I'm so sorry to have been out of touch for the past month. In that time I've taken on a new assignment in an undisclosed location - which, sadly, means I'll continue to be out of touch for the foreseeable future.

Of course, as the events of recent months may have already brought home to you, the future is not foreseeable. This is true of the future that led to this blog and of the one that has now led to its suspension. I can't help assuming it will remain true of the present and future futures.

One thing that might nevertheless have been foreseen long ago is that The Atlantic and my language columns would make a home for themselves on the Internet. The Atlantic came to the Web very early. We became a content provider for America Online at a time, in the 1990s, when the magazine had more subscribers than AOL did. Back then, I hosted a month-long forum on AOL, answering people's questions about language. By the end of the month, I was being interviewed about my emergence as one of the most popular columnists on the Internet. (No, I'm not kidding.)

That led to the development in 1995 of Word Court for the print magazine, which led to the publication of my first book, Word Court. That led to the development of Word Fugitives as an online feature for The Atlantic in 1998 (by which time The Atlantic had its own popular Web site). And that led to the publication of Word Fugitives as a book, my third, in 2006. All of this led to many other things, not least among them the launch of this blog late last year.

The timing of the launch of almost anything late last year can be said to have been unfortunate. Economics do not permit, etc. Hence my new assignment, for an entity that shall remain nameless for now, in a location that shall also remain undisclosed.

I do hope my language columns will return to The Atlantic in a near future that is as yet unforeseen. If you'd like to help bring that about, please study the roster of Atlantic advertisers and buy a lot of stuff from them. (You could also send a letter to the editor.) In fact, please buy a lot of stuff generally to help get the global economy back on its feet.

When that happens - and I have no doubt President Obama is right that it will happen - I will take the global economy's health as a sign of your abiding interest in the English language and your dedication to my columns about language. I will be grateful that you moved heaven and earth and pixels and dollars to bring these columns back to the magazine that was my professional home for so long. 

In the meantime, please visit me at my other professional home, www.wordcourt.com. And if the physical location of the courthouse pictured there is known to you, I advise you to tell no one, lest you risk an unfriendly late-night visit from the Word Police.

Billy Bob has made an error in parallelism. His second sentence contains a list of items that are not all the same grammatical structure.

If you'd like to thank someone, why don't you? 

Um, I just did.

Imagine having to come up with a new name for a geologic period:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7223663.stm

My impression is that fashion, the real difficulties that exist in some cases, and -- particularly -- the absence of firm teaching of grammar and punctuation in school, are all leading to an accelerating decline in the correct use of the mark.

Apostrophes suggesting possession or association are not to be used within the body of a proper geographic name (Henrys Fork: not Henry's Fork). 

The word or words that form a geographic name change their connotative function and together become a single denotative unit. They change from words having specific dictionary meaning to fixed labels used to refer to geographic entities. The need to imply possession or association no longer exists.

"Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews."

"Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered."

"The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before and he does it without destroying something else."

"Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying."

"We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable."

"America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy."

"A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world."

"Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When they judged the earth flat, it was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was. We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows."

"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."

Herewith some Word Fugitives responses I wish I'd had space for in the January/February issue of the magazine. What they were in response to was this:

Michael McWatters, of New York City, writes, "I use a computer for the better part of my waking life, and I've noticed that certain repetitive keyboard tasks are making their way into my non-computer life. For example, I recently knocked a jar off the counter, and a little voice inside yelped, 'Command-Z!' (the keyboard shortcut for Undo). Ditto for the time I accidentally ripped a page in a book. A friend mentioned that she recently lost her keys and thought, 'Command-F' (Find). There should be a term for this confusion, as it's only going to become more common."

Posted by mark: but have you tried to unlock your front door with the carkey clicker?

Posted by Jill: The one I want to use is the "insert" function--as in, "insert about three more hours into the day" without impacting normal needs like sleep, food etc. 

Alyssa Smith, of Dulles, VA: With those Command Fs and Command Zs, Michael McWatters is, of course, referring to his "interior macrologue."

Jeff Reed, of Wilmington, DE: Because the user needs to resort to the "F" or "Function" keys on the keyboard, it might be that "Functional Iteracy" would do. Or because it's written form is a new notational language, it might be "Keyculus" (after the notation developed by Newton now known as calculus). But, because you need to be wired to both understand and use the new notation, perhaps it's just "geekspeak."

John Marum, of Oakland, CA: Attempting computer commands in real life situations is called making imachinations.

Dylan Armstrong, of Westhersfield, CT: In referring to Michael McWatters' linguistic need, it seems that the word "compucalque" fits well. The key stroke is a direct translation of the action he would like to perform (i.e. Undo, Find, etc). Qualifying it with the "compu-" prefix speaks to the fact that the word is not from another spoken language but from the languange that we use to communicate with our computer.

Editor's note: the New Oxford American Dictionary defines "calque" as "another term for loan translation," and "loan translation" as "an expression adopted by one language from another in a more or less literally translated form."]

William M. Walsh, of Laguna Woods, CA: In response to Michael McWatters' search for a term to describe the intursion of his "virtual" world key strokes into real world actions:  ALTERKEYGO

Steve Chandler, of Galloway, NJ: Michael McWatters, and his friends, looking for real-life equivalents to the keyboard shortcuts are suffering from keystroke.