We're often asked about when to use capital letters. Why is it so confusing? The answer lies somewhere between what we’re used to seeing (beginning, as ever, with our school habits) and the seeming inconsistencies of best practice. As a general rule, capitals...
Remember last year: the pain of putting off that report day after day, finally bashing it out in a blind panic the night before it was due? Not only does this leave you a stress-addled mess, but it means your cobbled-together work won’t represent the best...
It’s that magical time of year again. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose and – quite possibly – being thrown together with people you have nothing more in common with than blood. And, as anyone who has grin-and-borne-it through a...
So, those emoticon smiles: what else can they be used for? Round brackets Imagine the contents of round brackets (or parentheses) as an aside that might be said behind your hand (an actor on a stage might anyway). These punctuation marks come in handy to:...
Finally, a House of Commons report that is a cause for celebration. This is Bad Language: the Use and Abuse of Official Language – the result of an investigation into the many ways in which politicians and civil servants may baffle and intimidate readers with...
Write Now reader Simon Lewis joins the great 'that' debate: Definitely one of my bugbears, that. Take this example: “The teaching medical students receive also leaves them with an incomplete picture.” I started interpreting this as “The medical...
The most innocuous-seeming topics have sparked incredibly heated debates. Marmite: love it or loathe it? Toilet roll facing front or facing back? [Front obviously – Ed.] Daddy or chips? Well, we’re about to start another one: whether or not to cut...
The latest version of the Collins English Dictionary has just been published, with some interesting new additions, including ‘iPlayer, ‘mankini’ (after Borat’s legendary garment), and ‘Twitter’. The words that officially enter the...
Many professionals may need to use creative or lateral thinking in their work, but here’s a competition that invites anyone to do just that for individual words. This is the so-called Washington Post Mensa Invitational – for which neither organisation...
When you consider the concept of inventions, anything from the wheel to the iPod might spring to mind. You’re probably less likely to think of a word, particularly not one you may take so completely for granted as ‘hello’. Yet it is believed to be...
For such a tiny punctuation mark, the apostrophe has an enormous tendency to confuse and irritate people. The reaction to this all-too-common frustration is generally one of two extremes. The first is to try to cut them out altogether. The alternative is to start...
The power of language is often harnessed to persuade. And love them or hate them – it’s usually one or the other – advertisements certainly have a way of getting inside our heads. Not to mention getting us to take out our wallets. But how many rules...