As linked to by waidesworld, Wikipedia's page on "Hiberno-English". The glossary is an odd mish-mash of slang (some of which I've never encountered) and more "normally"-used words. This one in particular made me laugh (knowingly):Scoop is used to describe an alcoholic beverage i.e. "Going for a few scoops". It is rarely, if ever, used in the singular (for ( Read more... )

I wonder if there's a term for English words incorrectly back-formed from their plurals? Just now I came across an otherwise well-written geometry article which used the word "vertice" where "vertex" was intended; the author evidently assumed "vertice" to be the singular of "vertices".

Just now on TV I see some guy captioned as being from the "Irish Association of Suicidology". I am appalled to discover this is actually a real word.

From the previously-cited Drummond piece, I find an example of something I've found both increasingly prevalent and increasingly annoying: the Spurious Comma. I do not want to spend every November, for the rest of my life, trying to breathe new life into a concept, that should have been left alone years ago.
Please tell me why there is a comma after ( Read more... )

Actually, not king, but editor: if an article makes some reference to its own length (case in point: Bill Drummond's No Music Day piece[1]), I would discount that from the actual article length and chastise the author accordingly (and possibly even edit it out of the finished piece). Same goes for any filler paragraphs describing the writing ( Read more... )

I skimmed through yet another attempt to explain Google's PageRank system (summary: "we trawled everyone else's documents and glommed them into ours, producing zero new information in the process") and found, right near the start, the statement that "not all links weight the same". Personally if I'd been asked to proof the article I'd have flagged ( Read more... )

It's not "an issue" or "a challenge" or even "an opportunity"; it's a problem, and it needs to be fixed.

I occasionally find things on my fridge that I don't recall composing. There are a few things that I'm pretty certain other people did, and a few I've done while drunk and forgotten about, but just now I found "dating lies" and I have NO idea where it came from. Or when it appeared there ( Read more... )

fascinating article about a guy who tries speaking solely Irish to people in Ireland. Comes with bonus Irish phrase guide at the end.

I know how much you care about the correct use of English.