Tag archives: writing help
![Who's confident [confidant?] about using -ance, -ence, and](http://oedblog.electricstudiolt.netdna-cdn.com/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/ant-ent-160x160.jpg "Who's confident [confidant?] about using -ance, -ence, and")
Who’s confident [confidant?] about using -ance, -ence, and similar suffixes?
For those of you who’ve been following my occasional series about homophonous affixes (or, to put it another way, word-endings and -beginnings that sound the same when spoken!), you should now know your -ables from your -ibles and be proficient in fore- versus for- or four. There are plenty more similar-sounding affixes, though, so I thought [...]
Keeping it in mind – Poetry By Heart
Writing West Midlands was delighted to be asked to run a Teachers’ Days as part of the Poetry By Heart competition. As Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands, and as a reader of poetry for many years, I had a particular interest in the process of memorizing poetry and of speaking it from memory. I [...]
May or might: what’s the difference?
I’ve mentioned before that the grammatical ‘rules’ about which many of us care most passionately often differ from person to person (and, of course, they also change over time). We all have our own particular pain threshold: I get inordinately ratty when apostrophes are misused, as evidenced by the fact that I can’t even resist [...]
What do you call the man in the red suit?
Last year on the OxfordWords blog, we posted a picture of a rather rotund gentleman, with a white beard and moustache, and some fetching white faux-fur trimmings on his red suit and hat. We asked ‘Who is this?’ and gave you a choice of Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Santa, Saint Nick, Santy, Kris Kringle, [...]
Relatively speaking: an untangling of that/who/which
I have a twofold career: as well as writing blogs about grammar and usage, I also teach English as a foreign language. Explaining the more arcane and sometimes illogical nuances of English grammar to native and non-native speakers alike can be challenging, but I relish the chance to do so. I’ve found that some people [...]
Grisly bears and grizzly murders?
Most of us would agree that English spelling can be a minefield: one reason for this is that there are numerous words which sound the same when you say or hear them but which are spelled differently and which have completely different meanings: a few examples are pour/pore, flower/flour, and sight/site. Such words are known [...]
Plain English in practice: writing instructions
There are times when clear writing can make the difference between life and death, such as when you’re writing safety instructions. As a language geek, one of my favourite pastimes is reading instructions and notices and thinking of ways to translate them into plainer, clearer English. I find that mentally revising instructions designed to create a safe environment helps to exercise my plain-English muscles: it prepares me for writing everyday emails to colleagues as if the recipients’ lives depended on understanding them. In this post, I’ve had a go at rewriting some safety instructions to make them easier to understand.
Pedal or peddle?
English spelling is full of apparent idiosyncrasies – native speakers and learners alike grapple with doubling consonants, how to form plurals, ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’’, and have to dodge umpteen other potential pitfalls. Another rich source of mistakes is the fact that English contains pairs of similar-sounding words (homophones). These words have different [...]
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