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The New York Times: Words We Love Too Much By PHILIP B. CORBETT MAY 6, 2014, 8:00 AM
A colleague noted six uses of the description “deep-pocketed” in our copy in a single week not long ago. There were four more appearances during another recent week: “deep-pocketed investors,” “deep-pocketed donors” and “deep-pocketed tobacco companies” (twice).
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Why ‘Mr Stink’ beats ‘King Solomon’s Mines’ for children today
From The Sunday Telegraph ‘No friend is as loyal as a book,” said Ernest Hemingway. That gets to the key point about books, which is that they are basically friends. They make life better. Especially if you get into them young: only last week a study revealed that children who were read to early in […]
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‘Horticultural pornography’ pictures of nice gardens or offensive language? | Mind your language
Not everyone finds it amusing to read in newspapers about food, property and now gardening ‘porn’ A reader has taken the Guardian to task for using terms such as “food porn”, “property porn”, and most recently (in a preview of the BBC television series British Gardens in Time) “horticultural pornography”. Continue reading… Mind your language […]
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English language offenders: show us examples of bad grammar
Spotted any misuses of language by people and institutions who should know better? Share your photos via GuardianWitness Grammatical mistakes crop up everywhere and are always a subject of lively discussion among our readers. Be it the Bad Grammar awards, the shortlist for which includes offenders such as the NHS, Tesco and Tristam Hunt, or […]
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When insults become the norm, dialogue is debased | Mind your language
If you call someone a Nazi just because you disagree with them, you have already lost the argument Fraped. For the unacquainted, it’s a perturbing portmanteau of "Facebook" and "raped" something that happens when you forget to log out and forget to cut out that annoying practical joker friend from your life. Rape is an […]
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Johnson: Mountains high enough and rivers wide enough
WHY do some places in the world have lots of small languages, and others have fewer, bigger languages? Earlier studies seemed to show that areas of high altitude, rainfall and temperature had high cultural and linguistic diversity. A brief glance in the direction of the geography and linguistic diversity of the Caucasus, central Africa or […]