The It Factor (Answer)
by Jay Lorch
   
Answer: SLASHDOT  

The prevalence of the letters "i" and "t" among the words, as well as the prominent appearance of the word "it" in the title, suggest that there is something important about those two letters. The puzzle is in cursive, and the interesting thing about those letters in cursive is that after writing out a word, one must lift the pen to dot each "i" and put a dash through each "t".

The trick to the puzzle is to convert each word to a letter using Morse code. Each "i" in the word corresponds to a dot and each "t" corresponds to a dash. Thus, for example, the word "idiotic" translates into ..-., which is the letter F.

The translation is as follows.

WordCodeLetter
this
-.
N
in
.
E
little
.--
W
insignia
...
S
idiotic
..-.
F
attest
---
O
citric
.-.
R
stir
-.
N
if
.
E
biting
.-.
R
trivia
-..
D
insipid
...
S

The letters spell out "news for nerds," a clue indicating the news web site SLASHDOT. (And, in case the reference isn't obvious, a Google search for "news for nerds" should readily turn up the Slashdot web page.)