Tag Archives: HUGE

Usage guides… there’s no getting away from them!

Yesterday, I found this well-worn copy of Margaret Nicholson’s A Dictionary of American-English Usage (Signet 1958) in my local street library (see photo below) just around the corner of where I live. I realised that it has been just about … Continue reading

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And the winner is …

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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Onto doesn’t exist?

Last week, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade published a post on Simon Heffer’s discussion of into on this blog. In his discussion of into in Strictly English, Heffer mentions a closely related usage item, the use of on to versus onto, of which … Continue reading

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Practicing with the HUGE database

Last week we ran a workshop with a group of language professionals in which they explored the HUGE database with some practice searches. Those practice search questions are now also available on the database page so you can do the same. … Continue reading

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The HUGE database: data entry

We have just finished the last video about the compilation of the HUGE database. Watch it here on our YouTube channel.

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There is a new video about creating the HUGE database on our YouTube channel. Watch it here.

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We are on YouTube!

We have expanded our social media presence with a brand new Bridging the Unbridgeable YouTube channel! In the very first video we’ve uploaded Robin Straaijer gives a very short introduction to the project and the HUGE database. You can watch it below, … Continue reading

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Help us out: journal suggestions?

We are looking for scholarly secondary works dealing with prescriptivism/descriptivism with an emphasis on usage guides and usage problems for the HUGE-database. So far, we have looked at journals such as American Speech, English Studies, English Today, The English Journal … Continue reading

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The Alphabet of Errors: L, M & N

Have you told people a 1000 times not to use lie for lay? Are those people, after all your well-meant though prescriptive advice, still lost as to when to use the one and when the other? Do they forget your … Continue reading

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Art

I decided that the project Bridging the Unbridgeable needed some art to use on publicised materials, so I came up with the following image, using a Bananagrams game and my coffee table top for a background.My English-language Scrabble set led … Continue reading

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