I’m aware of the organic nature of living languages and their need to adapt. If I forget, a glimpse of Chaucer brings me up short. His poetry shows just how much a language can change in six centuries. The remarkable capacity of English to absorb fresh concepts and to express …
We take a lot for granted when we’re kids. Maybe most things. Growing up in Cape Breton in the 1970s and 1980s, enforced post-structuralist studies and a career of editorial skepticism still years away, I barely gave terminology a thought. Things had names. You might not always understand them (like …
Frank McKenna, a San Diego photographer, complains that all photos displayed on the web are described as stunning. “What’s going on here?” he asks. “When did every picture become stunning?” McKenna sees this as word inflation. I agree to a point. Certainly it’s almost insulting nowadays to simply say something …
First of all: If you can avoid using whom, you should. Any but the most formal texts are better off without it; it’s a foreign word for most users, as evidenced by the general inability of even many language professionals to use it quite correctly all the time. Sometimes, however, …
The vagaries of language can cause even the most experienced editors headaches. Editors as a group are more attuned to the whims and ways of language than the average speaker, but many strange and challenging usages regularly fly under the radar and pass into public text, despite our best efforts. …
It’s the time of year when heeding weather reports is a good idea: setting out with meagre insulation can be foolhardy. (News flash: “Hypothermia Blamed When Editor Vanishes.”) I glean data from all sources and sally forth properly kitted, but meteorological claptrap can be irritating. A local CBC station announces …
Here’s a quick quiz. Tell me which of the following are English and which aren’t. For each one, say why it is or isn’t English and, if it’s not, what language it is. There’s no place to plug your car in in the parkade. A wha dat dey dem people …
The English language is a very complex and powerful thing, capable of many nuances and quite resistant to simplistic attempts at tidying it up. Sadly, not everyone realizes that. Worse still, many people take very narrow and inconsistent views, focusing on pet peeves while letting parallel instances of usage pass …
My first job, selling sundries the summer I was 12 to the cottagers and campers who flocked to Cape Breton’s fabled Mira River, was about as far from the language business as you can get. Yet a few days in, I learned a humbling linguistic lesson. Three times the customer …
This is the first in our “Facts and Fiction” series of mini-book reviews. Each blog entry will briefly describe one non-fiction and one fiction title that might interest editors and other lovers of language. The Story of English By Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil and William Cran (third edition). Penguin, 2002. …