Category Archives: usage guide

Wanted: Usage Guide Writers (f)

Posted on May 31, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Our current strategy for deciding which usage guides to enter into our database of English usage guides and usage problems has been to identify different categories of usage guides and focus our efforts on acquiring the guides that fit into these categories. … Continue reading →

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Author Spotting

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Cynthia Lange

I would like to share my excitement about my most recent book purchase. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s related to the HUGE database of usage guides and usage problems – albeit tangentially. The book is Het Handboek Stijl, which is the current … Continue reading →

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Pulpitically?

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Ingrid Tieken

I’m currently analysing the entries in Five Hundred Mistakes of Daily Occurrence (1856), one of the earliest Americn usage guides (though not the earliest one, as I thought before), for a paper I’m giving on the topic at the 5th … Continue reading →

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Shampoos and Language Usage Reviews

Posted on May 6, 2013 by xhlo

This week, reading English Usage Book reviews, sociological issues to do with language communities, and a couple of blogs on Americanisms/Britishisms, I noticed two things: one is that, for the most part, commentators on the correct usage of English, despite … Continue reading →

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Which online sources on language use do you consult?

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Morana Lukač

In 1995, Deborah Cameron made an observation which was years ahead of its time: “[The Internet] is an ideal arena for swapping linguistic trivia and debating matters of usage”. By now it is more than obvious that Cameron was right; … Continue reading →

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Avoid saying ‘ketchup’

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Looking through usage guides makes me notice prescriptions that haven´t quite ‘taken’. Especially older usage guides can be an amusing source of these. These prescriptions, in addition to prescribing current usage, often also give a prediction for future usage. A while ago, … Continue reading →

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John E. Metcalfe?

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Ingrid Tieken

Who was John E. Metcalfe? He appears to have been the author of a usage guide, called The Right Way to Improve your English. The book is cited by Milroy and Milroy (1999), but (apart from a couple of references to … Continue reading →

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Baker and the apostrophe

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Beatriz Medina Sánchez

Baker’s Reflections (1770) includes, among others, rules on the proper usage of the apostrophe (XXV). According to his remarks, this punctuation mark ought to be avoided when the writer intends to indicate a plural and he also encourages the audience … Continue reading →

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Tape your ducks in a row!

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Robin Straaijer

Sometimes you’ll find interesting explanations about why specific usages are problematic. This one caught my eye recently. It’s from the entry for duct tape in Bryan Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage. Garner quotes a newspaper articles to explain why people … Continue reading →

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500 mistakes of daily occurrence

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

Today, I managed to get hold of a copy of the first edition of Walton Burgess’s Five Hundred Mistakes of Daily Occurrence in Speaking, Pronouncing, and Writing the English Language, Corrected, New York. It was published in 1856, and it is, … Continue reading →

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