english

Honorific Evolution

Over on hellogiggles.com, Kit Steinkellner asks, Is It Time We Stopped Using The Word “Miss?” The use of honorifics is something that has long been …

Modern Emoticons in Legacy Punctuation

I like emoticons. That’s no secret. I think at least the basic ones add useful clarity to communication as well as a …

Heart outlines, one red one pink, intertwined

What to Call Unmarried Couples?

There was a recent article in the New York Times that asks the question: “What to call two people who act as if they are married but are not?” While some of the conventions of our society have changed, our language has been a little slow keeping up. Since I’m hardly shy about my willingness to try out new word usages (witness my never-ending push for a genderless pronoun class), I thought I’d have a bash.

Logical punctuation: Should we start placing commas outside quotation marks? (Slate)

Finally, people are starting to agree with me that the American convention doesn’t make sense. With the rise of self-publishing, maybe we …

My Vulgarity Conundrum

I love words. I love all words. They tie us to a common anchor of communication. And yet, some words are despised. Not because of anything intrinsic–they are just sequences of letters/sounds, after all–but because of societal taboos. It’s been an interesting personal adventure.

Grammar Myths – Let Bygone Rules Be Gone

Is it no wonder that I love playing in the fields of the English language? Grammar Myths.

Updating English (again)

Strict grammarians aside, I like to think that many people understand that English is a vibrant and adaptive language. We’ve entered into an amazing era of linguistic experimentation and adaptation. To that end, I’d like to once again throw in my 2¢ worth

Genderless Pronouns – Ey, Em, and Eir

English changes all the time. Our standard pronoun structure has served us well, but it does have weaknesses. It’s time that we fill the gap of not having a non-gendered pronoun. Whether in academic writing, or just because we want to be inclusively generic, ey/em/eir fit the bill easily.

Fixing the Education System

As with the weather, many people complain about the state of education but don’t really offer up suggestions for changing it. Here’s one proposal to overhaul the current system.

Trying To Make English Easier

Every generation finds English being tested by the young (and smart-asses, let’s be fair). It keeps the language vibrant. Plus, English does have bits that could deal with some tweaking. Though I’m no longer young (but I am the other thing), I’d be remiss in not mentioning some tweaks of my own.

A Pox on Collective Nouns

I have a major peeve with soccer announcers…not football/fútbol announcers, but soccer announcers (you know, the American kind). Almost every soccer match I watch is infected with a grammatical irritant that I’ve tried to scratch, but the itch persists. What bug is annoying me this time? The inappropriate application of verb agreement with collective nouns.

American Quotes

The single most annoying part for me of the American version of English is the stupid convention of placing punctuation inside quote …

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