Red Pen: A Grammar Podcast

Latest Episodes:

'The Elongated Yellow Fruit': On diction Mar 22, 2023

Show notes

Do you nictitate, or do you blink? Were the Clampetts new-money, or would you call them parvenus or arrivistes? When it comes to word choice, English draws the battle lines across a few fronts: the plainspoken versus the purple, the Saxonic versus the Latinate, Hemingway versus Nabokov. So let's get into it.

Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.

Thing 1: Ryan Davis

Thing 2: Mike Laws

Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.

Show notes:
Protest Periphrasis: How the words used to describe the actions of police hide their violence, Mike Laws, CJR

Rhythm Blues: On bad poetry Mar 15, 2023

Show notes

There are a great many ways to write terrible verse—lazy rhymes, half-baked conceits, catastrophic metrical breakdowns. But where others have failed, u/poem_for_your_sprog sings the subreddits electric. Look on his works, ye unlettered, and despair.

Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.

Thing 1: Ryan Davis

Thing 2: Mike Laws

Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.

Buzzwords, Part 2: A very unique and impactful finale Mar 09, 2023

Show notes

What voguish phrase makes Mike drop his first on-air F-bomb? Which term gets Ryan's vote for word of the decade? And what contributions did you, Dear Listener, make to this godforsaken list? Smash that play button for the answers to these and other pressing queries (to wit, on Russian poisonings, the best Judas, and MTA campaigns we just can't quit).
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach

Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

Show Notes:

Down In The Subway (1904)
Lyrics by William Jerome
Music by Jean Schwartz
Murray Head: Superstar/1971
Lyrics by Tim Rice
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber

Buzzwords, Part 1: A truly iconic episode Mar 02, 2023

Show notes

We all use them, we all hate them: fad terms. How do they catch on? Why should careful writing eschew them? Listen as Mike attempts to answer despite a determined frog in the throat, and Ryan attempts to shame him for bingeing the Mighty Ducks reboot (while copping to watching the ne plus ultra of trash TV, Netflix's You).

Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.

Thing 1: Ryan Davis

Thing 2: Mike Laws

Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.

Punctuation Problems, Part 2: With the Beatles Feb 22, 2023

Show notes

How litigious are the rights holders of the most beloved catalogue in music? Join us as we find out, stopping along the way to dish on Dick Morris, Ugly Kid Joe, Vladimir Nabokov, Mad Men, and (oh yeah) a dense little handful of troublesome marks: questions and quotations, colons and semis, dashes and parens.

Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.

Thing 1: Ryan Davis

Thing 2: Mike Laws

Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.

Punctuation Problems, Part I: F*ck up some commas Feb 15, 2023

Show notes

Pop quiz, hotshot: When does a period go inside a parenthesis? How many commas are too many for a sentence to bear? When do you use single quotes rather than double? Should you ever hit the space bar twice? And for extra credit: How is a poorly punctuated paragraph like pornography?

Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.

Thing 1: Ryan Davis

Thing 2: Mike Laws

Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.

Possessed, Part II: Doubly Possessive Feb 08, 2023

Show notes

Genitives, gerunds, postpositive adjectives—oh, my! There's still a lot to say about the tangled mess of possessive forms, so let's get back to it. You won't want to miss Producer Amanda's first on-air appearance (to dish on the royals, natch) or Mike's unforgivable misreading of a fine point in the Chicago Manual of Style. Plus: Meat Loaf, Lorde, Three Doors Down, and Three Days [sic] Grace.

Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.

Thing 1: Ryan Davis

Thing 2: Mike Laws

Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.

Possessed, Part I: Mo plurals, mo problems Feb 01, 2023

Show notes

When it comes to ownership in English, even the basics get real wrinkly real fast. Best to get right into it. So what do the Simpsons, Mighty Ducks, Danish film directors, and nepo babies have to do with anything?

Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.

Prepositions: Totally okay to end sentences with Jan 25, 2023

Show notes

A deep dive into a "rule" that arguably never was—and certainly isn't now. So where did it come from? As usual, a poet's to blame. Digressions include the animal tranquilizer xylazine, the authorship of works credited to Shakespeare, the dubiousness of quotes attributed to Churchill, Restoration-era rap battles, and Beavis and Butt-Head.

Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.

Thing 1: Ryan Davis

Thing 2: Mike Laws

Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

Inflection Points Jan 18, 2023

Show notes

You might've BID on a vintage loom on eBay—but if you didn't get it, you BADE it farewell. If you did, maybe you WOVE a pair of mittens so pretty your sister WEAVED through traffic to snag them. Verbs with different senses can be tricky, but it's nothing to get HUNG about (and certainly not HANGED over!). We're here to sort out these and other dual-use words, when we're not getting sidetracked by this year's deep bench of Best Actress contenders, Owen Wilson's Central American fashion statement, and how the word "wetted" makes Ryan giggle.
Questions/comments/ideas/snark go in the comments. We love you.
Thing 1: Ryan Davis
Thing 2: Mike Laws
Producer: Amanda Darrach
Find all your favorite Red Pen songs over on the Red Pen Official Playlist.

To use Red Pen chapters, swipe up on the Now Playing screen or click the top-right-corner Chapters button on Apple Podcasts for macOS.