He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. I abhor such fanatical phantasimes, such insociable and point-devise companions; such rackers of orthography Holofernes in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost (http://shakespeare.mit.edu/lll/lll.5.1.html) While neologisms such as…
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Making words mean what you want
‘[…] There’s glory for you!’ [Humpty Dumpty said.] ‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”’ Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’ ‘But “glory”…
Tagged with: commonly confused words, frequently confused words, meaning, semantics
Posted in Etymology, Grammar, Vocabulary
Posted in Etymology, Grammar, Vocabulary
‘I before E except after C’ – techniques for remembering tricky spellings
It may have the olde-worlde ring of a quaint but questionable proverb, and has indeed been much maligned in recent years, but there’s more truth to this well-known rule than initially meets the eye (or E). Here, we take a…
Tagged with: mnemonic, mnemonics, spelling rule, spelling rules, spelling tips, tips
Posted in Spelling, Vocabulary
Posted in Spelling, Vocabulary
The word ‘Brexit’ is factually incorrect
This is more of a geographical than lexical post, but relates to a mistake that is made by writers, journalists, politicians and myriad others on a daily basis: ‘UK’, ‘Britain’ and ‘the British Isles’ are not interchangeable. In the wake…
Tagged with: Brexit, Britain, British Isles, England, etymology, geography, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, political, region, Scotland, UK, United Kingdom, Wales
Posted in Etymology, Geography, Proofreading/copy-editing, Vocabulary
Posted in Etymology, Geography, Proofreading/copy-editing, Vocabulary
Literally redefining the English language
English is one of the most dynamic and adaptable languages in the world. While near neighbours such as France have committees in place to approve new and changing facets of their language, English is effectively “open source”; it is possibly…
Tagged with: definition, dictionary, English, figuratively, language, literally, usage
Posted in Proofreading/copy-editing, Vocabulary
Posted in Proofreading/copy-editing, Vocabulary