1013. How can fiction writers create diverse, authentic characters without relying on stereotypes? Alex Temblador, author of "Writing An Identity Not Your Own," tackles this question and more. Learn about the importance of community engagement in research, the pitfalls of overemphasizing certain character traits, and techniques for editing with an eye toward inclusivity. Temblador also shares her own experience applying these principles to her novel "Half Outlaw," offering a practical look at writing across identities.
1013. How can fiction writers create diverse, authentic characters without relying on stereotypes? Alex Temblador, author of "Writing An Identity Not Your Own," tackles this question and more. Learn about the importance of community engagement in research, the pitfalls of overemphasizing certain character traits, and techniques for editing with an eye toward inclusivity. Temblador also shares her own experience applying these principles to her novel "Half Outlaw," offering a practical look at writing across identities.
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MIGNON: Hey, it's Mignon, and I'm here today with a new interview to kick off our next season of Grammar Girl Conversations! The first batch was such a success that we're doing it again. You'll see an interview show in your feed every Thursday at least through Thanksgiving and maybe longer, and I have some great topics lined up. We'll hear from the editors of the Chicago Manual of Style; Erin McKean, who runs her own online dictionary; Christopher Penn, an AI expert, and today I'm here with Alex Temblador, who's a mixed Latine award-winning author of the novel "Half Outlaw," and the book we'll talk about today, "Writing An Identity Not Your Own," a guide for creative writers. She has an MFA in creative writing and does extensive teaching on creative writing, both at universities and in the broader  literary world.
Alex, welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast.Â
ALEX: Thank you for having me. I'm so glad to be here to chat with you.
MIGNON: Yeah, this is such an interesting book. "Writing An Identity Not Your Own." Twin books. [Both women held up their books.] It's a great book. And you know, I've never really seen anything like it before. And it's such a big question, I think, among fiction writers. Writers have heard, you want more diversity in your book because it reflects the real world and people should see themselves reflected in fiction, but then I've also seen people absolutely skewered for getting it wrong, and it creates all this anxiety, and I feel like your book is really right for this moment where those discussions are happening.
Can you tell me how the book came to be?Â
ALEX: Yeah, so because these conversations are happening, we had a really big one in 2020 with "American Dirt" when that came out, and the pandemic hit soon afterwards. So I feel like the conversation got a little bit stunted because we had a lot of things to be concerned with in the world. However, that conversation had been happening for many years prior to that.
And I was being asked by a writing workshops company called writingworkshops.com if I would teach a class on this subject. So I taught the class, got a lot of feedback from people who were as concerned about this subject, and they were asking, “What can I read after this class? Where can I go after this class to get more information?” and there just wasn't anything I could point them to that covered a lot of the subjects about different identities.
Maybe it was like one book about race or one book about sexual orientation, but it wasn't covering a lot of the different identities. So a few years later, after teaching it many times with different organizations or universities, et cetera, I approached my agent because I couldn't get this question out of my mind of, “How do we do this? How do we approach this?”Â
I would go to events, and no one would want to talk about it on stage. They were very concerned if they got questions, and they would shut down those questions very quickly. And I'm a very practical person. Yes, I know this is complicated, but maybe there's a way we can figure this out.
Maybe I can gather information from all these fantastic writers and people who have so much to say on the subject in one place. And then we can continue to have this conversation and develop it and see where this writing process takes us.
MIGNON: Yeah, I mean, when I hear these conversations, I find myself even wondering if people should try. If we do that, are we making the world a better place by bringing all different kinds of people into our stories, or are we just stealing other people's stories? You know, things that other people should be writing instead. What is your thinking on that?
ALEX: Yeah. That's a good conversation starter with this entire process. My perspective is we've been writing other identities, we always have, and we've written other historically marginalized identities, especially women. And we have not always done it in ways that are reflective or considering, are we putting out stereotypes about women?
Are we continuing these harmful tropes, et cetera. So we've been doing that. And yes, as our world continues to really understand the importance of diversity, I think this question kind of comes up, and I do think we're getting this messaging that our stories need to have diversity because that reflects our world, but ironically, publishing still doesn't actually publish that many stories with historically marginalized representation.
So it's kind of confusing there. I don't necessarily think we need to be writing “diverse stories” just because we think that's what publishing wants, or we think that's how we’re reflecting our society. In reality, most people actually don’t have a very diverse group of friends.
