A rose by any other name: Shakespeare was quite happy to sign his name Shakspere or Shakspeare
The great grammarian Otto Jespersen, writing in 1909, said English grammar was “not a set of stiff dogmatic precepts, according to which some things are correct and others absolutely wrong”; but was living and developing, “founded on the past” but preparing the way for the future, “something that is not always consistent or perfect, but progressing and perfectible – in one word, human”. Continue reading
Tag Archives: David Crystal
On a not very bright grammar test
On a not very bright grammar test
A child presented the answer ‘The sun shone bright in the sky’, and this was marked wrong, on the grounds that it is ‘not an adverb’.<!–more- Continue reading
The internet to transform spelling
The internet to transform spelling
- Date
- Continue reading