The Disappearing Semicolon; Has English Education Failed Us?
The media, both legacy and online, continue to herald the death of the semicolon. Perhaps this is meant merely as a distraction from the events unfolding in world politics, particularly…
Grammar
Musings on Grammar, Usage and Garner’s
Be honest with me: how serious are you about the serial comma? Do you wade into discussions on language forums and social media brandishing citations from your favourite authorities? Do…
English as She is Spoke
One of the more delightful books in my personal library is a reprint of the 1883 American edition of English as She Is Spoke, described by Wikipedia as, …intended as…
Writers and reading
This post is about, and for writers, for reporters and editors, for book authors and editors, magazine editors, feature writers, layout artists, copy editors and anyone who either fancies themselves…
Fowler for the 21st Century
On the desk of every writer, every reporter, every editor, every PR director and every communications officer is a small library of reference books. A good dictionary (Oxford, American Heritage,…
Type Crimes and Taxes
Type crime is the term author Ellen Lupton uses in her book, Thinking With Type, to describe egregiously bad typography. That description came to mind as I perused the latest…
The Secret to Good Writing
Spoiler alert: the secret to writing well is…. (insert drum roll)... writing. Writing a lot. Every day. Every possible minute you can spare. Writing and writing more and then writing…
Grammatical Hell in a Handbasket
The Washington Post has started the apocalypse. Yes, they have. And the whole world is about to go to hell in the proverbial handbasket because of it. The maw of…
A Sense of Pinker’s Style
I share one of Steven Pinker’s passions: I like to read style books, grammar books, language books. To me, they’re like literary chemistry sets. When I was young, getting a…
Another Archy Poem
Most of Don Marquis’ Archy pieces were written in lowercase. The literate cockroach, we learned, would stand on the typewriter and dive, head first, onto the keys. But this way,…
Me, Myself and I Redux
At Collingwood Council meetings, you will always hear someone say “Moved by myself…” when presenting a motion at the table.* Argh! Where did these people go to school? Clearly our…
Me, Myself and I
At council meetings across the province, you will hear someone say “Moved by myself…” when presenting a motion at the table. To me it’s like nails on a blackboard. The…
Feetish or Fettish?
I was surprised to recently read in David Crystal’s book, The Story of English in 100 Words, that fetish – which I pronounce “feh-tesh” – was once pronounced “feetish.” In…
Words, words, words
Writing before the arrival of the internet*, Bob Blackburn commented on the nature of exchange on then-prevalent BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), words that could as easily be written today about…
The nit-pickers always can find something
In high school we parodied For Whom the Bell Tolls relentlessly: “Que va, what a cafeteria lunch that is.” “Truly, it is a cafeteria lunch.” “That is a cafeteria lunch…
Kill the Apostrophe? Rubbish! Keep it!
A site has popped up with one of the stupidest ideas about English I’ve read in the past decade or two. It’s called Kill the Apostrophe. Subtle. At first, I…
Mr. Grinch
There is an unwritten, often unmentioned social contract that takes place when you do what you think is something selfless. We like to think that we are altruistic. That is,…
How NOT to use a semicolon: a short musical interludeum
Great stuff! Alltop finds the word “colon” highly irregular and funny. HT to tejassssssssss’s tumblr for this one, originally on .
To Be or Not To Be
What Shakespeare was talking about in the famous soliloquy from “Hamlet” was not all about whether it’s better to end your life or to continue to endure pain and heartbreak.…
Full Stop
The Nipper is learning punctuation. They were studying periods, exclamation points, and question marks in class. He told us they have hand signals for each one (they clap for an…