A consideration of language as an index of oppression in the United Kingdom

In ET17, Tony Fairman claimed that some descriptive grammarians are becoming prescriptive and that they risk presenting ‘Standard English’ as if it were all of English or at least the only English that matters. ET asked four professional grammarians to respond to his observations. Sidney Greenbaum and John Sinclair were specifically named by Tony Fairman.

According to Bill Palmer, who edits and circulates the quarterly newsletter Word Watching (P.O. Box 386, Station Westmount, Montréal, Québec H3Z 2T5, Canada), Tom Swift was a hero in a series of boys' adventure books some years ago. Tom never simply said anything, but ‘said morosely’ and ‘said excitedly’. This adverbial inclination has led to a minor genre of word-play, the Tom Swiftie, as in: ‘I've lost my crutches,’ said Tom lamely.

Creating the first scholarly dictionary of the English of Trinidad and Tobago

A report on the history, formation and uses of such scientific terms as Homo sapiens and Hermerocallis aurantiaca.

The British ‘Plain English Campaign’ (described in ET5, Jan 86) has produced a Plain English Course for people who need ‘good, cost-effective writing skills’. Costing £495, the course consists of: trainer's guide, 25 acetates for overhead projection, 48 folders and namecards, 48 sets of worksheets, 2 copies of ‘The Plain English Story’, and 48 ‘copysets’ for students' own work (which can also be displayed for discussion on the overhead projector). The Campaign organizers, Chrissie Maher and Martin Cutts, have created the course for managers and administrative staff in government and business. Below are the course's fifteen suggestions for clear writing.

The development and use of the Italian cousin of franglais.

In the description of such usages as argue away, measure up and zonk out, a venerable orphan comes in from the linguistic cold

THE THIRD College Edition of Webster's New World Dictionary was published by Simon & Schuster in September 1988. The work contains 170,000 entries and 800 illustrations in 1600 pages. Recent college dictionaries have contained about 150,000 entries. The increase is due in part to the steady proliferation of the vocabulary and in part to competition among the four rivals. The others are American Heritage Dictionary, College Edition (Houghton Mifflin, published in 1982); Random House College Dictionary (1984), and Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Merriam-Webster, 1983). By comparison, Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828, contained 70,000 words. The college dictionary is one of a family of New World dictionaries that have sold more than 80 million copies since 1951.