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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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If you’re so upset about ‘literally’, why aren’t you fussing about ‘really’?
These people who use “really” to describe things that aren’t actually real! They’re the worst, aren’t they? As we all know, “really” is the adverbial form of the adjective “real”, and “real” means “actually existing, true”. “He really blew my socks off”: did he? Did he really? No he didn’t! He metaphorically or figuratively blew […]
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Doge: such grammar. Very rules. Most linguistics. Wow
You know an internet meme has pretty much breathed its last when the Today programme brings in someone to talk about it and explain why it’s funny, while the presenter patronises them and pronounces the word “online” as though they’re picking it up with tweezers. Today, that happened to Doge. (In fairness Evan Davis, for […]
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Why it’s ‘Ukip’, not ‘UKIP’, and why I find that amusing
It’s one of the weirdest ongoing arguments that rages in the comments underneath Telegraph Blogs – more heated, at times, than whether or not Muslims are behind the global warming scam, or if the moderators are in the secret pay of Brussels. The argument is: is it Ukip, or UKIP? Underneath Ambrose’s piece published a […]
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SHOUTY ALL CAPS and pass-agg full stops: how instant messaging has created a new English
There’s a lovely Ben Crair piece in the New Republic this morning, about how instant messaging and texts are changing our use of punctuation: it seems that a full stop at the end of a chat message can be seen as aggressive or final. So see you at home later is happy and friendly, while […]
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When is it OK to drop the F-bomb in front of your kids?
“When Granny gets annoyed, she says ‘fiddle’,” my six-year-old daughter remarked the other day. “And when Mummy gets annoyed, she says ‘rats’.” “What about when Daddy gets annoyed?” said my wife, giving me a sidelong glance. “What Daddy gets annoyed, he says f–.” OK, OK, but is this a problem? Davina Wakelin, headteacher of Meeching […]