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How Linguistic Diversity Plays Out In English

Polyglot texts (texts using multiple languages) have become increasingly common; they are salvos fired against arrogant monolingualism. Monolingual English speakers would do best to join the multilingual world and welcome these texts. - The Conversation

When Dinosaur Encyclopedias Strode The World

From the 18th century to the 21st, the stats keep rising — number of words, number of entries, number of volumes — and the rival publications proliferate: Compton’s, Caxton’s, Collier’s, Grolier’s, the Oxford and the Columbia, to name a few. - Washington Post

Science Fiction Magazines Have Been Inundated With Chatbot-Generated Stories

The editors of three science fiction magazines — Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Asimov’s Science Fiction — said this week that they had been flooded by submissions of works of fiction generated by A.I. chatbots. - The New York Times

A Science Fiction Magazine Had To Close Submissions After Being Flooded With AI Content

Clarkesworld publisher Neil Clarke says some people submitting AI content are "listening to all these experts on TikTok and YouTube that say, ‘Hey, you can make some money, just pop this into ChatGPT and then submit the text to this list of sites.’"  - BuzzFeed

The War Poetry Of Ukraine

"The war has been going on since 2014, but it wasn’t until the full-scale invasion of February 2022 that the world started paying attention. Or, perhaps, as some of the poets in the anthology state elsewhere, the war began long before 2014 by way of colonial imperial politics." - LitHub

Don’t Miss The Exuberant Diversity Of Ukrainian Literature

It's a thorny question after years of occupations and wars. That, "combined with the systematic repression of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture has made some Ukrainians ambivalent about fully embracing the many writers from Ukraine who are not ethnic Ukrainians." - The Millions

What Is Fixer-Upper Empire Builder Chip Gaines Doing With Larry McMurtry’s Last Bookstore?

This is a twist. "The Archer City store was the last remaining shopfront, and had become a pilgrimage of sorts for devotees of McMurtry’s Westerns." Gaines was spotted carrying boxes of books out of the store, the inventory of which has now gone all-online. - LitHub

Someone Who’s Read A Lot Of Roald Dahl Books To Kids Explains How To Handle The Nasty Bits

"What's interesting about this unneeded controversy is that I haven't so far seen anybody ... who thinks (bowdlerizing the books) is a good idea. Loudmouths on the right think it's 'woke cancel culture' nonsense, and loudmouths on the left think it smacks of literary censorship. So why has this happened?" - Slate

Roald Dahl’s Publisher Will Release An Unaltered Edition Of His Works, In All Their Insensitivity

"The Classic Collection will 'sit alongside the newly released Puffin Roald Dahl books for young readers', the publisher said," referring to the controversial new editions, vetted by sensitivity readers, which remove such potentially offensive epithets as "fat" and "ugly." - The Guardian

A History Of Having To Alter The Problematic Roald Dahl

Dahl’s antisemitism was widely reported around the time of his death. His editors had entered discussions regarding the misogyny and racism in some of his other books. In some cases he listened and in others, he didn’t. Eventually, his US publishers had enough of his truculent behaviour. - The Conversation

How Poetry Redirects Us In Language

“Poetry cannot save us, and yet the poets could do a great deal to redirect our minds and senses back to the proper object of their love…eyes schooled by the poets, as they look out on the ravaged landscape of our world.” - Hedgehog Review

The Failed Simon & Schuster/Penguin Random House Merger Hearings Tell You Everything About The State Of Publishing

"We invest every year in thousands of ideas and dreams, and only a few make it to the top. So I call it the Silicon Valley of media. We are angel investors of our authors and their dreams, their stories. That’s how I call my editors and publishers: angels.” - Harper's

How The Conversation, An Academic News Website, Has Pulled In An Audience Of Young Professionals

"Survey data showed that a bulk of (the site's) readers were in the 18-to-35 age bracket. ... To experiment with a new approach, The Conversation launched the Quarter Life series in March 2022, commissioning stories for people in their 20s and 30s." - Journalism.co.uk

In English: The Importance Of The Words From Elsewhere

Emily Dickinson thought that words start a new, discrete cycle of life the moment they are uttered. While American English can be perceived as a threat to the survival of other cultures around the world, in our country it is a force that helps to bind us together. - The New York Times

The Most Troubling Thing About ChatGPT Writing? The Endless Cliches!

 ChatGPT, the popular bot released to the public by OpenAI late last year, is obsessed with clichés and uses them all the time. Perhaps it is no coincidence that use of the chatbot has already become common in areas of life where people write formulaically and blandly. - The Atlantic

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