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Topic: English usage


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In the News (Sun 20 Dec 09)

  
  Usage. Bartleby.com
With a detailed look at grammar, style, diction, word formation, gender, social groups and scientific forms, this valuable reference work is ideal for students, writers, academicians and anybody concerned about proper writing style.
This reference work has remained a standard resource—serving generations of students and writers with commonsense rules of style and grammar.
The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 2nd ed.
www.bartleby.com /usage   (220 words)

  
 Frequently Asked Questions about English, Series 1 and 2
As a linguistics professor, with a special interest in English and a background including some time as a teacher of English to speakers of other languages, I frequently have to explain how things work to people who don't really know much about English grammar.
I don't find it particularly disturbing that people ask questions about English grammar; after all, this is why people ask questions, and this is what I do (in part) for a living.
English vowel phonemes, with phonetic charts of those that occur in general and after /r/
www-personal.umich.edu /~jlawler/aue.html   (733 words)

  
 American English
British usage is "meter" for a measuring device and "metre" for the unit of length.
In British usage a "stub" is a shortened end of something, often implying that the rest of the object has been broken off, the usage "stub one's foot" means to bring the foot into sudden, often accidental, contact with some obstacle.
In British usage "yard" means an area of ground adjacent to a building with a hard surface adapted for use by vehicles and horses, a "garden" is a place where plants are grown.
www.scit.wlv.ac.uk /%7Ejphb/american.html   (12175 words)

  
 Amazon.co.uk: Practical English Usage, 2nd Edition: Books   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
It is "intended for intermediate and advanced students, and for teachers of English," as it is stated in the introduction.
I particularly enjoy the bright white of the paper and the use of a brown-red for the entries, whereas their explanations are in fl, in bold type and cursive.
I think everyone who studies the English language should have this book on their shelves, next to their dictionaries, for whatever your grammar doubt is, you'll quickly find a solution to your problem.
www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/019431197X   (750 words)

  
 The Word We Love To Hate - Literally. By Jesse Sheidlower
The Oxford English Dictionary cites Dryden and Pope for this sense; Jane Austen, in Sanditon, wrote of a stormy night that, "We had been literally rocked in our bed." In these examples, literally is used for the sake of emphasis alone.
Usage writers often criticize such words as potentially confusing and usually single out one of the meanings as "wrong," the "right" meaning being the older one, or the one closer to the word's etymological meaning, or the one more frequent when 18
The trouble with usage criticism of the sort leveled at literally is that it's typically uneven: Parallel uses are frequent and usually pass unnoticed.
www.slate.com /id/2129105/fr/rss   (1625 words)

  
 References: English Language Usage   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
Common Errors - discussion of errors in English usage which are so common that some people don't recognise them as errors.
Common Errors in English - site which simply and entertainingly explains a number of common spelling and usage errors in English.
English Grammar Clinic - your grammar questions answered by professional English language instructors.
www.usaa-academy.com /nerc/res/reseng.html   (331 words)

  
 Amazon.com: Practical English Usage: Books: Michael Swan   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
I like Practical English Usage because the examples are real, living English taken from the British National Corpus, or are realistic enough to be acceptable as such.
Practical English Usage contains hundreds of entries on English grammar, from elementary to advanced topics and some entries on other issues (pronunciation, usage of problematic words, style etc.).
I have been teaching high level English grammar for 7 years, and this is by far the best reference book I have used.
www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/019431197X?v=glance   (1263 words)

  
 Internet Public Library: English   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
Usage essays and synonym essays provide detailed discussion and advice.
English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept.
The dictionary-thesaurus itself has been designed to emphasize full, supportive usage information in entries, including example sentences and phrases, and indicators of context and grammar.
www.ipl.org /div/subject/browse/ref28.05.00   (1560 words)

  
 The Early Modern English Dictionaries Database (EMEDD)
It opens up the complete range of language phenomena in Renaissance English, as lexicographers of the period saw them, and comprises the core of the electronic corpus necessary as a base for writing a modern period dictionary for the language of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
Instead, until the late 17th century, English dictionaries were normally "bilingual," either in mapping a non-English language to English (that is, translation) or in mapping hard, often Latinate English, so-called "ink-horn" terms, to easier common English (a function of synonyms).
Lexical indeterminacy observed in the period (the frequent inability of modern lexicographers to detect precise senses, and their omission of citations of that kind in their examples) is consistent with this theory.
www.chass.utoronto.ca /english/emed/emedd.html   (3345 words)

  
 The Writing Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Some of the rules that govern article usage are very subtle; only years of experience with the language will enable you to understand and apply these rules.
Moreover, a noun that is countable in your native language may be uncountable in English, and vice-versa.
Keep in mind that native speakers of English seldom use articles incorrectly; therefore, any errors that you make are very noticeable and distracting to them.
www.rpi.edu /web/writingcenter/esl.html   (3569 words)

