Category: English

Carobs are a girl’s best friend

You know you’ve got problems when you’re flicking through a jewellery catalogue and your eye homes in on the etymology tidbits rather than the diamonds.

A translation sin of omission

I wrote a couple of posts, back in August, about the Oxford comma (Oxford commas (1), The Oxford Comma dilemma: a solution? and Oxford commas

And sometimes words are just soooo interesting!

I’ve just been reading Khoi Vinh’s marvellous blog, Subtraction. In his post on “Ways I’m a Dork: Travel Edition” he describes the Grid-It Organizer from

Words

This lovely video, produced by Everynone for Radiolab, has been doing the rounds on Twitter, so you may already have seen it. It bears repeat

Commas: fascinating facts (and a Stop Press)

Fascinating comma fact 1 A comma is not just a punctuation mark, it’s also a type of butterfly, so-named because of the white comma-shaped marking

The Oxford Comma dilemma: a solution?

To those of you still fretting over the Oxford Comma dilemma (and who don’t read the Comments – tsk, tsk!), the “august journal” Speculative Grammarian offers

Oxford commas (2): Live dangerously – take our poll!

Do you use the Oxford (serial) comma? Here’s a sentence with the Oxford comma: My favourite foods are Greek yoghurt, salted almonds, cheese, and dark

Oxford commas (1)

I was puzzled last week to see references on Twitter to the exotic-sounding “Oxford comma”, a new term to me. It turns out (thank you,

If the shoe doesn’t fit (2): eggcorns and etymology

“Shoe-in”, Ben Zimmer points out, belongs to a special family of errors called “eggcorns”: misspellings, mis-hearings or misinterpretations of standard (often idiomatic) words or sayings.

If the shoe doesn’t fit: getting the etymology right

Ben Zimmer’s latest On Language column in the New York Times (Beach-Blanket Lingo, 5 August 2010) examines the terms used by coastal resort residents (from-heres)