Category Archives: usage features

I come, I seen, I chased him up the street

Posted on April 10, 2018 by

And here is Amos van Baalen’s first blogpost. And if you are a native speaker of Australian or British English, do take the time to contribute to his research by filling in the survey below. It won’t take a lot … Continue reading →

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Singular they and women

Posted on March 26, 2018 by

Back and forth to Berlin last week, for the Wild Publics conference organised by Theresa Heyd and Britta Schneider. There were two papers on prescriptivism, my own (Codification – prescription – prescriptivism: The authority of the lay-person) and one by … Continue reading →

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You say Ke-no-ah and I say Keen-wah

Posted on March 14, 2018 by

And here is Lizi Richards’s first blogpost (again, it isn’t as far as I know an issue in The Netherlands!):  Even in 2018, a strong argument can be made that the British general public are obsessed with accents. Lesley Milroy, … Continue reading →

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On the front page no less

Posted on March 11, 2018 by

Most of the usage problems studied by Mittins et al. in the late 1960s (Attitudes to English Usage, 1970) have since increased in acceptability. This is what we tested by repeating their survey in the form of usage polls on this … Continue reading →

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His, his or her, their

Posted on January 5, 2018 by

If people think singular they is a new feature in the English language, arising out of the need to express gender neutrality: it isn’t. There was already an article about the pronoun in 1975, by Ann Bodine. Very well worth … Continue reading →

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A which hunter at it again

Posted on October 12, 2017 by

I just proofread an article of mine which had been copy-edited, in the process of which all my whichs (and some whos) had been changed into thats! Copy-editors tend to be anonymous, but I bet this person was American. Another … Continue reading →

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We understood that to “decimate” meant to kill one in 10

Posted on July 29, 2017 by

This is a quotation from a new book, The Beast, by Alexander Starritt, due out on 7 September, and previewed in today’s Guardian by Ian Jack, about a fictionalised sub-editor on the Daily Mail. It might make entertaining reading!

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