Category Archives: usage features

On whom/who in a Richard Osman novel again

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Ingrid Tieken

Perhaps my favourite St Nicholas present this year (ok, I also got the latest Asterix and Obelix comic, as well as the first ever Jane Austen graphic novel and lovely house socks, so hard to choose actually) was Richard Osman’s … Continue reading →

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“Een boek vol taalfouten” – an excellent usage guide for Dutch

Posted on November 4, 2025 by Ingrid Tieken

Looking for Dutch usage guides in the context of the Bridging the Unbridgeable project has not been easy or productive. Asking around didn’t produce any titles, nor did I come across any in bookshops which I visited regularly across the … Continue reading →

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Prescriptivism in a Dutch news item

Posted on September 19, 2025 by Ingrid Tieken

Last night on the 8 o’clock news: a new gadget was introduced that warned users if a stalker would come too close. A woman was interviewed anonymously about the advantages of wearing such a gadget, saying how happy she was … Continue reading →

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Hun or hen? A Dutch shibboleth hitting the news

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Ingrid Tieken

Hun and hen: these are third person plural pronouns in Dutch, but the distinction – hun for indirect object and hen for direct object – is hard to remember (for me it definitely is). And anyway, the distinction was only … Continue reading →

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Congratulations, Dr Stenton!

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Ingrid Tieken

Yesterday, Adrian Stenton obtained his PhD degree from the University of Leiden. His thesis is called These Kind of Words: Number agreement in the species noun phrase in International Academic English. The thesis was published Open Access by LOT, and … Continue reading →

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On Richard Osman and his editors

Posted on August 4, 2024 by Ingrid Tieken

So I’ve finally read them all, all four of Richard Osman‘s The Thursday Murder Club crime novels. Not in the order in which they were published, due to their availability in our public library (so that in the end I … Continue reading →

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On who/whom in popular culture

Posted on February 29, 2024 by Ingrid Tieken

Just out, I wrote earlier today, New Horizons in Prescriptivism Research, and in it there is an article I wrote on the exploitation of who/whom as a usage problem in popular culture: television series, films, popular novels. And here is … Continue reading →

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Singular ‘they’ in Dutch?

Posted on January 22, 2024 by Ingrid Tieken

“Will everyone put down their phone?” is quite common in English today. It has been around as a construction since at least the 14th century, developed into quite a controversial feature in the language, but as our Usage poll #10 … Continue reading →

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“Inputted” on the increase?

Posted on January 10, 2024 by Ingrid Tieken

On reading a PhD thesis from the University of Sheffield on the phonology of West Cornwall English (excellent data collection, detailed and very meticulous methodology description) I encountered the word inputted, which set me thinking. The context was very clearly … Continue reading →

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Tryna into the OED?

Posted on July 14, 2023 by Ingrid Tieken

Rereading Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) this summer reminded me of one of the last BA theses I supervised before I retired nearly three years ago. The student writing the thesis was analysing twitter messages, and told me … Continue reading →

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