Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

Metalinguistic comments that is, as in the novels of Kingsley Amis, Len Deighton and Ian McEwan. Reading A Most Wanted Man (2008), I came across several references to accent but also one to who/whom: But for how long? And from who? … Continue reading →

From Sunday’s Guardian website … Oh for a German Academy! On a separate note, the spell-checker here wanted me to change Guardian to Gardina! For those not familiar with the Guardian, it has for many years been known for its … Continue reading →

The New York Times has asked students to respond to a short piece on “Does grammar still matter in the age of Twitter?”, and received 172 responses! The piece can be found here.

“Ain’t is a chav word, innit?” chavs

As a follow up of our project’s closing symposium, there will be a special issue of English Today later this year with most of the papers. Here are the ones that are out already: Great Britain and the United States: … Continue reading →

I fear that the Oldie (September 2019, a British monthly magazine whose title speaks of its readership – which of course includes me!) is a bit late for the party on this one …

We’ve written about the greengrocer’s apostrophe on this blog before, but what about these other people, footballers (known for their use of the perfect when other people would use the past tense in English instead), sports commentators (who seem to … Continue reading →