I have an exercise in the book where I have you reflect on who your closest circle is. I think it's called the circle of trust in the book, and if you actually do the exercise, they have found that people really don't have as much diversity within their close group of friends. So it's interesting to me when they want to write a very diverse cast of characters, I question sometimes, “How do you know those characters? How have you connected with that community in real life, or researched it, or learned about that community to really write it as thoroughly as I think you can?”Â
I really do believe writers have this capability. I mean it's very complex as we're getting into it, but I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to write other identities that you don't inhabit or have not experienced or are two steps away from you.
There's nothing wrong with trying to write something. I don't think you're stealing stories. I think publishing needs to make space for historically marginalized people to write their own stories and share their own work.
MIGNON: Yeah. And you do, you have great exercises at the end of every chapter that are these exercises that writers can do. And those were really helpful. One thing that struck me is just, it's a lot of work to try to get this right.
You can't just take a character who might've been white and say, “Oh, I'll just make them black. And then I have diversity in my story.” So, talk about some of the ways that you can make your characters authentic and real.
ALEX: Definitely. I'm so glad you said we cannot just take one identity and replace it with the other. That's like, number one big no no. I think my favorite way to approach it is with intersectionality. And so it's really considering if I have a person, what identities does that person inhabit? Now they're going to have things like a class identity, in terms of how they grew up or now that they're an adult, what kind of job do they have? What kind of income?Â
But we also have identity in terms of their race, and their sexual orientation, and their gender identity, their nationality. All of these things is going to make a person and a character completely different from a different person or character. And that is going to impact how they speak throughout the book.
It's going to impact their motivations, their fears, their concerns, their joys. And all of those little identities really are going to randomly push the plot. And it's going to impact how they interact with their setting. So I think requiring writers to kind of sit back and think about story, and character creation, and plot in ways that I think we just naturally do instinctively.
I don't know if we necessarily break down our characters in that manner all the time, and I'd like to challenge writers to kind of do that.
MIGNON: Yeah. Yeah. So what are the ways that a writer can, let's say it's true, a writer has a very homogeneous social circle but wants to give it a go, putting more diversity in a book. What are some of the places or ways they can learn more about, I don't know, I feel like it sounds dumb, but how can you learn more about people who aren't like yourself?
Like what are the ways that you have found work for your writing students maybe who wanted to try something like this?Â
ALEX: Absolutely. It's kind of like a three pronged process that I like to think of. First of all, read books by people who are writing within their own identity, and not just that but supporting them outside of the book. So supporting them on social media, reading their interviews, kind of seeing how they're talking about their work, why it's impactful for them to share these stories.
That's just the start. But second, the second step, do your research. Look into the different elements of an identity that people experience and inhabit and interact with. So that means you want to look at their history within a certain area or time. If you're talking about, let's say Latino people in Texas.
That's going to be different than Latino people in Chicago in the 1950s. So, you know, really study the history and the time. Look at what was going on socially, culturally, understand those nuanced aspects that you're not going to be able to get from watching a movie or TV show, or maybe even necessarily in all the books that you might read because there's so much information out there, right?
This seems like a very big task, but it’ll help you out a lot. I also suggest listening to podcasts by people of those identities, understanding how they speak, and the different dialects, and how they might approach and have different perspectives. It's not just a single perspective within a single identity.
And then most of all, and this is probably the hardest one that I get a lot of writers pushing back on, understandably so, is connecting with the community that you want to write about. So, if you are more connected to that community, you know what's at stake if something is misportrayed in your work.
If you write a stereotype, if you include something that's harmful, it also allows you to integrate the community and support them in different ways and learn about those little things that you would not be able to get from research at times. But I also think it's just a way, there's a really phenomenal children's book illustrator who said, I think it's James Ransom, who said he hadn't written about Native American, he hadn't illustrated Native American picture books because he hadn't held their babies, which is like this beautiful way of saying you want the community to trust you with their story.
And they'll trust you if you're connecting with them, and you're advocating for them, and you're being their allies and accomplices and really genuinely connecting with them.
MIGNON: Yeah. And you can't just do an internet search. Like you're not going to get there. You mentioned in your book, the foochie face, which is something, Latin American name for kids making a face when something's disgusting or they don't like it.