  
 The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. 1996. Page 206
The traditional names for these groupings—Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasoid (or Caucasian), and in some systems Australoid—are now controversial in both technical and nontechnical contexts and are likely to give offense no matter how they are used.
Caucasian does retain a certain currency in American English, but it is used almost exclusively—and erroneously—to mean “white” or “European” rather than “belonging to the Caucasoid racial group,” a group that includes a variety of peoples generally considered to be nonwhite.
This ambiguity, along with the growing aversion among many people to the racial terminology of earlier anthropologists, suggests that Caucasian may soon go the way of the -oid words and disappear even from local police blotters.
www.bartleby.com /64/pages/page206.html   (424 words)

  
 English vocabulary words derived from Latin and Greek prefixes, roots, and suffixes and other dictionary info
The English vocabulary development activities and resources in this and related sites are based primarily on Latin and Greek elements that are included in thousands of English terms and expressions.
Some of the words in English can be traced to a remote past; some have histories that began yesterday or are even beginning today.
Whether you are a “native speaker” or have learned English through studies, this FREE Latin-Greek Cross References will provide you with samples of Latin-Greek elements (prefixes, roots, and suffixes) that exist in English so you will have a better idea about the main parts of the important English words.
www.wordfocus.com   (1069 words)

  
 "Word Safari: Megalist of Word Links"
English and its History -- Sample texts from Old and Middle periods, commentary, charts, bibliography, and links; from Blue Rider Development.
The King's English, by H. Fowler -- Venerable authority on English usage, syntax, grammar, punctuation, and style (1908 edition).
English Grammar FAQ -- Archive of John Lawler's postings on alt.usage.english, with links to more linguistics arcana, including the Chomskybot.
home.earthlink.net /~ruthpett/safari/megalist.htm   (3961 words)

  
 Common Errors in English
Non-Errors Those usages people keep telling you are wrong but which are actually standard in English.
UsingEnglish.com: useful resources for those studying English as a second language
English as a Second Language Help Desk at Washington State University
www.wsu.edu /~brians/errors/errors.html   (443 words)

  
 Alt.usage.english FAQ
Basic English (where "Basic" stands for "British American Scientific International Commercial") is a subset of English with a base vocabulary of 850 words, propounded by C. Ogden in 1929.
The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs gives the proverbs "All truths are not to be told" (1350), "All things fit not all persons" (1532), "All feet tread not in one shoe" (1640), "All are not saints that go to church" (1659), and "All Stuarts are not sib to the king" (1857).
The prescription for formal English is: use "who" as the subjective form (like "he"/"she"/ "they"), and "whom" as a direct or indirect object (like "him"/ "her"/"them"): He gave it to me. Who gave it to me? That's the man who gave it to me. I gave it to him.
www.ccp14.ac.uk /ccp/web-mirrors/xtalview-mcree/pub/dem-web/misrael/auefaq3.html   (15835 words)

  
 alt.usage.english FAQ   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
W3 was widely criticized by schoolteachers and others for its lack of usage labels; e.g., it gives "imply" as one of the meanings of "infer" and "flout" as one of the meanings of "flaunt", without indicating that these are disputed usage.
The Oxford Companion to the English Language says: "The merger of vowels in tot and taught begins in a narrow band in central Pennsylvania and spreads north and south to influence the West, where the merger is universal.
The usage dispute centres on the use of the verb "to impact (on)" in the sense "to affect, to have an effect on, to influence".
gost.isi.edu /brian/liter/english_faq.html   (17031 words)

  
 ESL Resources for Students
English Forums is a great place to learn and discuss the English language with help from professional teachers.
English Consultor offers a free weekly e-mail newsletter for ESL students with motivational articles, reading help, grammar tips, vocabulary help, and question and answers from readers.
Friends in English is an online community composed of people from all around the world who are learning English as a second language; you can join the community or visit their companion website.
owl.english.purdue.edu /handouts/esl/eslstudent.html   (1751 words)

  
 English Usage
English is easier than some other languages because nouns and some indefinite pronouns (anyone, someone, everyone, and so on) have a distinctive case form only for the possessive (the student's notebook).
But a remnant of the origin of English is that the six pronouns have distinctive forms in all three cases and must be used with care:
Usage varies if the noun ends in sibilant sounds (the sound of s or z).
www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr /~guvenir/courses/ENG401/usage.html   (4036 words)

  
 Studying Phonetics on the Net
And here are the main consonant phones of English (with some non-phonemic allophones shaded in yellow.) Consonants, especially stopped ones, are very difficult to clip out of words as recognizable single segments.
British and American Vowels The vowel sounds and IPA symbols of American English in the Vowel quadrilateral; then a contrasting set of vowels for British English in a second quadrilateral.
The Varieties of English page by The Language Samples Project at the University of Arizona has descriptions and samples of distinguishing differences for seven varieties of North American English.
faculty.washington.edu /dillon/PhonResources/PhonResources.html   (3561 words)

