Author Archives: Robin Straaijer

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About Robin Straaijer

I am a linguist and EAP trainer, working on English prescriptivism and Standard English. Lover of photography and comedy.

Favourite language blogs (results)

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

The what-are-your-favourite-language-blogs poll posted in June is now closed. Surprisingly, a little more than half of the answers were given as write-ins in the option ‘other’. Here are the results. First, a thank-you to those who voted for this blog, we’re very … Continue reading →

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Favourite language blogs

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Our blogroll on this site shows the language blogs that we like. But we would also like to know which ones are your favourites?

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Wanted: Usage Guide Writers (f)

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Our current strategy for deciding which usage guides to enter into our database of English usage guides and usage problems has been to identify different categories of usage guides and focus our efforts on acquiring the guides that fit into these categories. … Continue reading →

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Latest conference news

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Latest conference headline: follow us on Twitter – hashtag #PrescrConf2013 new paper by Charlotte Brewer (University of Oxford) on prescriptivism and the English school curriculum. Here is the new abstract (Grammarian Gove). Registration for the Leiden conference Prescription and Tradition in Language on 12-14 June … Continue reading →

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HUGE database

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

The creation of a database of English usage guides and usage problems: the Hyper Usage Guide of English, or HUGE-database, is one of the sub-projects within Bridging the Unbridgeable. It is the first database to combine more than two hundred years of usage advice … Continue reading →

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Avoid saying ‘ketchup’

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Looking through usage guides makes me notice prescriptions that haven´t quite ‘taken’. Especially older usage guides can be an amusing source of these. These prescriptions, in addition to prescribing current usage, often also give a prediction for future usage. A while ago, … Continue reading →

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Pre-conference workshop

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Attitudes to Prescriptivism is the theme of a workshop that we will hold on Tuesday 11 June 2013as a ramp-up to the conference Prescription and Tradition in Language which will take place here at Leiden University. There is more information about the workshop on the … Continue reading →

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Tape your ducks in a row!

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Sometimes you’ll find interesting explanations about why specific usages are problematic. This one caught my eye recently. It’s from the entry for duct tape in Bryan Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage. Garner quotes a newspaper articles to explain why people … Continue reading →

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Features

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Robin Straaijer

We have added a new page to the blog; it’s called Features. While our blog posts are usually short and to the point, we occasionally want to post longer pieces. These features can take different formats: they can be a … Continue reading →

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Check your grammar checker

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Robin Straaijer

During her plenary lecture at the 17th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics in Zürich, Anne Curzan reminded us of the enormous influence of the grammar checker in Microsoft Word. My first thought at hearing the checker mentioned is that it … Continue reading →

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