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The quotation in this title is from an article by David Crystal on the split infinitive which appeared in English Today in 1985. It was taken from a book by Robert Burchfield, The English Language, which had come out that … Continue reading
One of the corrections in the second edition of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, originally published in 1814 but reissued in 1816, includes you was. This change was recorded by Kathryn Sutherland in her comparison of the two editions of the novel (Penguin … Continue reading
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This image comes from the website of Plurabelle Books, which is situated in Cambridge (UK). It is part of a bookplate indicating the ownership of the book in which it was found. The owner’s full name is John Raymond de Symons Honey, … Continue reading
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“… who moved differently then I knew”: this is a quotation from the website announcing the film Pina by Wim Wenders (UK release 22 April 2011). The error, then for than, is a typical Dutch mistake, according to Joy Burrough-Boenisch in her … Continue reading
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John Honey’s The Language Trap, subtitled “Race, class, and the ‘standard English’ issue in British schools”, is a 38-page pamphlet published in 1983 by the National Council for Educational Standards. It is a controversial document to say the least, even by … Continue reading
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This will be one of the topics discussed at the SENSE panel discussion ‘Varieties of English: How prescriptive should we be?’ on 27 January (see under News for more information). One of the panel members will be Joy Burrough-Boenisch, the author of the … Continue reading
I’m currently reading a pile of students’ essays on the use of WordSmith Tools in the analysis of two eighteenth-century English novels. They make very interesting reading, and no two are alike. This time, though, in view of the discussions … Continue reading
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This is the title of an article by John Honey, published in 1995 in English Today. In the article Honey makes a plea for “agree[ing] upon [a] reasonable form of prescriptivism”, discussing as a case study the occurrence of pronoun … Continue reading
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On the subject of what is called singular they (Everyone has their off-days) Mittins et al. write that Jane Austen “uniformly employs this usage”. The authors refer to S.A. Leonard’s Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage (1929) here, where we … Continue reading
Fowler is Funny by Paul Bennett, freelance copyeditor I have no religion except Fowlerism. I am a devout follower of Fowler, and when you make the decision to be devout, you must be prepared to defend your saviour. I have … Continue reading
Bridging the Unbridgeable 