Tag: Language

For a clear New Year: a musical style guide from the EU Commission.

If one of your New Year resolutions is to improve your writing style (are you reading this, clients? you know who you are) this musical

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.

Dot-dot-dot (2): when to type an ellipsis

My post on Tuesday (26 October) was about how to type an ellipsis; this one goes into a wee bit more detail about when you

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

Planked away

My mother, who’s 85, was discharged from hospital last week. Her local pharmacy makes up a weekly blister pack dividing out her medication for each

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