  
 UCL Survey of English Usage
The Survey of English Usage carries out research in English Linguistics and was the first centre in Europe to carry out research with corpora.
The Survey is based in the Department of English Language and Literature at UCL.
We are pleased to announce that a recent application for funds under the ESRC research grants scheme has been successful and that research on the two-year project Next Generation tools for linguistic research in grammatical treebanks will begin in January 2006.
www.ucl.ac.uk /english-usage   (204 words)

  
 Lynch, Guide to Grammar and Style
Professional linguists are adamant that the language isn't "declining," and that many usages censured by self-styled grammarians are in fact perfectly reasonable, whether on historical grounds, logical grounds, or both.
Bad writers consider long words more impressive than short ones, and use words like usage instead of use or methodologies instead of methods without knowing what they mean.
British English, and much of it has been outdated in the eight decades since its first edition's completion.
www.andromeda.rutgers.edu /~jlynch/Writing   (1371 words)

  
 Amazon.com: Oxford Fowler's Modern English Usage Dictionary: Books: Henry Watson Fowler,Sir Ernest Gowers   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
This second edition (cf., Third Edition) of "Modern English Usage" may strike some readers as arcane and archaic, because it is so restrictive in its prescriptions.
The language has changed quite a bit since then; thousands of words have been added, hundreds have gone obsolete, and hundreds more have had their meanings shaded; and of course many of Fowler's pronouncements are now merely echoes of battles long lost or won.
Central to his purpose was the belief that the right word in its proper place and context constituted the backbone and much of the muscle and sinew of forthright and effective writing.
www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0192813897?v=glance   (2128 words)

  
 Amazon.co.uk: Fowler's Modern English Usage (Oxford Language Classics S.): Books   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
Celebrating its 75th year, this classic text has become the standard work on the correct but natural use of English and has ensured that Fowler is a household name.
Central to his purpose was the belief that the right wordat the right time in its proper place and context constituted the backboneand much of the muscle and sinew of forthright and effective writing.
It is not a thesaurus or a dictionary, but a carefully constructed masterpiece which should ensure you never put a foot wrong in expressing yourself in English either in writing or in speech.
www.amazon.co.uk /exec/obidos/ASIN/0198605064   (1277 words)

  
 Ye Olde English Sayings
Note: the American colonials hated making boards suitable for tables so much that they often used split apart shipping crates; there are still examples to be found which have the painted names of the master of the house and the shipping agent/company on the underside.
An old English law declared that a man could not beat his wife with a stick any larger than the diameter of his thumb.
Acting on his orders, over 300 English men and women were burnt at the stake for their faith.
www.rootsweb.com /%7Egenepool/sayings.htm   (4467 words)

  
 spell1
The Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature (SPELL) is an organization of people who love our language and are determined to resist its abuse and misuse in the news media and elsewhere.
SPELL also promotes good English in positive ways--by recognizing people for outstanding contributions to better English usage, sponsoring a scholarship-essay competition for high school seniors, and publishing an informative, entertaining newsletter for members.
Although the Handbook is not intended to be a full-fledged usage manual, many members have bought copies to give to their non-member colleagues.
www.spellorg.com   (995 words)

  
 English Usage FAQ Home Page
We track current news stories of relevance to English and English usage, and these pages are updated frequently.
Our news sources are listed on the English Usage Sources page.
This page lists some memorable, and not so memorable, moments in 2003 where English usage was in the spotlight....
www.yaelf.com /index.shtml   (381 words)

  
 Grammar Style refdesk.com   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
American Heritage Book of English Usage - A powerful, practical and authoritative guide to contemporary English usage that will help you make intelligent decisions when communicating in speech or writing.
History of the English Language - online resources related to the study of the history of English from pre-history to the present day.
King's English - HW Fowler's classic reference guide to vocabulary, syntax, punctuation, grammar, and style.
www.refdesk.com /factgram.html   (1857 words)

  
 Common Errors in English
Dictionaries differ among themselves on how much guidance to usage they provide; but the goal of a usage guide like this is substantially different: to protect you against patterns which are regarded by substantial numbers of well-educated people as nonstandard.
If the standard usage where you are differs from what is described here, tell me about it; and if I think it’s important to do so, I’ll note that fact.
Note that I often suggest differing usages as appropriate depending on the setting: spoken vs. written, informal vs. formal; slang is often highly appropriate.
www.wsu.edu /%7Ebrians/errors/index.html   (1248 words)

  
 Traditional English Grammar: Description and Use   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-09-07)
Traditional English Grammar: Description and Use is a "traditional" introduction to the basic syntactic structure of Modern English and the most common prescriptive rules in formal writing.
The traditional analytic framework is in many cases not scientifically accurate; rather, it has served and continues to serve as a useful framework for discussing prescriptive rules.
If your intent is to gain an understanding of English from the perspective of modern linguistics, two excellent grammars are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum's Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Randolf Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik's Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Longman, 1985).
textant.engl.unr.edu /grammarbook/title.html   (412 words)

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