Philip Pullman thinks this coin needs another comma. What do you think?
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Philip Pullman’s call for a boycott against the new 50p coin is just the latest Oxford comma controvery.
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‘Greengrocer’s’ may be in mourning, but the rest of us can sigh with relief.
Stark naked? Not quite…
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Pedants should reach for their red pens now.
Use it at your peril.
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The word ‘like’ has a grammar, and by looking at it, we can learn a lot about what ‘like’ means and what it contributes to someone’s speech.
Graphics: Emil Jeyaratnam/The Conversation; Photos: Mohammed Saber/EPA
When reporting violence, grammar matters: the use of voice is key to apportioning blame and, importantly, an accurate depiction of what has taken place.
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Organisational twaddle is everywhere. It’s time to climb the ‘strategic staircase’ and incentivise our corporate leaders to abandon it.
We use different grammar when speaking or writing, but the difference is so subtle that linguists were blind to it for centuries.
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Spoken language evolves differently and faster than written language, and there are good reasons why this is the case.
Software tools can take multiple languages to entirely new spaces.
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Software tools for South Africa’s Nguni languages may assist with redress and effective communication.
The language that you speak may affect your approach to climate change.
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Research suggests that speakers of “present-tensed” languages such as German and Finnish - in which the future can be describe in the present tense - are more likely to support stronger climate policies.
‘I want to be effluent’: malapropisms and mispronounced words were a regular gag in the TV comedy Kath and Kim and continue to peeve many people today.
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Do you wince at a mispronounced ‘Moet’? Do you cringe at unintentional portmanteau words, like ‘misunderestimated’ or ‘insinuendo’? You are not alone.
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Evolutionary biologists ask very similar questions about species to those asked by linguists about languages.
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New research gives weight to Noam Chomsky’s idea of a universal language ability.
Trust me, I’m not the one to ask.
EPA/Michael Reynolds
In a language as idiosyncratic as English, linguistic pedantry is futile and misguided.
It’s really ok to be a grammar pedant.
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Grammar pedantry recently contributed to the downfall of World Bank chief economist Paul Romer. But ‘grammonds’ are people to be celebrated not vilified.
Sign outside the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin.
William Murphy
The ‘rules of grammar’ aren’t set in stone, so correcting other people is pointless and demeaning.
The most expensive punctuation in the world…
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A badly written law cost a US company US$10 million, when a judge ruled that a comma missing from a statute meant 75 truck drivers were owed four years of unpaid overtime wages.
The prescriptivist stranglehold on grammar isn’t just restrictive, it’s often just plain wrong.
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Were your teachers right about when to use commas, and about not starting sentences with ‘and’?
New linguistic studies show the ratio of “he” to “she” in Australian news reporting is 3.4 to 1.
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A new database that shows the use of gendered words in major Australian newspapers tells us much about whose voices are being heard.
When did past simple tense become passé, I ask myself.
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Writers, over the last decade, have been waxing lyrical about the rise of the present tense in English fiction. But this morning I read something entirely new – for me, at least. I read a manuscript written…
…and Red Little Riding Hood.
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The use of adjectives in English has caused an internet storm – here are the ‘rules’ explained.