Author Archive
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on June 08, 2010
The Times recently carried a report on the Academy of English, an organization set up by the Queen’s English Society to “protect the language from impurities, bastardisations and the horrors introduced by the text-speak generation.”
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Anyone who’s now cowering behind the sofa in fear and trembling of these text-speak horrors can safely come out and calm [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on December 29, 2009
If you’re a cryptic crossword devotee, try this one: “Sheds light in elbow attachment”. Answer later …
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Instead of crosswords, some people reach for the Scrabble board at Christmas and gather the family round for hours of festive wordplay.
Although most of us see Scrabble as a harmless way to pass an hour or two, others take [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on December 09, 2009
Well, it’s over. The Plain English Campaign 2009 awards were announced yesterday, and one of the winners was Lord Mandelson. Having left the cabinet twice in less than ideal circumstances, Mandelson is back in a position of some authority, and is seen as the government’s Great Communicator. But this observation, referring to the MPs’ expenses [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on December 07, 2009
“Perhaps I could say, by way of introduction, welcome to our stakeholders. We look forward to our engagement, as we roll out our dialogue on a level playing field, so that, going forward in the public domain, we have a win-win step change that is fit for purpose across the piece.”
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That was Dr Tony Wright, [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on November 24, 2009
When you’re looking for a word that you’ve heard, or only half-remember having ever seen, it can be tricky using a paper dictionary. You might look up shedule, not realising that there’s a C involved; or if you want to make a clamour you might look for a claxon (though what you really need is [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on November 10, 2009
There are a number of words in English which end with the consonant m followed by the consonant n. Words like hymn, condemn, solemn. We don’t pronounce the n so the words are pronounced /hɪm/, /kənˈdem/, and /ˈsɒləm/. When they form derived words, such as hymnal, condemnation, or solemnity, then the letter n becomes pronounced: [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on October 22, 2009
There’s an old chestnut about the pronunciation of the word GHOTI. It’s pronounced, obviously enough, /fɪʃ/. The GH is /f/ as in cough; the O is /ɪ/ as in women; and the TI is /ʃ/ as in motion.
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Not true, of course (it’s a made up word and you can read about it on Wikipedia, but [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on September 08, 2009
One of the leading UK newspapers is always referred to in the satirical magazine Private Eye as the Grauniad. This is a humorous reference to the supposedly high number of typographical errors that used to be found in the Guardian.
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Typographical errors have more than one category. There are miskeyings, such as form instead of from, [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on June 10, 2009
An outfit in Austin, Texas called the Global Language Monitor has announced that the English language has one million words. Well, it has had, they say, since 10:22 a.m. Stratford-on-Avon time on June 10th. (Actually, the town is called Stratford-upon-Avon, but let’s not quibble. And also, the countdown clock on their website counted down to [...]
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Posted by Stephen Bullon on April 15, 2009
If you’re like me, you’ll have spent many years labouring under the misapprehension that Jimi Hendrix sang ’Scuse me while I kiss this guy in his 1967 hit, Purple Haze. But in fact he didn’t – what he actually sang was ’Scuse me while I kiss the sky. There’s a word for this sort of [...]
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