Author Archives: Ingrid Tieken

UniSIG: Copy-editorial decision-making strategies

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Ingrid Tieken

Morana Lukaç and Adrian Stenton will be presenting a study of copy-editors they conducted in 2020 to members of SENSE, the society of English-language professionals in the Netherlands. They’re looking forward to to sharing insights of a study with the … Continue reading →

Posted in announcement, events | 1 Comment

A new usage guide! Buy one, get one free

Posted on February 3, 2022 by Ingrid Tieken

Harry Ritchie, the author of the amazing and important book English for the Natives (2013), has just published two new books, e-books this time. They’re called The Secret Passwords of Middle-Class Grammar and The Real Rules – A Quick Guide. … Continue reading →

Posted in news, usage guide | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A very timely piece on Dutch “literally”

Posted on January 24, 2022 by Ingrid Tieken

Thank you, Ewoud Sanders, for choosing to write on Dutch literally just this weekend. A very welcome piece for my comparative paper on the English, Dutch and German usage guide traditions later this week. We’ve written on this topic (from … Continue reading →

Posted in announcement, usage features | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The first Dutch usage guide?!

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Ingrid Tieken

For a paper I’m giving later this month, I was looking for the beginning of the Dutch usage guide tradition, and in particular for the first usage guide to have been published. Not every book on language qualifies as a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Is different from really correct?

Posted on January 4, 2022 by Ingrid Tieken

The reference is to the title of an article from 1 January 2022 on the Guardian online, by subeditor Susan McDonald. With an amazing 4194 comments in three days, the opportunity to add another one is now unfortunately closed. I … Continue reading →

Posted in news, usage features | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A very unlikely British phrase

Posted on December 29, 2021 by Ingrid Tieken

Watching the final episode of the BBC mini-series A Very British Scandal last night I was struck by the Duke of Argyll saying “This battle between you and I …”. It would have been highly unlikely for a man of … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Is there a German complaint tradition?

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Ingrid Tieken

Milroy and Milroy, in Authority in Language (first published in 1985, but with a fourth edition in 2012), argue that English has a complaint tradition, with people writing Letters to the Editor about linguistic problems they encounter and usage guides … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The work of copy-editors

Posted on December 10, 2021 by Ingrid Tieken

Today, 10 December 2021, Morana Lukač and Adrian Stenton, both of them working within the context of the (former) Bridging the Unbridgeable project, will be giving the final talk this calendar year of the LUCL Sociolinguistics Series, from 4 pm … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Geoffrey Nunberg, Robert Lowth and punctuation theory

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Ingrid Tieken

Working on the punctuation practice of 18th-century letter writers, I was intrigued by the title of Geoffrey Nunberg‘s book, The Linguistics of Punctuation (1990). The book didn’t have what I was looking for, was in fact more about developing a … Continue reading →

Posted in usage guide | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Language columns in major newspapers

Posted on October 27, 2021 by Ingrid Tieken

It’s great to come across language columns in newspapers like The Economist and, more recently, the New York Times. It is even greater if they deal with aspects of prescriptivism, and linguists’ as well as the general public’s reactions to … Continue reading →

Posted in news, usage features | Tagged | Leave a comment