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Wasted Words: How Language Sometimes Evolves

Tuesday July 7, 2015

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 new ideas and technology enables […]

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Dwain Richardson

English Editing in Quebec: Mind Your Noun Strings, Please!

Tuesday September 15, 2015

If you regularly work with French copy, you know that French emphasizes nouns more than English does. This results in our Gallic official language constantly using noun strings — that is, strings containing several nouns in a row. They will often take the form [noun] + of + (the) + [noun]: la gestion de la […]

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Dwain Richardson English Editing in Quebec French to English noun strings translation

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James Harbeck

Wherefore Pleaseth Archaic English?

Tuesday January 5, 2016

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Are these not beautiful […]

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archaic English James Harbeck KJV Bible language change Linguistics Frankly Shakespeare

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Victoria Neufeldt

What Do Words Really Mean?

Tuesday February 2, 2016

How discombobulating words can be! You feel certain about what a word means, but then are challenged by another person’s interpretation. Sometimes the discussion, or even argument, is rooted in changing social situations. For example, what does poverty mean? What did it mean 200 years ago? A dispute about words may also be philosophical: there […]

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definitions language change Victoria Neufeldt word meanings word usages

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: The Origins of Texting

Tuesday February 9, 2016

Is digital discourse destroying the English language along with civilization? Does texting portend doom? Let’s not be so hasty: I often read letters from the past — for example, the 19th-century correspondence of Bertrand Russell’s family.1 These aristocrats (Russell’s grandfather was twice the British prime minister) habitually took shortcuts in their numerous epistles, presumably to […]

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language change texting Wasted Words Wilf Popoff

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: Respectable Stoners

Tuesday February 21, 2017

Legalizing marijuana makes it acceptable, but will it make it respectable? Jumping that second hurdle will be difficult, requiring us to forsake the vast vocabulary it has spawned. I don’t see that happening right away. While I cringe at seeing chief justices, bishops and other bigwigs described as stoners or potheads, if they come out […]

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connotation of words nomenclature slang usage Wasted Words Wilf Popoff

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Administrators

Reminder: New Post on the Editors’ Weekly

Thursday March 9, 2017

Due to technical issues, you may not have received your usual email notification this week about the latest post on the blog. “Canada is a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages from around the world. As the number of residents whose native language isn’t English increases, the need for editors who can edit their writing effectively […]

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James Harbeck

Currying Favour With Your Readers

Tuesday August 8, 2017

Editing and writing have a lot in common with cooking. For one thing, people come to a text, as to a restaurant, with certain expectations and ideals, and you should satisfy them. You don’t have to give them something completely predictable — especially if you’re in a line more artistic than industrial — but you do want […]

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breaking grammar rules context cookbooks editing for the situation James Harbeck Linguistics Frankly standards style

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Wilf Popoff

Wasted Words: A Paean to Poetry

Tuesday August 14, 2018

Good poetry, I believe, projects the essence of culture. It conveys profound concepts and articulates observations while captivating the listener with its beauty and power. It does this with a matchless performance of words that blend language with wisdom. The listener is both enlightened and entertained. Bad poetry, on the other hand, has little effect […]

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culture free verse music lyrics poetry prose Wasted Words Wilf Popoff

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James Harbeck

Yeet Citationality: Yippie-ki-yay!

Tuesday January 15, 2019

The voting is in, and the American Dialect Society’s Slang Word of the Year is… yeet. Yeet is not so well known to oldsters, but it is in vogue among the youth. Its popularity demonstrates a central fact of how vocabulary spreads. It also leads us to Bugs Bunny, Clark Gable and Judith Butler. People […]

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citationality communication James Harbeck language Linguistics Frankly popular culture slang verbing vocabulary