Category Archives: usage features

On REsearch again

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Ingrid Tieken

January is a month of correction work in our department: I calculated that I corrected some 200,000 words (!) of student work last month. (I only got likes when I announced this on facebook in the beginning of January.) I’m … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

How to Better Write Letters

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Ingrid Tieken

This is a copy of a book I accidentally found in the Leiden Free Bookshop the other day. It reminded me of eighteenth-century letter writing manuals, so I picked it up. And very much like Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style, its final … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The future of English

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Morana Lukač

At the turn of the calendar year, we are usually making (soon-to-be-broken) resolutions and speculating about the future. It comes as no surprise that linguists have been exchanging their views on the future of English in the previous weeks, John … Continue reading →

Posted in news, usage features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

How careful can you be …

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Ingrid Tieken

I’m going through the final chapter of Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style (2014) to find out how many old chestnuts he discusses in his overview of usage problems. I’m always hoping to find new chestnuts, so we’ll wait and see. Of … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features, usage guide | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Fix Your Grammar

Posted on January 9, 2015 by Carmen Ebner

If you are in a grammar or usage dilemma and looking for a clarification, you can find a huge number of useful and informative websites on grammar and usage advice online. Sometimes you come across advice presented in a somewhat … Continue reading →

Posted in cartoons, usage features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Season’s Greetings and other seasonal pitfalls

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Carmen Ebner

Christmas is getting closer and the preparations for the festive season are well under way. If you think that pedants and sticklers will grant you some sort of Christmas amnesty, you are most probably wrong. For  them the Christmas season … Continue reading →

Posted in polls and surveys, usage features | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Railway station or train station?

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Morana Lukač

One of the pet peeves of the British English-speaking language pedants has traditionally been the usage of Americanisms, which we have written and surveyed our readers about in our previous posts. In my research of the complaints about language use, … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

An 18th-century Garner?

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Ingrid Tieken

Within this project, we take Robert Baker’s Reflections on the English Language (1770) to be the first English usage guide. But was it? In the introduction to the Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage (1989: 8a) we are able to read … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features, usage guide | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

A lost cause?

Posted on September 19, 2014 by Carmen Ebner

Yesterday Scotland has voted and decided to stay within the United Kingdom. Today newspapers are filled with punchy and informative headlines analysing the outcome of the Scottish referendum. When I was reading an article in The Independent, my eyes fell immediately … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The language of The Catcher in the Rye

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Ingrid Tieken

We are moving house this summer, and while packing up the books in my study I came across an article I wrote nearly thirty years ago but that I had completely forgotten about. It is about usage problems and their function in … Continue reading →

Posted in usage features | Tagged , , | Leave a comment