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Author Archives: Ingrid Tieken
On Microsoft’s Grammar Checker again
A few years ago, Robin Straaijer wrote a blog post about Microsoft’s Grammar Checker. He had been inspired to write the post after hearing Anne Curzan speak on the topic during the ICEHL-17 conference at Zürich in 2012. Reading Anne Curzan’s … Continue reading
Grammar pedants online
In the Bridging the Unbridgeable project we’ve been trying to find out what people’s pet hates are. So far, we’ve done so directly by asking them in attitudes surveys, both online and face-to face, but another great source is to … Continue reading
No it didn’t: heighth as a usage problem
Last week, the book Transatlantic Perspectives on Late Modern English came out, edited by Marina Dossena. It includes two papers that are of interest to this project, one by Ulrich Busse, which deals with the usage guides by Alford (1864) and White … Continue reading
Posted in announcement, usage features
Tagged 500 mistakes, Anne Curzan, heighth, John Benjamins, Marina Dossena, oed
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Her Ladyship’s Guide to the Queen’s English
This is one of the most recent usage guides in our HUGE database, published in 2010. For my book on the usage guide as a genre, I decided to read it from cover to cover, just as David Crystal did with Fowler’s … Continue reading
On REsearch again
January is a month of correction work in our department: I calculated that I corrected some 200,000 words (!) of student work last month. (I only got likes when I announced this on facebook in the beginning of January.) I’m … Continue reading
How many usage problems are there, Emily?
Yesterday, I commented on what looks like the omnipresence of the split infinitive in usage guides and other books that provide usage advice: Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style (2014) and Cherry Chappell’s How to Write Better Letters (2006). The split infinitive is also … Continue reading
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How to Better Write Letters
This is a copy of a book I accidentally found in the Leiden Free Bookshop the other day. It reminded me of eighteenth-century letter writing manuals, so I picked it up. And very much like Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style, its final … Continue reading
How careful can you be …
I’m going through the final chapter of Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style (2014) to find out how many old chestnuts he discusses in his overview of usage problems. I’m always hoping to find new chestnuts, so we’ll wait and see. Of … Continue reading
2014’s most remarkable events in prescriptivism
It’s new year’s eve, and time to look back on the year that is almost behind us! Several remarkable events happened this year, events that we all reported on in this blog. First there was the new edition of Sir … Continue reading
Posted in announcement
Tagged CIA, English Today, HUGE database, Rebecca Gowers, Sir Ernest Gowers, Steven Pinker
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The first American usage guide
In the post today: my copy of Seth T. Hurd’s Grammatical Corrector, the first American usage guide, published in 1847, and found on ebay. It is in better condition than the ebay picture suggested: it has a green cover, and a … Continue reading
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