CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
A moonlit, nervous, and short-sighted Theosophist asks, "What is that misty white thing over there? Is it a ghost, or a Mahatma, or an Astral Body?" From Pick Me Up, 1892.
"When I see [a word like ennui, sacrilegious, gunwale, or parabola] coming I have to step hastily into an open quotation or a split infinitive and wait until it disappears around the corner" (Hinton Gilmore in Cartoons Magazine, 1919. Illustration by Robert Lemen).