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Category Archives: usage guide
Sexy usage advice
Comma Sutra proved my husband’s favourite St Nicholas present this year. Good for me, because I was the one who bought it for him. The reason I did is that it neatly combines our respective research interests – mine in usage … Continue reading
Hoary witticisms and other prescriptivist jokes
In going through our usage guides, we occasionally come across linguistic jokes – not terribly funny, admittedly, but they apparently appeal to writers on usage. And they have done so from the earliest days of the usage guide tradition onwards, … Continue reading
Posted in usage guide
Tagged flat adverbs, Vizetelly, Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
1 Comment
Taggart vs. Pinker: and the winner is …
I’d really like to be able to find out how well “our” usage guides, those in the HUGE database that is, have been selling over the years. This is confidential information, I was recently told by the firm handling the estate of … Continue reading
Early usage guide writer a talkshow host
Hardly any news if the information can be readily found on the Internet, but for me it was: Bergen Evans (1904-1978), the author of A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage (1957) together with his sister Cornelia , hosted a talkshow on language. I … Continue reading
Who is Kay Sayce? Who is Ann Batko?
I’m trying to find out who Kay Sayce is. I know she (he?) is the author of a usage guide called What not to write: A guide to the dos and dont’s of good English (2006). The book is included … Continue reading
Bryson in Hungary and China
WorldCat is a wonderful resource for our kind of work (though not always entirely reliable …). I looked up Bryson’s Troublesome Words (1984), one of “our” usage guides, to find out how popular the book was. I was trying to follow … Continue reading
Jack Lynch on (correct) usage
Reading Jack Lynch’s The Lexicographer’s Dilemma (2009), I (re)discovered his usage guide, called The English Language: A User’s Guide, originally published in 2008. I then also found his very useful alphabetically arranged website (called Guide to Grammar and Style), filled with usage advice: … Continue reading
How many English usage guides are there?
This is an important question in the context of this project, but it will be one that I have come to decide is impossible to answer. Unfortunately, and (perhaps, for some) frustratingly so. One important tool (or so I thought originally) … Continue reading
Question for Bryan Garner
Bryan Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage contains a lengthy list of works dealing with English usage, studies as well as usage guides. Very useful for our project! There is one item which I can’t quite classify offhand as belonging to either … Continue reading
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