Category Archives: Uncategorized

Yesterday, the Guardian posted a call asking readers to express their personal thoughts on what the terms “working class” and “middle class” actually mean. These are terms well-known from sociolinguistics, so I’ll be curious to so how readers will respond. … Continue reading →

Paul Nance is a regular contributor to this blog. This time, he has written a great piece on metalinguistic comments in detective novels by Rex Stout (1886-1975). Enjoy reading it!

On 8 July I wrote a post on a piece on irregardless in the UK Guardian newspaper, not because of the piece itself, but because it generated 327 responses from readers. This, I now realise, was small fry. A piece on … Continue reading →

MW’s inclusion of irregardless spawned not only a cartoon in the UK Guardian newspaper, but a response from 327 members of the the general public!

Are you a copy-editor or a proofreader of English texts? We are interested in what you think! If you can spare a bit of your time, you will help researchers at Leiden University learn more about editing practices by filling … Continue reading →

We are currently compiling a list of available monographs—such as Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Carol Percy’s 2017 Prescription and Tradition: Establishing Standards across Time and Space—and university courses that focus on linguistic prescriptivism (in English, but also in other … Continue reading →

Another piece from the UK Guardian on how the Apostrophe Protection Society has finally given up the unequal struggle!

Another interesting article from the UK Guardian on which pronouns people who identify as non-binary would like others to use to refer to them. Apart from it being a possible language/usage change in progress, it also addresses the issue of … Continue reading →