I could get a job of work, or I could step into a saloon I’d been running Red, my big sorrel gelding, for I don’t know how long, glancing over my shoulder every minute, expecting to see somebody. I glanced again and didn’t see nobody. So, I slowed Red to…

An old baker looks at his life and tries to find some value in it Theophilus Jones leaned forward, peered into an oven in his bakery, and saw a loaf of bread. “A minute more,” he said. He closed the oven and straightened, then grimaced and grabbed his back. …

Why does anyone speak and write in terms of something else? — In Modern American Usage, Wilson Follett says that the construction “in terms of” has become extremely popular: “The rage for expressing everything in terms of something else is a disease traceable to college-catalogue English. From 1900 on a college course was hardly respectable if it did not offer to present…

A young woman prepares for her first night at the Last Chance Saloon The saloon doors swayed in the evening breeze. Mary Lou stood beside them, smoothing the new frilly pink dress that Mrs. McCoy had given her to wear on her first night in the Last Chance Saloon. Betty…

How bad spellers can learn to spell better — Those of us who spell badly can be flattered by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, who in The Reader over Your Shoulder offer this observation about some of us: “They were quick-brained as children and learned to take in two or three words at a time, before going to school…