John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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Entries from February 2009

Hitler, Grammar Nazis and a Job Application

February 23rd, 2009 · No Comments

Found via Grammar Blog and You Don’t Say, among other sources: And if you enjoyed that, you’ll like this:

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Tags: Language

Linguistics for Lazy People

February 18th, 2009 · No Comments

Seems like it is whenever I have most things to do that I find seriously fun things to distract me. Nothing new about that, it happens to all freelancers. But just at the moment, I have toothache and laughing is quite painful. And a Language Hat post has introduced me to Speculative Grammarian, “the premier […]

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Tags: Language

Terry Pratchett is UK’s Most Stolen Author

February 14th, 2009 · No Comments

A Times article last week included a less-than-scientific Top Ten of the UK’s most shoplifted books (and I’ve got most of them. The titles, I mean, not the shoplifted ones). It’s the kind of story that when you actually get to the list, it makes you think, “Oh yes, of course,” so I’ll leave the […]

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Tags: Literature

Street Sign Silliness

February 2nd, 2009 · No Comments

Punctuation purists led by John Richards, founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, are up in arms over Birmingham City Council’s decision to omit apostrophes from street signs. Reactions have run from the usual indignation to outright horror. Apostrophe Abuse ironizes about it cleverly, calling Birmingham “the city where apostrophes arent welcome,” while Apostrophe Catastrophes goes […]

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Tags: Language · Life

The End of Civilization As We Know It

February 1st, 2009 · 2 Comments

Over at You Don’t Say,* the blog of Baltimore Sun copy editor John McIntyre, there has been a discussion going on about Wikipedia. I must point out that the Wikipediaphobes have not, quite, said that the online encyclopaedia will bring about the End of Civilization etc. as the title of this post would suggest. On […]

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Tags: Language · Life