Minding other people’s language. A lot.
A railway tannoy announces: ‘We kindly ask you to place your litter in the bins provided.’ It is indeed kind of them to ask. Or is it? Is that really what they mean? Sounds a bit odd, when you think about it. Wouldn’t it be us, the customers, who would be acting kindly by granting […]
The standard rule on pronouns that end in -self or -selves, set out in grammar books from Lowth (1762) to Whitney (1885) to Jespersen (1933) to Quirk (1985) to Garner (2022), is that they are for reflexive use, when subject and object are the same: ‘they entertained themselves’, ‘you could buy it for yourself’ and […]
Here are two written versions of the same spoken utterance: The first version corresponds with the conventions of standard (if informal) written English: a syntactically complete question, with a question mark, and then a follow-up question presented as a sentence fragment (where ‘Are you’ is implicit), again with its own question mark. But the second […]
Kenneth Williams would have been 100 yesterday, so I found myself thinking about one of the finest puns in cinematic history: his line in Carry On Cleo, ‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’ An odd expression, though. What is ‘it’? And what is it ‘in’? To the OED! The phrase ‘have it […]
Among the many dazzling quotes that have been circulating since Tom Stoppard’s death, this one caught my eye. It’s from his 1982 play The Real Thing, spoken by the character Henry, a playwright, who may or may not represent some of Stoppard’s own attitudes (I don’t know the play). Criticising another character, Henry says: He’s […]
This was posted on social media today by the BBC Newsnight account: Kay Burley says Kemi Badenoch’s performance at party conference has sured up her position as leader for the time being. But should it be sured up or shored up? Short answer: it should be shored up. Sured up is a confusion of two […]
(With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan) I am the largest language model anyone could ever needI’m trained on hefty datasets that no one sane would ever readI’ll answer any question with great eloquence and attitudeAs long as you indulge me with a little factual latitude To find you information I will delve and then elucidateAnd […]
I was listening to some of the statements made by Winston Churchill on VE Day in 1945, and this short passage, delivered from the Ministry of Health building in London, drew the attention of my inner grammar nerd (who, to be frank, is not really all that inner): Everyone, man or woman, has done their […]
Twice in the last week I’ve been struck by people citing supposed rules of English usage that differ from my own understanding. These two cases illustrate the way that many of us associate correctness in language with fitting a particular logical pattern. But making sense doesn’t always make sense – a lesson I’m still slowly […]
Cenotaph attendee Liz Truss has today instructed her lawyers to send Keir Starmer a cease-and-desist letter. The gist is that he must stop saying that she “crashed the economy”, a scurrilous falsehood that has damaged her previously successful career. The political effects of this foolishness are predictable, and legally it’s “about as weak a letter […]