DCblog

A correspondent writes to ask if I have written anything about 'false friends', and their role in language learning and teaching. Ju...

A correspondent writes to say : 'I discovered that the verb to spoil has preterite and past participle spoiled but that it also has sp...

A correspondent writes to say that someone corrected him when he asked (before a tennis match): Who are playing? His friend said it should ...

Are semi-colons really necessary, asks a correspondent? Well it all depends on what she means by necessary its perfectly possible to have a ...

A correspondent writes to ask about the possessive apostrophe. Is it actually an apostrophe of omission? The apostrophe is a relatively late...

A correspondent writes to ask when the question-mark symbol was first used in English? Was it an inverted semi-colon. No, the question-mark ...

A correspondent writes to say that he caught himself saying All I find is idiots , and wondered whether it shouldn't have been All I fin...