And so I wanted to see pictures. I wanted to learn more about it. And so I went and I did a Google search, and maybe this is just AI, but the AI result at the top was completely wrong. It was ridiculous. It said, it's the face you make when your bathroom remodel doesn't go the way you want it to.
ALEX: Oh no.
MIGNON: And I was like, what? And you know, there was an Instagram post that someone had said that. And of all the nine other search results seemed right, but they picked on that one. And there's a lot of minefields if you're just limiting your search to one way of finding information and talking to people.
And then it made me think of a guest I had on earlier in the year, she talked about how one person isn't representative of an entire community. So even if you talk to one person, you're not getting the whole big picture.
ALEX: No, not at all. Oh my gosh. I'm so glad you brought that up about just a little Google search. Yeah, we definitely need to check our sources to make sure they're providing the right information. But if you're part of the Latine community, you'll just know that. It's in memes that people send to each other, and people will point it out to children.
I mean, I used to make that face all the time as a child. So that’s so funny that you brought that up.
MIGNON: That’s a great example. So, you mentioned stereotypes, and I have to say, I got kind of overwhelmed going through that section in the book, there's pages and pages of stereotypes and tropes that are problematic. But as I was going through it, it felt like I was marching through a list of every piece of popular fiction and every movie I'd ever seen.
And so, I have not written fiction, but I've experimented with it. And I've always felt like, “Oh, I can't write this because it's a cliché, and I can't write that because it's a cliché.” And my husband always makes fun of me because he's like, “Everything is a cliché. People like tropes and the happy ending and romance and things like that.”
So can you talk about stereotypes and tropes? Like they are definitely in fiction, and they're there for a reason, but then they can be done so badly. And so like what purpose do they serve? Why do we like them so much? And then what can we do to still maybe use them, but in ways that aren't problematic?
ALEX: Absolutely. So listeners, I have a whole chapter, chapter 11, it is the longest chapter in the book. It was very long for me to write. And I understand it is going to be overwhelming to read that chapter. And I apologize, but my mindset when I was writing it was “Okay, if I'm editing something that I've written, I want to be able to go to the section about sexual orientation and just see and skim through the sexual orientation stereotypes to make sure I don’t have anything in there that might be harmful.”
Now, when it comes to stereotypes and tropes, where they become harmful is when we reduce characters to like a single dimension or a single story, which Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie kind of coined that, that beautiful term, and it's when, say for example, we have a character who is gay, and they are the gay best friend of your main character now the "gay best friend" trope — we see it all the time like in stories and in movies, and it is okay to have a gay best friend to a main character, but if it becomes a trope when that character's sole purpose is only to help the main character.
They have nothing beyond surface level description of who they are. Who is that person intersectionally? Do they … what do they feel about things? Do they push against the main character instead of helping them in just a yes, yes way? Do they give them different perspectives, their own perspectives?
Do we as the reader get to see something that we wouldn't necessarily see if it was just tropic, and they were only written in a single dimensional way? So I think, you can have stereotypes and tropes, and you're going to see some of the things that I do list as stereotypes and tropes in your favorite books, movies, even in your own work.
There's so many different ways you can use them. You can actually use stereotypes to criticize the stereotype. So, the white savior stereotype, or white savior trope, Barbara Kingsolver has, oh, gosh, I'm blanking on the name of the book right now, but it's white missionaries go to Africa, saving souls, which in itself is a whole white savior trope, but I think she criticizes a lot of that concept of white saviorism and that can sometimes be intermingled with religious saviorism. So, I think there's ways to use it and use stereotypes mindfully, knowing, here's how they have harmed stories in the past. I can use it to subvert the trope. I can use it in a new way.
If we always have these romance stereotypes, we've only always seen it with heterosexual characters, maybe there's a way to use it to showcase queer characters, but not to the detriment of queer people, if that makes sense.
MIGNON: Mhm. Yeah, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, I love stories that have really interesting secondary cast of characters. Like, I love stories where the supporting characters are also just quirky and interesting and fun, and they have their own stories, too. And it almost seems like, if this, if you apply this to any kind of writing, it's going to make your writing better. Like your best friend, whether they're gay or straight or black or white or Asian or Latine, if you develop them more as a character, your stories are going to be more interesting.
