Search Results for: oxford comma

The Oxford comma in the news

Posted on September 19, 2022 by Ingrid Tieken

Are you for or against the Oxford comma? No choice when publishing with OUP of course, as even Thérèse Coffey would discover. And I doubt if people would be against adding a comma where a lack of one would lead … Continue reading →

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Donna and the Oxford Comma

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

During a British Academy lecture in 2011, David Crystal mentioned that language was rarely the object of a work of art. Well, here is a work of art created by Donna Piët for an exhibition called “Een Poging tot Nieuwe … Continue reading →

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Prescription and Prescriptivism

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Ingrid Tieken

by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade Last year, I taught an MA course called Prescription and Prescriptivism, as part of the MA Linguistics programme at the University of Leiden Centre for Linguistics. The final assignment was for the students to write … Continue reading →

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Overused exclamation marks!!!

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Morana Lukač

In the latest issue of Intelligent Life magazine published by the Economist Group, six writers including Julian Barnes, Claire Messud, and Ali Smith discuss their favourite punctuation marks. We have addressed the topic of punctuation in a number of our … Continue reading →

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Mind Your Language

Posted on November 16, 2011 by BtU Admin

Mind Your Language is a fantastic blog run by The Guardian on usage problems, the use of style guides and many related matters. Particularly the entries by David Marsh are well worth reading. Among the usage items dealt with we find: … Continue reading →

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The turbulent times of hopefully

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Ingrid Tieken

Below follows Anna Yuryeva’s first blog post. She’d be pleased with your comments. Two years ago, in April 2012, the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook published a tweet, which was followed by a virtual tsunami of criticism from grammar enthusiasts: “Hopefully, you … Continue reading →

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The Correct and Improving Major Byron F. Caws

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Ingrid Tieken

This is Richard Bond’s second blog post. The Story So Far – At Dr. Johnson’s House in London there is a plaque that reads “Castigavit et emendavit” (“he corrected and improved“) suggesting that these are H. W. Fowler’s words in recognition … Continue reading →

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Yagoda’s Language Madness

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Carmen Ebner

March Madness describes a very American phenomenon: the NCAA college basketball tournament. In this tournament college teams compete against each other and by winning move on to the next round. This process is often visualised in so-called brackets, which apparently … Continue reading →

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