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Reading Hoffman’s Honger (1990) by Leon de Winter, a Dutch writer (b. 1954) who divides his time between living in The Netherlands and Los Angeles, I was struck by the apostrophe in the title of this novel. Dutch usage of the apostrophe … Continue reading
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As a new feature on the blog, we are compiling a Language Calendar (see the bar under the banner). So far it contains only two dates: 4 March: National Grammar Day in the US 22 April: Modern English Usage Day … Continue reading
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Social media in teaching and research As a follow-up on the article Twitteren met een Twist in the final issue of Forum (19 April), the Bridging the Unbridgeable project is organising a session on the (potential) benefits social media can … Continue reading
Today, 22 April 2012, is Modern English Usage day: according to Jenny McMorris, in her biography of H.W. Fowler called The Warden of English (OUP 2001), Modern English Usage was published on 22 April 1926. The Warden of English is a fantastic book to read, written in … Continue reading
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Thanks to Google for suggesting the right spelling if you happen – quite understandably – to search for “Bridging the Unbridgable”. No such help for typesetters or spelling correctors (quality newspaper NRC’s? or magazine L’Officiel’s?) missing the absence of the intermediate e … Continue reading
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This was the question asked on the page-a-day calendar published by Genootschap Onze Taal for 4 June 2004. The answer is, obviously, not the same for English as it is for Dutch. The most successful Dutch usage manual, Onze Taal … Continue reading
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R.W. Burchfield (1923-2004) was not only the author of the third edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage – which Wikipedia labels as a “controversial, substantially rewritten and less prescriptivist” version of the book: he was also responsible for the second Supplement of the … Continue reading
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Being asked to review the Collins online dictionary reminded me of my vocabulary classes as a first-year student at the department of English language & literature at the University of Amsterdam nearly 20 years ago. We had to study concordance … Continue reading
One of the polls a while ago asked your opinion about this sentence: Traditional and CONTEMPORARY furniture do not go well together. But when we were discussing this sentence during a project meeting the other day, we couldn’t really work … Continue reading
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Peter Tiersma, in a chapter called “The Legal Lexicon”, notes: In American English, shall has become virtually obsolete, so that the sole future modal verb is will (Tiersma 1999:105). Is this indeed the case? Do copy editors allow “I will” … Continue reading
Bridging the Unbridgeable 