Star-Spangled Banner and Pledge of Allegiance.

Linguist Geoff Nunberg tells us his word of the year, and why he chose it.

President Trump has a penchant for breathing new life into expressions with troubled pasts, like "America first" and "enemy of the people." It's not likely his uses of those phrases will survive his presidency. But he may have altered the political lexicon more enduringly at a Houston rally two weeks before the elections, when he proclaimed himself a "nationalist" and urged his supporters to use the word.