Essential English phrases

Legacy West and the Shops at Legacy — the corporate and retail district around Legacy Drive and the Dallas North Tollway that is effectively Plano's second downtown, and where Toyota, JPMorgan and Liberty Mutual all put their campuses. 'Out at Legacy' is a location, an employer and a lifestyle in one word.

The original 19th-century railway town around 15th Street, with the DART Red Line station in the middle of it. Confusingly, it is not the commercial centre of the city — Legacy is — so specify which you mean.

Independent school district. It is the first question anyone asks about a Plano address, because the city is split between Plano ISD, Frisco ISD and Lewisville ISD and the boundaries do not follow the city limit. Two houses on the same street can feed different districts.

The company you buy electricity from, which is not the company that delivers it. Oncor owns the poles and wires; you choose the retailer, and the plan you pick moves your annual bill by hundreds of dollars.

The cold front that arrives out of a clear sky and drops the temperature twenty or thirty degrees Fahrenheit in an hour, often with a dark blue-black leading edge. North Texas weather is not gradual.

The North Texas Municipal Water District's annual temporary switch from chloramine to free chlorine for system maintenance, usually in late winter or spring. The tap tastes and smells of a swimming pool for a few weeks; it is planned, announced and harmless.

The Dallas North Tollway, the spine of the whole northern suburbs and run by the North Texas Tollway Authority. Plano addresses are described by which side of it they are on, and driving it without a TollTag means invoices at a markup.

The NTTA transponder. North Texas has a great deal of tolled road — the Tollway, the Sam Rayburn, the President George Bush Turnpike, the TEXpress managed lanes — and Plano sits at the crossing of several. Get one in week one.

The President George Bush Turnpike, State Highway 190, which forms Plano's southern edge. Along with the Tollway and Highway 75 it is one of the three coordinates every Plano direction uses.

US Highway 75, the free alternative to the Tollway running up the eastern side of Plano with the DART Red Line beside it. Locals say '75' far more often than 'Central'.

The stretch of shops, restaurants and grocers along and around Legacy Drive and Coit Road serving Plano's very large South Asian and East Asian communities. Nearly a quarter of Plano is Asian American, and the food economy reflects that as fully as anywhere between the coasts.

The Plano Balloon Festival at Oak Point Park each September — hot air balloons at dawn and dusk over a suburb, and one of the few genuinely civic events in a city that is otherwise about corporate campuses.