The Language Perfectionist: “The Mischief of Language”
For the title of this year’s annual April Fools’ Day column, I’ve borrowed a phrase from Leo Rosten (1908-1997), the humorist and screenwriter. As devotees of “recreational linguistics” know, English isn’t just rules and grammar. It...The Language Perfectionist: “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope”
Can you see anything wrong with the following sentences? “No longer able to cope, she reluctantly decides to leave.” “I just can’t cope anymore…. Most of the time I can cope pretty well.” “Homer and the rest of the family have...The Language Perfectionist: Stillborn Words
New words, or neologisms, are coined all the time. Not so long ago, we didn’t have blog, downsize, iPod, megatrend, shareware, Wi-Fi… and many others. But not every newly coined word becomes widely used or even enters the language. As you might expect,...The Language Perfectionist: The Columnist Settles a Dispute
Recently, a grammatical point made in an essay posted on a friend’s website generated a spirited disagreement from a reader. My friend asked me to mediate. The essay told the story of a student who was rebuked by his teacher for saying “He is taller than...
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