Archive of stories published by English Language Style & Usage

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2014

Paul Zablocki in Language & Lingustics

Mar 5, 2014

The Closing Quotation Mark Dilemma

Three simple rules to keep your punctuation marks in their right…

Philip Shemella in Dirty Data

Feb 27, 2014

Advisor or Adviser

A data-journey for one word that goes both ways

Cameron Shea in English Language Style & Usage

Jan 30, 2014

The Oxford Comma

A Harder Look

Commas separate items in a list of three or more. There is debate on whether a…

1 response

Philip Shemella in Dirty Data

Jan 8, 2014

Data are Beautiful

Data’s story in grammar

1 response

Dick Wisdom in I. M. H. O.

Aug 13, 2013

Literally Indefensible

Your protestations about “literally” are literally wrong

“Have we literally broken the English language?” asks Martha Gill in The Guardian today. The problem, such as it is, seems to be that the definition of “literally” has…

The Strange Case of He Versus Him, and Other Pronoun (Mis)applications

Sometimes proper English…

Elli Thompson Purtell

May 5, 2014

I like your purple shirt

The impact of saying enough—and nothing more.

Ed DeHoratius

Mar 18, 2014

Enough Already with the Typos, Sports Illustrated

Why Editing is Important

Elli Thompson Purtell in On Content

Jun 11, 2014

Word Purge

How my workplace finally rid itself of tired, overused and plain inaccurate language—and…

Josh Silverman

Dec 20, 2013

Vaccinations against obfuscation

It’s time to evolve our vernacular.

These were the top 10 stories published by English Language Style & Usage; you can also dive into yearly archives: 2013, 2014.

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English Language Style & Usage

Nuance, structure, variation. For those who appreciate concise and elegant writing.

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