ALEX: Absolutely. Yeah, I know this is such a hard process to write other identities and edit other identities. But really, I hope it just helps you in every aspect of your writing process. Because a lot of times in this book, I'll tell you, “Okay, if something feels kind of weird and awkward or you're not sure, am I being discriminatory there, or is this a harmful trope?" just write a whole other scene. Or delve deeper into that character. Maybe you're missing something about their intersectional identity that can come out there and really make them more complex, affect the storyline in some different way that's beneficial and positive, showcase a certain identity in a way that we don't necessarily see all the time.
So I'm hoping it actually opens doors for you rather than shuts doors in the way that I think people could approach this process thinking, “Well, I'm not gonna be able to do anything.” Well, actually that's a limiting mindset. This could give you an opportunity to do way more than you ever considered.
MIGNON: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you were talking about in the section where you talk about describing how people look and not doing that in a problematic way, like have you described your white characters? Compare. If you're describing your characters of other identities way more than you're describing your white characters, that's a sign that something is happening.
Talk more about that, please.
ALEX: Yes, so there's sometimes an imbalance when we're talking about characters of different identities or we're describing them. Not only does it happen with how we describe looks with our characters of color, but it and usually it happens with dialogue too. So we might really focus on characters of different nationalities or different races and ethnicities.
We'll focus on their accent and how they speak more so than maybe white characters. I'm mixed. I'm half Mexican, half white. I have a Mexican side, and I have a white family, and I'll go to both sides, and I can tell you everybody uses double negatives, and drops articles, and they don't speak “proper English” or whatever it may be, even though we're all English speakers. That was all of our first language. Â
So it's ironic that sometimes that can appear in our work, where we will just naturally write white characters as if they're mainstream or as if we expect readers to just know that's what we're intending, but then we'll go overboard sometimes describing characters of historically marginalized identities too much so, and then it can either exoticize those characters or make them into a caricature and still sends the message that white, straight, cis, heterosexual, abled characters are the norm or the mainstream, etc. Yeah.Â
MIGNON: Yeah. Leave things to the imagination for your readers or for everyone or like the same. Yeah. And what about body language? That was an interesting section. How to deal with body language.
ALEX: Yes. Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up because as a writer myself, I write a lot of first-person, and so I had to think of ways to not just tell the reader everything that's going on in the mind. But also to think about “How do I perceive a situation happening based on what I'm observing about another person in a scene or in real life?”
And so with body language, when you're writing other identities, body language can tell you a lot, especially when you have characters of different identities interacting. If somebody is very uncomfortable about discussing race, we see that in real life people closing themselves off or stuttering or looking down or looking for ways to run out the room.
So, that stuff is going to happen with their characters if you're having a cast of characters who are different identities. Sometimes they can tell you more about what somebody doesn't recognize if they do something discriminatory to one character. It can also showcase how a character is really unsure what just happened.
If they are crossing their arms, they're very uncomfortable or they could be angry. If they're doing a little twitch, like pulling their hair back behind their ear, that might be indicative that something isn't right. So look at ways to bring in facial expressions, body movement rather than just relying on dialogue, which, when we're writing other historically marginalized characters, as I said, we can rely too heavily on sometimes, rather than focusing on the way they look, or their internal dialogue, and their internal monologue. So I hope that kind of is like intersectionality and just creates a more holistic, fully formed, well-rounded character for writers.
MIGNON: Yeah, and if you're wanting to do research, I imagine it would probably be better to watch YouTube videos or something than to watch movies because movies might be stereotyping or at least might not be accurate.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah, and if you do watch movies or film or TV, I would highly suggest looking at who produced it, who wrote it, who's acting in it to see those levels of comfort that the actors might have and really showcasing authentic characters and how they move. But yeah, I think YouTube, and again, just knowing people in real life and going and connecting with them in their safe spaces and in their communities.
And recognizing when they're comfortable around you because if you are a writer, you know, I don't want to send this message like, “Oh, you want to write a different ethnicity, go connect with the community and doing it for wrong reasons, right?” You want to go in there genuinely, you want to go in there authentically.
There will or there could come a point where they feel comfortable enough to really be a little bit more of themselves with somebody who is not within the community that you might start to see body language or word choice or behavior changing. And that's called code switching because people who have historically marginalized identities usually have to code switch in spaces that are not made for them or designed to be welcoming of them.
