Read Breaking Copy, a copywriting blog by Daryl Lang, the writer of History Eraser Button

Friends outside New York City often ask what’s going on at the World Trade Center site. Here are some pictures that show the progress of the site:

(more…)

I’m sure there’s a sensible reason for this sign to exist. But the hell if I can figure it out. Aren’t most places not bus stops?

(Spotted on an unremarkable street corner somewhere around Ridgefield Park, during a bike ride exploring the New Jersey suburbs Monday.)

One unique quality of library books is the notes past readers have written in them. To be clear: I never write in library books. But I enjoy that extra layer of the reading experience—trying to puzzle out what other readers were thinking based on scrawls in the margins. (Within limits—and I’m talking about legible notes, not obsessive highlighting or underlining, which is annoying.)

I especially like it when a reader has corrected a mistake, or made a sophisticated editing judgment:

(more…)

By four o’clock on a Friday in late August, with all sensible work having ceased after lunch, Manhattan is in the midst of a mass exodus. The commuter trains teem with office workers bound for summer excursions, overstuffing the luggage racks with rolling suitcases and sipping bottled beer from paper bags.

(more…)

I saw this sign recently near my apartment. I think it sums up the kind of neighborhood I live in: