Author Archives: Ingrid Tieken

Soon to appear

You can pre-order now! Congratulations, Joan, Morana, Robin! Looking forward to reading it.

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Even Breaking Bad

We finally decided to watch this series, the best series ever, according to some people we know. Netflix of course. It happened after we finished watching all of Better Call Saul, its prequel, which got a very favourable review in … Continue reading

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Online multilingual handbook of language criticism

Focusing on German, English, French, Italian and Croatian, this multingual handbook looks extremely interesting for our field. Articles are published both in German and in the language of the field it deals with, so they should cater for interested scholars … Continue reading

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Ian McEwan’s metalinguistic comments

During the final month of 2022 I read two of Ian McEwan’s novels, an earlier one, Saturday (2005), and his most recent Lessons (2022). Ever since reading his short story “Mother tongue” (2001) I’ve been keeping track of his metalinguistic … Continue reading

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Comparative prescriptivism

When I gave a workshop on usage guides and old usage problems for TeamWork earlier this year, Marcel Lemmens, one of the organisers, presented me with a copy of his recently published writing manual called Als je BGRPT wat ik … Continue reading

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Back online

Harry Ritchie’s website with his two freely available usage guides is once again up and rolling. You’ll find it – and them – here. Do let us know what you think of it.

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“The language is evolving …”

I know that, but I’d still like to know what YOU think about this sentence, which I heard this summer while camping in England: “We are currently having to deal with a large volume of calls and are unable to … Continue reading

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Great news from the publisher

Routledge has just let me know that Describing Prescriptivism: Usage Guides and Usage Problems in British and American English has come out in paperback. Much cheaper than the hardback!

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The Oxford comma in the news

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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Verbal hygiene at Mr Kipling’s

I love Mr Kipling’s little Bramley apple pies, advertised as “exceedingly good cakes”. So far so grammatically good, and good they are. But when buying them this summer during our holidays in England, we also spotted Mr Kipling’s exceedingly good … Continue reading

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