The Corpus of American Historical English is a searchable index of word usage in American printed material from 1810 to 2009. Powerful complex searches allow you to trace the appearance and evolution of words and phrases and even specific grammatical constructions, see trends in frequency, and plenty more. Start with the
5-Minute Tour.
posted by Miko
on Jan 7, 2012 -
23 comments
It has long been noted that style manuals and other usage advice frequently contain unintended examples of the usage they condemn. (This is sometimes referred to as
Hartman's law or
Muphry's law - an intentional misspelling of Murphy.)
Starting from this observation, Joseph Williams' paper
The Phenomenology of Error offers an examination of our selective attention to different types of grammatical and usage errors that goes beyond the descriptivism-prescriptivism debate. (alternate
pdf link for "The Phenomenology of Error")
[more inside]
posted by nangar
on Nov 28, 2011 -
17 comments
I’m not advocating the abolition of grammar, but rather its justification. I’m not quite sure what that will entail in the end, but I’m starting out by pointing out grammar rules that just don’t make sense, don’t work, or don’t have any justification. All I want is for our rules of grammar to be well-motivated.
posted by Joe Beese
on Sep 10, 2010 -
90 comments
The Canadian Government’s
Translation Bureau recently made its French/English/Spanish technical terminology database,
Termium, free to access after over a decade as a subscription-based service. While off-the-cuff translations are often available from free services like
BabelFish, Termium focuses on technical terminology such as scientific, medical and legal terms.
[more inside]
posted by Shepherd
on Oct 22, 2009 -
35 comments
"The old, mean man" vs. "The mean old man." Here's an aspect of English (and other languages) I've never thought of before. If you're using a string of adjectives, there's a natural order for them to appear in: "opinion :: size :: age :: shape :: color :: origin :: material :: purpose". (Although I find "old, mean," due to it's strange order, sort of striking.) [more info:
1,
2,
3]
posted by grumblebee
on May 19, 2007 -
91 comments
According to Stanley Fish , "Students can't write clean English sentences because they are not being taught what sentences are." The solution: make them invent their own language.
After a generation that privileged content to the exclusion of form, is the pendulum swinging back the other way?
posted by myl
on May 31, 2005 -
134 comments
The Apostrophe Protection Society: ...reminding all writers of English text, whether on notices or in documents of any type, of the correct usage of the apostrophe should you wish to put right mistakes you may have inadvertently made.
posted by acridrabbit
on Aug 12, 2002 -
57 comments
Learning propper english gramar
ain't gotta suck no longer. Someones made it fun and enjoyable for everybody!
And when you meat someone who can't write good, you'll know why.
This could even be the dearth of the MeFi grammar flames even! (nahhh)
posted by BentPenguin
on Dec 29, 2001 -
6 comments
