February 2nd, 2010
e all have favourite words. Mine include beauties like ‘plop’, ‘scud’ and ‘gargle’, because I like nice sounds more than sophisticated definitions.
But what about the words you hate? The ones that appear like dog turds on the pavement of prose?
I can’t speak for you, but mine are:
READ ON »
Ten words that make readers recoil »
Author: Ben Locker.
Posted in: Blog, Words | 63 Comments »
January 27th, 2010
grammatical point that’s cropped up a couple of times this week.
Can ‘that’ be used in place of ‘who’?
Copy Editor Nick Howard has strong feelings on the point. He goes as far as insisting that “‘That’ does not refer to people”.
I disagree. I think it can do. Especially if you want to avoid re-using ‘who’ in only a few words.
Who do I mean? The Prime Minister that took us to war with Spain.
Or am I wrong? Who’s that disagreeing with me?
“That” can refer to people »
Author: Ben Locker.
Posted in: Blog, Words | 4 Comments »
August 31st, 2009
he silly season must very nearly be over if we’re already talking about what words have made the Collins English Dictionary.
This year’s tedious publicity stunt has worked by drawing attention to young people’s slang, some of which — wait for it — is used on Twitter. ‘Noob’ and ‘meh’ and ‘mwah’ and ‘OMG’ and ‘wtf’ and all the rest of it.
The real point of the story, though, is contained in this quote from Elain Higgleton, Collins’ editorial director:
In three or four years a lot of these words may have fallen out of use and might well come out of the dictionary.
Or, to put it more plainly, “in three or four years, a lot of these words won’t help sales, and might as well come out of the dictionary.”
No matter: there’ll be plenty of other ‘zeitgeisty’ (yuck) terms to flog future editions.
Just don’t expect me to buy it. This copywriter’s sticking with the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. It’s crammed full of fascinating words, and the real joy of it is that most of them aren’t to be found anywhere on Twitter.
Twitter slang in dictionary. FFS, who cares? »
Author: Ben Locker.
Posted in: Words | No Comments »