And so if you are trying to connect to a community, that's something you're probably going to notice or recognize, or I hope you do eventually.
MIGNON: Yeah, and that's something that's going to take a lot of time. You're not going to show up and be like, “Hi, I'm writing a book about your community. Can I be your friend?” You know?
ALEX: No. This is like a genuine give and get. And this is not, I think some writers also think, “Well, I'm friends with the person at my religious institution, or my coworker is this identity, and we're friends, we see each other every day.” Are you getting invited to the barbecues and the dinners and the funerals?
Are they really opening up to you and showing you things or sharing things about their community that they might not do if they don't feel safe around you? So really kind of understanding where you're at in that position and why you're there, and ultimately it's more important to be there supportive and as a genuine friend.
Yeah.
MIGNON: Yeah. I want to talk about slang and dialect a little bit more because I think the language aspects are going to be particularly interesting to Grammar Girl listeners. And I think there's been some debate about how much slang and dialect you should use in fiction in general. So, because it can become dated or misrepresent people and things like that.
So can you talk about from a "Writing an Identity Not Your Own" perspective, what are the extra things you have to consider about slang and dialect?
ALEX: Yeah, I think you need to, of course, make sure it's relevant to the time period in which you're talking about. Make sure you understand the different meanings behind different forms of slang, if it's used between people of the same community or people or only in relation to people outside the community.
Knowing the historical, cultural, and social aspects of that slang, that colloquialism, that phrase. I'm not really concerned with the idea of slang or colloquialisms being dated if you want to include it in your work. I think everything is dated as soon as it gets published. So I find it can just bring something to life about a certain community or a time or a place that I think we in the publishing world should be promoting.Â
Unfortunately, I do think publishing has pushed against slang and colloquialisms among writers of historically marginalized identities, and I think that's to their detriment, but also making sure that it doesn't become so caricature — you don't overly use slang and colloquialisms from or for your character of historically marginalized identity compared to somebody who is not marginalized or who has more privilege so that there is that balance because sometimes it could come across as you are indicating that somebody of a certain identity is less educated, or has broken English, or is less than some other group or is an out group, a person from an out group versus this in group that you’re writing about. So take consideration into all the elements that come with slang and colloquialism, and how you present it with your character, and how readers might perceive it is what I would suggest.
MIGNON: Yeah, the example I always think of is, we all, almost all of us at least say "gonna" and "kinda," and if you only have some of your characters, it's spelled that way in their dialogue and not others, why are you doing that? Is that really what you're trying to do? Doesn't usually make sense.
ALEX: Absolutely. And with little aspects of dialect, like dialect there, like "kinda" or "gonna," most of the time, I would just say it's okay just to write it completely as “kind of” like in the grammatical way. Now, if you're really trying to showcase maybe a character's accent, like I do have characters in my second book who might have like a little country aspect to them, and that really kind of gets played up a little bit more than maybe some other characters, and this kind of comes up when we're talking about characters of other nationalities, is this question of, “Well, if they're learning English, shouldn't I show that their English is not perfect, or their English, or their grammar isn't perfect?”
And again you could risk the situation of othering if you overdo it, if you do it in a way that is a caricature, if you do it without actually having this fully formed character that is complex and not solely defined by the language that they use.
MIGNON: Mm hmm. Yeah. So I listened to another interview you did, and you talked about your book, "Half Outlaw," and how you wrote it, and then it seemed like you had done a lot more work on the "Writing an Identity Not Your Own," and then you went back and edited it. And I'd love to hear more about that editing process you went through yourself to implement some of these tactics that are insights that you gained about that kind of writing.
ALEX: Yes, it was so scary to edit that book.Â
MIGNON: I guess maybe first give people a little overview of what it is too.
ALEX: Yes, "Half Outlaw" is a story about a woman named Rocky who is half Mexican, half white. She's orphaned at a very young age and sent to live with her white uncle who is part of a one percenter motorcycle club. So think like Hells Angels types.
And part of the book is she goes on a journey throughout the U.S. after her uncle dies and meets all these different people who have different identities, who are queer, who are indigenous, who are Vietnamese, who are different levels of education, different job backgrounds, classes, all these different identities are in this story. Or even disabilities.
