Soda, Pop and Other Words Americans Just Can't Agree On

If you sit down a group of people from different parts of the United States, you're bound to come across a few cultural differences. But of all the important topics on which Americans disagree, nothing sparks more debate than a seemingly simple question: Is a carbonated beverage called soda, pop or coke?

The Atlantic created its own version of the famous 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey, in which former Harvard professor Bert Vaux polled thousands of Americans about how they pronounce certain words.

The Atlantic recreated the project by calling people across the country and asking them a few of Vaux's questions. Then they layered the answers with North Carolina State University graduate student Joshua Katz's heat maps Read more...