Awkward and pretentious continue to move upward in their rankings for reasons that are not clear, except that there does seem to be much in life that can be appropriately described with these two adjectives. One of the biggest upward moves came from conundrum, which may also be a comment on the times.

We note with approval the appearance of three spelling-related newcomers — whether, thorough, and through. Perhaps this month's Spelling Bee inspired people to be more concerned about spelling, or perhaps more people are realizing that spell-checkers don't answer all questions. Either way, this looks like good news — and like a nice note to end on, as Word.com now enters a bit of a hiatus. We'll be back in September.