Words to Good Effect

The Caledonian Mercury: “Scotland’s first truly online newspaper”. Plus, Useful Scots Words.

I’ve just discovered a “new” Scottish online newspaper that’s been around for nearly 3 years but which I hadn’t heard of until yesterday. It’s the

Empty-nest syndrome – a linguistic side-effect

I became an “empty-nester” when my daughter moved away in September to attend Leeds College of Music. Harry, our son, had left two years earlier. So

Nouning and verbing: an ask too far?

It’s been a while since I wrote about my (and your) favourite or least favourite words. But at Glasgow’s State of the City Economy Conference last week (9

Creative printing

This is great fun. For anyone who’s got old printer/fax/scanner hardware kicking around. All you need is a bit of creativity. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/52635278 w=500&h=281] Brother

Glasgow’s times present: international ambitions, but we won’t speak your language

I attended Glasgow’s 15th State of the City Economy Conference today. There was a lot of talk about the importance of global marketing, exports, tourism,

Glasgow’s times past

Looking for “doon the watter” links for my “Coping with Sandy” post, I discovered an amazing blog for anyone living in, from or interested in

Coping with Sandy: Hunkering and coorie-ing

Merriam-Webster’s “Trend Watch” reported a spike in lookups of the word “hunker” in the run-up to Hurricane (Superstorm?) Sandy. They give this CNN headline as

Ministry of Justice language services: FUBAR?

Interpreters in the UK have been up in arms over the Ministry of Justice’s 2011 language services framework agreement with a company formerly called Applied

A social networking rant. Tell us who you are, people!

Why do some business people go to such great lengths, on social networking sites, to avoid telling people who they are and what they do?

Translator training: Wordfast in London (8 and 9 November 2012)

Translators, have you got your training schedule worked out for autumn 2012? If not, you might like to consider the Wordfast workshops being held in