Category Archives: usage features

I’m good, I’m fine

Posted on May 27, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

About a year ago, Morana and I posted a survey on this blog to try and collect data about attitudes to the flat adverb. We wanted to use the data for a paper we were writing at the time. But … Continue reading →

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Whether or not?

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

My colleague Ton van der Wouden would like to know if whether or not  is a usage problem – or not. He noticed an enormous increase in usage (Google Books) over the last eighty years or so. As far as I … Continue reading →

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Seeing usage problems around every corner!

Posted on May 20, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Bram Steijn‘s second blog post for the MA course Testing Prescriptivism:  I was sitting in the train, checking my Facebook messages, when I stumbled upon the following mistake in someone’s profile text: “living life at full”. The person … Continue reading →

Posted in MA Leiden, usage features | 3 Comments

And the winner is …

Posted on May 19, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

This morning, I’ve been going through the HUGE database to find out which of the 123 usage problems was treated most by the usage guides (77 in all). Does anyone want to make a guess?    

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We’re/were: huh?

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Recently, one of my English Facebook friends wrote that she and her family had just survived a very cold May Bank Holiday weekend camping with snow on the hills. “We’re you in a caravan?” one of her friends asked. We’re … Continue reading →

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9 December: Save The Date!

Posted on May 11, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

On 9 December 2016, the Bridging the Unbridgeable project will organise a usage guides symposium at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. Speakers will include Rebecca Gowers (author of the revised edition of Plain Words and of the recently published Horrible Words), … Continue reading →

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The Comma Queen is back

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Carmen Ebner

Mary Norris, copy-editor and author of the usage guide Between you & me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, shares her knowledge on language use in a series of videos on The New Yorker.   Now in season two, the Comma Queen … Continue reading →

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Stephen Fry telling off his guests

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

Here is Joachim van Gelder’s first “Testing Prescriptivism” blogpost: Stephen Fry has hosted – with generous helpings of his usual charm and panache – the annual British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards ceremony for the past 11 … Continue reading →

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Commonest. Common or not?

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Ingrid Tieken

And here is Madeleine Ibes’s first blog post: Whilst doing my weekly reading for the course Testing Prescriptivism, I stumbled across a term I had never heard before. The book I was reading was a study done by Mittins et al., … Continue reading →

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Introvert pedants?

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Carmen Ebner

Robin Queen and Julie Boland, both from the University of Michigan, recently conducted a study on attitudes towards spelling variation, which has now been picked up by The Guardian. What they call “typos” and “grammos” are errors everyone has come across when using the internet … Continue reading →

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