Let's be honest, Zoom birthdays and happy hours are bad. But an emerging type of platform…
Author: Gretchen McCulloch
Covid-19 Is History’s Biggest Translation Challenge
Services like Google Translate support only 100 languages, give or take. What about the thousands of…
‘Boomerspeak’ Is Now Available for Your Parodying Pleasure
The verbal stylings of the boomer generation—dot dot dots, repeated commas, mid-sentence caps—crystallized into a distinct…
New Emoji Are So Boring—but They Don’t Have to Be
A new data set on the popularity of emoji reveals a problem with Unicode's approval process,…
The Meaning of All Caps—in Texting and in Life
Emphatic caps feel like the quintessential example of internet tone of voice. Sure enough, they’ve been…
Fans Are Better Than Tech at Organizing Information Online
Archive of Our Own, the fanfiction database recently nominated for a Hugo, has perfected a system…
Coding Is for Everyone—as Long as You Speak English
Code depends on English—for reasons that are entirely unnecessary at a technical level.
Autocomplete Presents the Best Version of You
As goofy as some of your smartphone keyboard's predictions are, at least it tries to not…
Children Are Using Emoji for Digital-Age Language Learning
When preliterate kids type strings of emoji, it may seem like a random act. But when…
The Widely-Spoken Languages We Still Can’t Translate Online
People who speak languages missing from Google Translate, Siri, and Wikipedia will face future crises—leaving aid…