LANGSCAPE is a Cambridge University Press project associated with both ‘English Today’ and a new international usage guide for the year 2000 by Pam Peters, author of the ‘Cambridge Australian English Style Guide’ (1995). Like the Australian publication, the international work will be distinctive in its use of empirical evidence from computer corpora as well as data elicited from surveys of users of English round the world. Because English is a world language, any account of usage that is limited to one person's views and resources is inadequate. The first topic and questionnaire (‘The ubiquitous letter e’) appeared in ET53 (Jan 98) and the second (‘To capitalize or not to capitalize’) in ET54 (Apr 98). See the accompanying box for further information on the Survey. See also p.25.

A survey ranging from the revolutionary work of Isaac Pitman in the nineteenth century through spelling reform and global English to the contemporary issue of the world's endangered languages

A review of the kinds of dictionaries now being created to cope with English as a universal language

HOWARD JACKSON considers how hard it is to figure out just what is on offer in an average general dictionary

A discussion towards the teaching and learning of English as a universal medium

The editor of ‘English Today’ talks electronically to KATHERINE BARBER, the editor of the ‘Canadian Oxford Dictionary’, just out. (See also p. 20.)

A controversial author considers the reception that his recent book ‘Language is power’ has been receiving from some fellow scholars of language

A reply to Frank Palmer and Patrick Honeybone on the issue of a Chomskyan ‘language gene’

A report from the Survey of English Usage at the Department of English Language and Literature, University College London