Category Archives: usage features

Discourse marker like and the joys of serendipity

Posted on June 16, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

Discourse marker like is finding its way into usage guides, as Viktorija Kostadinova shows in her work. None of the usage guides in the HUGE database, all published before 2010, has an entry on like.  But some writers do discuss it, even … Continue reading →

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Just out (surprise)

Posted on May 19, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

Today, we found out that our article “Prescriptive attitudes to English” is published, that it has been out for two months already. Thanks, Carmen, for tweeting about it, or I wouldn’t have known. Still, I’m really pleased, and expect Carmen … Continue reading →

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Grammar Badgers

Posted on May 11, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

A few weeks ago, I gave a guest lecture through Skype for students at the University of Wisconsin. Interesting experience, and fantastic students they were. Their teacher, Anja Wanner, told me they were busy preparing an outreach project (obligatory at … Continue reading →

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Microsoft Word, or: what is wrong with prescriptivism?

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

I’m reading through Carmen Ebner’s PhD thesis one more time (defense coming up soon!), and it strikes me in my own writings, too, every time – the red squiggles under prescriptivism, as in the header to this post. It makes … Continue reading →

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TIME Magazine – a style guide?

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Ingrid Tieken

I’d like to know if TIME Magazine employs a style guide. The answer is of course “yes”, but do they have style guide of their own? And is it publicly available? In particular, I’d like to be able to see … Continue reading →

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A/an homage?

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

“A homage to P.G. Wodehouse” is the subtitle of Sebastian Faulks‘s novel Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (2013). I picked up the book in our local library because, inspired by my colleague’s earlier query about a peculiarity in Wodehouse’s language, I went … Continue reading →

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The “new” like and non-native speakers of English

Posted on August 17, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Earlier this summer, Susan de Smit finished her BA thesis in English here at Leiden on the use of “the new like” by native as well as non-native speakers of English. If you are interested in the results of her … Continue reading →

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“Use the active voice” – full stop

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is one example of the effect which following up on Strunk and White’s linguistic advice may have (see last week’s blog post on this): He spent a considerable portion of 1802 in Nellore collecting manuscripts, interviewing local Brahmins whom … Continue reading →

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Frank Sinatra and prescriptivism

Posted on July 12, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

This summer, driving through France, one of the CDs we played was “The best of Frank Sinatra”. Singing along with his very popular “That’s Life” (1966), my attention was suddenly caught by his use of laying for lying: “Each time I find myself … Continue reading →

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Forever dangling? The unstoppable dangling participle under scrutiny

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Ina Huttenga’s second blog post: The dangling participle is a pervasive structure in the English language. These “misrelated” modifiers have been used throughout English language history, but they seem to have become problems only recently, in the 20th … Continue reading →

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