February 2019: Predictive text meme in Wired and galleys of Because Internet

My latest Wired article is about the appeal of the predictive text meme: we’ve gone from Damn You Autocorrect to treating the strip of three predicted words as a sort of wacky but charming oracle. Plus: I’ve officially got a Wired author sketch now!

I was also quoted in the Huffington Post about how we use okay vs ok vs k in workplace communication and profiled in Stylist France magazine (print, in French).

In Because Internet news, I tweeted some novelty brand twitter accounts about my book, and some of them actually replied! I also made an emoji version of the Because Internet cover ✨, and there’s now a Goodreads page for Because Internet and for me as an author, if you’d like to register your interest in structured data format!

The latest Lingthusiasm main episode was about a new metaphor for verbs and sentences: the verb is the coat rack which the rest of the sentence hangs on (transcript). I also did a lingcomm meta thread about how we go about making a “technical topic explained in a nontechnical way” episode like this. The bonus episode was about how the internet is making English better — it’s a live recording from our Melbourne show, so you can feel like you’re in a friendly group of lingthusiasts from the comfort of your own couch!

I also updated my website, including a shiny new theme, a more detailed page for the book, a bio page, and an updated contact page.

Selected tweets:

• The difference between the face with tears of joy and the tears of joy tilted sideways emoji
• There is no such thing as “the” dictionary
• The problem with “Hey.” as a text
• I am the podmother
• When a non-linguist tries to correct my grammar and I come back with a dozen citations
• Why we should write the first singular subject pronoun in lowercase
• The equivalent of “pouring rain” but for a lot of snow
• “The Old Irish version of English” (A neural net tries linguistics)
• If our various linguistic tools had languages like English as the marginally-supported edge case
• As a linguist you should speak a minimum of the following
• On being a walking dictionary: a very on-brand story and the most socially incongruous place you’ve read a book
• Extended uses of the duck emoji

Selected blog posts:

• Why sign languages need protecting
• Guide to making alveolar trills (as in Spanish “rr”)
• Babies sometimes think that “you” means “me”
• All words are made up words
• Linguistics takes on the Roses are red meme and WUG is for the way you look at me
• Common mistakes: correcting people’s grammar
• The importance of mother-tongue education
• New favourite example of Latinate morphology being semi-transparent to English speakers
• On studying emerging sign languages

This month’s photo is of a bound galley copy of BECAUSE INTERNET — the first time I got to see my book looking like a real book! The inside still has some minor typos and other revisions, but this is the version that will be sent out to reviewers so that reviews can come out at the same time as the book in July.