Dumbing down the style of English in Scarborough Fair
A line in the lyrics of the classic English folk ballad ‘Scarborough Fair’ has been ‘dumbed down,’ presumably because the style of English was sometimes too difficult to understand.
Was it really that difficult, was it really such an impossible task …
March 30, 2010
English civil war use of English
This article discusses some of the problems that arise with the use of English when writing the dialogue for a short story or novel that is set in the English civil war period of the 1640s, or is set in …
April 21, 2009
Lost in translation
The French sentence ‘je n’sais quo’, which of course translates to ‘I don’t know what,’ is typically used to indicate that something has a certain indefinable quality, so indefinable that it’s impossible to, well, define it..
Let’s be serious for …
April 8, 2009
Wind turbines English
Wind turbines are also called wind farms, which can be pretty confusing if the wind turbines are offshore wind turbines – how can a farm be in the sea? It is farming, but not as we know it, it’s farming …
April 1, 2009
Stock market English analysis 2
In Stock market English analysis I asked whether we should criticise the writer of an article about the stock market for using some pretty unusual verbs in his article
Let’s look at it from his (or her) point of view. …
Stock market English analysis
The style of English used in stock market articles can be interesting
This is part of an article about the stock market – it’s the part of the article which has the most interesting use of English: ‘In early European trade …
March 15, 2009
Laser printer health and safety
For health and safety reasons, a laser printer like this should only be placed in a suitable location
It weighs about 140 pounds, which is about the weight of a lightweight to medium-weight person….