And so I wrote the book. I felt pretty confident about it because I've been writing about different identities as a journalist for many years. I've been doing a lot of research as a creative writer in this topic. I thought it was pretty good. I shared it with, we sold it a year and a half later, I'm doing the edits with my editor, and I had been working on "Writing an Identity Not Your Own," and when I received the edits they were, I didn't have any big issues in terms of the character from the editor's viewpoint. However, because it was in my head, I was like, “Okay, maybe I didn't get everything right, I didn't go through this with a fine-tooth comb in the way that I would absolutely do now.” So what I ended up doing is kind of doing what is in the editing checklist in my book.
I would focus on every single character of every single different identity. And I was like, okay, this editing round is just on them. And then I would go on to the next character. And then I would go, okay, now this whole editing round is on dialect, and accent, and dialogue. We're going to focus on everybody's, and I'm going to really look at if I have them speak like this, does this say something about their character or about that identity?
And I went through so many edits within … I think I had about a month or two weeks to a month on the first round. And I had about two weeks to a month on the second round with my editor. I did have a sensitivity reader, which was fantastic. And they gave a little bit of feedback. But really, I was combing through things in a way that I had never done before, and I did find stuff that I wasn't very proud of, or I didn't want going out in the world, or that I didn't intentionally mean to write in the book.
And I had to rethink about my characters, how they interact with each other, if they say this or do this, does this say this about this identity, and it was very stressful, and I don't want other writers to do that or to have to experience it. I would have liked to kind of approach the book with having already written this nonfiction book that is out in the world, but I've written the book for you, and hopefully it could help writers and editors to kind of like approach it in a way that it doesn't have them scrambling at the very end before their book comes out to make sure they get everything right.
MIGNON: Yeah, editing can be really stressful, but it's also wonderful because you get a chance. I mean, what a gift that you had the time and the chance to, even if it was compressed to, to make your book better and something that you're something that you're happier with to have out in the world.
ALEX: Yeah, and there were moments where I was talking with different editors and we're like, “Oh, this scene, there's nothing that I think people could have said was like discriminatory, but there's something off about it, doesn't feel right.” And they were like, “Maybe you should rewrite it.” And I rewrote the scene, and it worked so much better.
It actually gave a whole level to one of the characters that Rocky ends up meeting. It gives them a whole different angle that I hadn't written them. I hadn't approached them in the edits beforehand, and it was very exciting to kind of see how this like slightly changes the story, or makes the character better, or makes my main character reflect on how she behaves and thinks about other identities, or how she perceives how her family reacted and behaved to her other identities. So it was really fun to kind of do that, and it was hard, but I'm so glad I had the opportunity to do it.
MIGNON: That's wonderful. And that book, again, that's called "Half Outlaw." That's a great novel that you wrote. And today we've been talking about "Writing an Identity Not Your Own: A Guide for Creative Writers." And if you're not a creative writer, I hope it's been educational for you too, to see how much work and thought that writers do put into all their characters and just how much goes into it.
Alex Temblador, thank you so much for being here with us today. Where can people find you if they want to connect with you online or maybe book one of your or attend one of your writing classes?
ALEX: Yes, go to my website, alextemblador.com. You can find a lot of information on there. I even include discussions such as this on there so that people can hear about what I've said about "Writing an Identity Not Your Own" or my other books, and you can see my events and classes that I teach, but I also have another website writinganidentitynotyourown.com.Â
I hope to continue to have this conversation to share my thoughts and perspectives or things that I learn in this whole process of writing this book on there through blogs and different media. So I'm hoping to grow that and continue to help people with this process, and it just won't be the book.
And if you'd like to follow me on social media @Alex_Temblador. (Instagram,Threads)
MIGNON: Wonderful. And we're actually doing a new thing this week. So that's the end of the show for regular people, but we now we have subscribers, so if you are subscribed to the podcast — to the premium thing at Apple Podcasts or if you're a Grammarpalooza subscriber  — we're going to continue the conversation, and Alex has this wild anecdote in the book about the book reading that happened for the book, "The Help" that came out a few years ago. So we're going to continue talking about that. If you want to hear that subscribe at Apple Podcasts, the premium part, or to Grammarpalooza.
And to the rest of you, thanks for listening. I'll be back on Tuesday with a show about words like "cockamaime" that sound like they might be gendered, but aren't; and about ways that words can slide around between parts of speech in English. What Edwin Battistella calls grammar that leaks.
That's all. Thanks for listening.