This morning, while I was browsing around one of my favorite websites brainpickings.org, I came across an article which mentions the 2005 edition of William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s classic The Elements of Style. This edition is illustrated by … Continue reading
And today I found the book itself (see previous post): thanks for this, Carol Percy, and congratulations on the book. The book includes various articles that are of interest to the Bridging the Unbridgeable project, but the article I will … Continue reading
Now that the university library at Leiden subscribes to Cambridge Histories Online, it is possible to have access to books like the Cambridge History of the English Language without having to search for the book in the English Reading Room. … Continue reading
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As a new feature on the blog, we are compiling a Language Calendar (see the bar under the banner). So far it contains only two dates: 4 March: National Grammar Day in the US 22 April: Modern English Usage Day … Continue reading
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Thanks to Google for suggesting the right spelling if you happen – quite understandably – to search for “Bridging the Unbridgable”. No such help for typesetters or spelling correctors (quality newspaper NRC’s? or magazine L’Officiel’s?) missing the absence of the intermediate e … Continue reading
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R.W. Burchfield (1923-2004) was not only the author of the third edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage – which Wikipedia labels as a “controversial, substantially rewritten and less prescriptivist” version of the book: he was also responsible for the second Supplement of the … Continue reading
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In a short story called “Mother Tongue” (2001), Ian McEwan writes about his efforts at acquiring standard English, a variety he had not learnt at home. As a result of his reading novels by Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene, [s]lowly, … Continue reading
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… one of our readers asked a few days ago. “Where was he working when the National Council of Educational Standards asked him to write The Language Trap? Was he an academic?” she asked. What we know about John Honey … Continue reading
I am one of many fans of the public radio program, A Way with Words. The show is broadcast from San Diego and presented by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett. They discuss a variety of language-related topics in an accessible, … 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
Bridging the Unbridgeable 