The Name Inspector received a mysterious package of books today from Norton, publisher of his book Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little. The paperback version already? No, too early for that. Inside he was delighted to find four copies of the Korean translation of Microstyle, with the distinctive exclamation point graphic on the cover replaced [...]

Come meet this cute, colorful little owl at the very first Seattle Interactive Conference next month! Actually, The Name Inspector isn’t sure the owl will be there. But the conference is sure to be colorful anyway. Seattle Interactive is about the sweet spot where “technology, creativity, and emergent trends” intersect. That means entrepreneurs will be [...]

The Name Inspector is excited to announce that the Kindle version of his book, Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little, is available for purchase and immediate delivery on Amazon.com. He’s a little torn, though. On the one hand he’d like to heartily encourage everyone with a Kindle to buy his book now. On the other [...]

The Name Inspector has created a new page to round up press mentions of this blog. If you check it out, you’ll find that The Name Inspector is quoted in an article about domain names in the latest issue of Inc. magazine. Who else is quoted in the same paragraph? Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy. [...]

The experiment continues. The Name Inspector is once again having “office hours” consultations at greatly reduced prices. In-person meetings are best (for you Seattle folks), but phone/chat works too. Contact him today or tomorrow for details.

Not so long ago, The Name Inspector’s younger son got his first pair of shoes at Nordstrom. As a little lagniappe, he also got a plush toy named Nordy, whose head is shown on the right above. This is definitely The Name Inspector’s favorite plush toy inspired by a sketch by a famous philosopher of [...]

On Wednesday the Global Language Monitor “announced” that English got its one-millionth word at precisely 10:22 am GMT that day. And the word was Web 2.0, so naturally, blogs such as  Mashable, John Battelle’s Searchblog,  and TechCrunch took notice. Now, The Name Inspector realizes that the “millionth word” story is a ridiculous play for attention [...]

A few days ago John Cook reported that lawyers from job site Jobdango want the folks at Zoodango, a site that has nothing to do with jobs, to stop using the name Zoodango because the -dango ending infringes on Jobdango’s trademark. Zoodango CEO James Sun said they’d fight the trademark issue even though they’re changing [...]

The Name Inspector would like to apologize to those of you who’ve recently contacted him about office hours. He’s been overwhelmed with requests, too busy to schedule times for consultation, and falling behind in his email. So he’s done what any sane person would do under the circumstances: slipped out of his office in disguise [...]

The Name Inspector is pleased to make an announcement: After months of arduous book proposal writing and revising, he’s landed a book deal with W.W. Norton. Norton is the largest American book publisher not owned by a corporate media conglomerate, and The Name Inspector is thrilled to be under contract with them. The book is [...]