Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Mittins et al. survey continued

Posted on February 2, 2015 by BtU Admin

Perhaps you’d been wondering what had happened to our update of the Mittins et al. survey from 1970, of which we so far put only the first eight sets of usage problems to you for evaluation. There are fifteen sentences … Continue reading →

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How many usage problems are there, Emily?

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Ingrid Tieken

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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Figures from 2014

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Robin Straaijer

It’s the start of a new year and thus a good time to rack up some numbers from our presence last year on social media. Here they are: To start, we presently have more followers than ever: over 800 people now … Continue reading →

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How huge is the HUGE database?

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Emily Maas

The past weeks we have been looking into the ‘hugeness’ of the HUGE database. We want to show how many usage guides were in the database by year, what kind of usage problems there are and how many of each category. … Continue reading →

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Bridging the Unbridgeable Lunch Lecture on ELAN

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Viktorija Kostadinova

The next Bridging the Unbridgeable lunch lecture will take place on 21 October 2014, at 13:00 in Lipsius 308. During this session Amanda Delgado Galvan, a PhD candidate at LUCL, will introduce the language annotation tool ELAN and show how it … Continue reading →

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Help us out: journal suggestions?

Posted on August 26, 2014 by Emily Maas

We are looking for scholarly secondary works dealing with prescriptivism/descriptivism with an emphasis on usage guides and usage problems for the HUGE-database. So far, we have looked at journals such as American Speech, English Studies, English Today, The English Journal … Continue reading →

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You Guys or Y’all?

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Emily Maas

Okay, you guys, I’ve got a little more written… are you ready? —Joey Tribbiani (Friends) To me it seems as if plural you is a little bit lost these days. Sitcoms and television series such as Friends, The Big Bang Theory, South … Continue reading →

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No hard language feelings?

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Carmen Ebner

The use of English, or rather its misuse, has often caused the one or the other to throw up his or her (or their?) hands in horror. Last month I attended the English Grammar Day at the British Library in … Continue reading →

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Can you correct someone without being a language bully?

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Robin Straaijer

Over the past two weeks, the linguistic blogosphere has exploded over ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s latest musical parody Word Crimes. Linguists, editors and others were blogging at break-neck speed to discuss the judgements expressed in the song. On this blog, Viktorija … Continue reading →

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A parody within a parody?

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Viktorija Kostadinova

The latest prescriptive lesson on correct grammar doesn’t come from a usage guide or a grammar blog. It comes from “Weird Al” Yankovic’s latest album called “Mandatory Fun” in the form of a parody of Robin Thicke’s popular song “Blurred Lines”. … Continue reading →

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