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Language and words in the news – 7th March, 2014
Posted by Kerstin Johnson on March 07, 2014
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular.Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include, or just add a comment to the post, with the link(s) you’d like to share.
Books, science, dictionaries, words and language
Helvetica: one font to rule them all
For the past 50 years Helvetica has dominated design. But, now its pioneer Mike Parker has passed away, is the era of this sleek, modernist typeface drawing to a close?32 Books That Will Actually Change Your Life
Believe it or not, a book about zombies can change your life. That’s because it’s not just about eating brains, it looks at cultural divides, politics, war, and conflicts that seem petty once the fate of the world is at stake.13 Words You Probably Didn’t Know Were Coined By Authors
English has had its fair share of literary giants over the years who, from Chaucer and Milton to Dickens and even Dr. Seuss, have each contributed words to our language.23 Sentence Diagrams That Show The Brilliance Of Famous Novels’ Opening Lines
In their magna opera, famous authors have written some of the most beautiful and well-known lines in literature. Elements like word order, vocabulary, and grammatical construction give these sentences their power. To demonstrate this, Pop Chat Lab diagrammed some famous novels’ first lines.Language teaching and resources
Grammar exercise books: how debate is dressed up as certainty
The great thing about worksheets is the apparent certainty of what is being ‘taught’. There are only right and wrong answers. This becomes amusing when you come across a category or term that you know is contested by people who know something about the subject.British and American English
“Worrying”
I have the impression that concerning and worrying are on the rise as adjectives. To my mind, the conventionally “correct” alternative to both would be either troubling or worrisome.National Grammar Day (US)
March Madness
Wow. Very poem.
Amaze syllabifying.
Because grammardayA Plea for Sanity this National (US) Grammar Day
Remember, this National Grammar Day, that there are people all around you with varying degrees of knowledge of and appreciation for the intricacies of English. Instead of calling people out on March 4th for all the usages they get wrong, how about pointing out all the thing things that people–against all odds–get right?ACES 2014 National Grammar Day Tweeted Haiku Contest entries
GrammarDay haikus
must follow the rules, or else—
“too long, didn’t read.”Map
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Recent Comments
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Posted by Bronwyn Carlisle to Just who is this post for? The difference between "who" and "whom" on March 07, 2014 The Scots seems to use "whom" quite easily. I always have to think about it, and mostly don't use it speaking, but I have often wondered why it is that it is so intuitive to identify object and subject when I'm talking about I/me, we/they, or him/he, but not with who/whom.
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Posted by Marcus Howling to Business tips & techniques: personality types on March 06, 2014 This is a great blog post I really think you gave great insight and will reach a lot of people. If anyone is interested in taking a test like this you should try this one I found. I know there is a cost but it was really affective and I learned a lot about myself and the types of careers that may be best suited for me. Take a look. Thanks again and I hope you...
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Posted by Jonathon Owen to Grammar and Grammar on March 06, 2014 Thanks, Stan. And the fact that linguists' definition isn't widely known causes a lot of problems. It was clear that a lot of people responding on Twitter to my blog post about teaching grammar were thinking more of mechanics and usage than parts of speech and sentence structure. If people aren't clear on what grammar is, then discussions about whether or not it should be taught won't get very far. Thanks, Kerry. :)
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Posted by Kerry to Grammar and Grammar on March 06, 2014 "Language is the ultimate democracy, and everyone gets a vote." Spot on and totally fabulous - I think this may well turn out to be my quote of the year ....
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Posted by Stan to Grammar and Grammar on March 06, 2014 I'm with you on this, Jonathon: I prefer to restrict grammar to its narrower sense(s) than to use it as a catch-all term for anything variable or regulable in usage. But I can see the use and appeal of having such a broad (and familiar) name. There was a related debate on my own blog some years ago, and one commenter suggested that my feelings about this were an example of 'nerdview', which was a fair...
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Language tip of the week: ask
In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc. This week’s language tip helps with the verb ask: The verb ask is never used with the preposition to. It […]
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Grammar and Grammar
Today’s guest post comes from Jonathon Owen, an editor and book designer with a background in linguistics. Jonathon blogs about language at Arrant Pedantry, and his work on grammar and usage appears in Copyediting newsletter and on Visual Thesaurus and Huffington Post. _____________________ A few months ago, in a post titled “12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes about […]
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Life skills tip of the week: ways of suggesting something
Learning about pragmatics and how to express yourself successfully is a useful life skill, said Michael Rundell in January when he introduced the new pragmatics series on Macmillan Dictionary. The series is part of the Macmillan Life Skills campaign, offering free resources for English language students and teachers each month. As part of the series, we’ll bring more useful content and […]
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The ‘emphatic’ use of quotation marks
Quotation marks, also known as inverted commas, are normally used for quotation, as their American name suggests, or to mark a title (book, film, etc), or to enclose a foreign, technical, or otherwise potentially unfamiliar word. Standard use of these marks encompasses variation: they can be single or double, and may be punctuated differently around […]
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Language and words in the news – 28th February, 2014
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link […]
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Language tip of the week: money
In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc. This week’s language tip helps with other ways of saying money: cash coins or notes that can be […]
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Crawling the Web for new words
Today’s guest post, from Daphné Kerremans of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, is another in our occasional series on developments in language technology (and how they help us produce better dictionaries). Daphné is a linguist interested in the socio-cognitive mechanisms of language processes, specifically regarding the adoption of linguistic innovations by individuals and the speech community at large. She […]
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Life skills tip of the week: ways of expressing uncertainty
As part of our pragmatics series, we bring more useful content and tips from the Macmillan Dictionary on expressing yourself. The previous language tip looked at ways of saying ‘I don’t know‘. This week’s tip gives some ways of saying you think you know something but are not completely sure: perhaps/maybe: used for saying that […]
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Word roots and routes: tract
Next in a series of posts exploring some of the ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ of English vocabulary. In my school maths lessons, one of the weapons I had in grappling with intractable geometrical puzzles was a plastic semicircle called a protractor. I was unaware, then, of the similarity to the much more familiar word tractor. Still less did […]
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Language and words in the news – 22nd February, 2014
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link […]
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Teaching pragmatics
Are you interested in teaching pragmatics in class? Macmillan Dictionary has launched the first of a series of lesson plans by author Jonathan Marks, dealing with different ways of expressing a meaning or attitude. In the first lesson, learners develop their awareness and understanding of expressions meaning ‘I don’t know’ and practise using these expressions. […]
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Language tip of the week: few
In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc. This week’s language tip helps with the determiner few: Don’t use a singular noun or an uncountable noun after few. […]
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