MetaFilter posts tagged with usage

That's what they said

escabeche — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:14:00 -0800

The Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English is a searchable collection of almost 2 million words of transcribed spoken English from the University of Michigan, including student study groups, office hours, dissertation defenses, and campus tours. Researchers use the Michigan corpus to investigate questions about usage, like "less or fewer?" (cf. this contentious Ask Meta thread) and more general topics, like "Vague Language in Academia." Browse or search MICASE yourself.

Ask the Editors @ Merriam-Webster's

Kattullus — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:07:47 -0800

Merriam-Webster's Ask the Editors blog is the centerpiece of the Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary site. It is an excellent source of sensible advice about English language and usage. Editor-at-large Peter Sokolowski also has a Twitter feed where he highlights various interesting things about words. Finally, Merriam-Webster has started producing Ask the Editor videos, four so far, where they've tackled the subjects of i before e, classical roots, affect vs. effect and how news stories affect what words people look up online, in this case focusing on the effect of the coverage of Michael Jackson's death. Incidentally, Merriam-Webster have released their top ten words of 2009 list, which is based on what words people looked up.

Aargh!

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 10:45:45 -0800

Aargh!

At the end of the day

johnny7 — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 20:09:30 -0800

Weasel words 'Spare Don Watson, author of Death Sentences from all of these weasely, wishy-washy, and worst of all, ugly bits of management-speak that have drifted out of consulting sessions and into the social realm.' Forbes.com..................... Your favourite spin doctoring ?

eh?

casarkos — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 08:43:07 -0800

Words: Woe & Wonder The CBC explains and debates usage from a Canadian-journalism standpoint - for example, why the Iraqi ex-leader is referred to by his first name and whether to capitalize this place.

Politically correct hardware terminology:

sixtwenty3dc — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 06:25:09 -0800

LA County, leading the charge: Equipment vendors who do business with Los Angeles County received a message in November 2003 from the county's Internal Services Department (ISD) informing them that "based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County," labeling or describing equipment with the term 'master/slave' is no longer acceptable. (via snopes.com)
the slashdot comments on this...

Pirates of the Common Media

wendell — Thu, 18 Sep 2003 01:27:24 -0800

It's OK to Talk Like a Pirate, Just Don't Pirate Words!
from Dan Gillmor and David Weinberger, found via The Boingers, who disabled comments.

London Congestion Charging

brettski — Mon, 17 Feb 2003 02:25:05 -0800

Conjestion charging hits london £5 to take a car into the central zone (pdf) between 7am and 6.30pm Mon - Fri. It's all the work of controversial mayor "Red" Ken Livingstone Opinion is split: for and against. A small majority of Londoners seem in favour of it - traffic in London now is as slow as the days of the horse and cart! Day one seems quiet, though it is the school holidays! Is this the answer?

XiBe — Wed, 30 Oct 2002 04:03:19 -0800

For all those words-lovers among us, the Visual Thesaurus from Plumb Design has recently been updated, to celebrate the company's 5 years anniversary. The classic edition we all know is still available here. Just beautiful.

adrianhon — Wed, 15 May 2002 07:48:43 -0800

They might actually be, you know, be useful. This year, a student in Nebraska won $1000 for finding the worst example of overuse of the phrase 'you know,' by an athlete who said it 30 times in a 135 second interview. But are they really that terrible? Known as discourse markers, phrases such as 'you know' and 'I mean' are thought to be essential in conveying information in conversation and helping us understand each other. Discourse markers also exist in many other languages and possibly even ancient languages.

Spoon — Tue, 08 Jan 2002 03:56:37 -0800

If your never sure about all thing's grammatical... then this may help you. hyphens, apostrophes and split infinitives are all covered, along side many and various spellings, rules and regulations.