Words to Good Effect

Top 100 Language Blogs 2010: we’ve been nominated!

We’ve been nominated as one of the Top 100 Language Blogs 2010 competition organised by LexioPhiles. As you can imagine, we’re well chuffed! Nominations are

…and the words the world just can’t abide

The British Council’s 75th anniversary poll of its students’ English language preferences also surveyed their least favoured words. The 10 most disliked English words were:

English words the world likes…

My last post was about words we don’t like. This one’s about words we do. To celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2009, the British Council

Words that set our teeth on edge

I had a Twitter conversation recently with Ashleigh Grange of Plush Text Communications and Janine Libbey of P & L Translations about words we dislike. Ashleigh’s language bugbear of

The UK’s sexiest accent? Parliamo Glasgow

In a survey by the Travelodge hotel group, 5000 Brits voted the Geordie accent (Newcastle and the north-east) the nation’s sexiest. They clearly don’t appreciate

Shake out your web site’s welcome mat

The best way to make your web site welcoming to visitors isn’t a big “Welcome” mat on the home page. The trick is to put

Cut printing costs: use Century Gothic

A test conducted by Printer.com compared ink consumption for different fonts. Century Gothic was found to use 30% less ink than Arial, used as a benchmark, and

Ouch! Stung by my own spelling bee

I knew this would happen – the minute I blog about spelling, I make a spelling mistake on Twitter. The tweet was about creative and

Spelling bees in my bonnet (1)

I work with language, so it goes without saying (I hope) that I care about spelling. That said, I don’t think texting heralds the death

Spelling “speling”

This morning’s “Call Kaye” programme on BBC Radio Scotland featured an interview with Richard Lawrence Wade, whose “Free Speling” campaign aims to help English “break