Monthly Archives: June 2017

A missing word?

Posted on June 30, 2017 by adrianstenton

I was copy-editing a paper for a language journal today, and came across this: “… children may or may not identify phonemes better audiovisually than auditory only.” The prescriptivist in me baulked at the combination of adverb and adjective, and … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features | Tagged oed | 8 Comments

“But this is what I was taught in school!”

Posted on June 24, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

This is not the kind of comment you’d expect to hear from British informants when asked about the acceptability of particular disputed usage items, given the lack of formal grammar teaching in UK schools since the 1960s and 70s. It … Continue reading →

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Discourse marker like and the joys of serendipity

Posted on June 16, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

Discourse marker like is finding its way into usage guides, as Viktorija Kostadinova shows in her work. None of the usage guides in the HUGE database, all published before 2010, has an entry on like. But some writers do discuss it, even … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features | Tagged the new like | Leave a comment

More than th-fronting

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

I keep on looking for instances of prescriptivism or metalinguistic comments on prescriptive issues in English literature. My call for examples in English Today recently did not produce any more examples unfortunately. The solution? Keep on reading, and even rereading. … Continue reading →

Posted in usage guide | Tagged David Lodge, Deaf sentence, Lynne Truss, prescriptivism | Leave a comment

Only 35?

Posted on June 6, 2017 by adrianstenton

Here’s a UK Guradina newspaper fluff piece for Harold Evans’ new book on writing dos and donts. He seems very confident!

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Pullum: “Strunk simply doesn’t bother to look”

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Carmen Ebner

For readers of this blog and those who have followed the debate between prescriptivists and descriptivists closely, it’s hardly surprising to hear that Geoffrey Pullum, Professor of General Linguistics at Edinburgh University, is not particularly fond of William Strunk’s The … Continue reading →