Why don’t we zag zig?
YOU CAN LISTEN TO HIP HOP, but not hop hip. You can hear the pitter patter of tiny feet, but never the patter pitter. You can hear chit chat turning…
Category: Language
Mispronounciations
THAT’S A MISTAKE, of course. Most people know that the noun isn’t pronounciation, but pronunciation. And they’ll duly write in to Radio 4 in their hundreds every time they hear…
“You can quote me”
YOU’LL HAVE SEEN QUOTATION MARKS around the most unlikely of phrases. Their proper use is to indicate that a saying has been first pronounced by someone else: “Neither a borrower nor…
The red big bus
THERE’S NOTHING GRAMMATICALLY WRONG with that headline. Determiner, adjective, adjective, noun. So why is it so awkward to read? Every native English speaker instinctively knows the correct order in which…
Winning at Hangman
HANGMAN IS A GREAT GAME, and can be played anywhere. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen. But the winning strategy is counterintuitive. Most players will…
He who hesitates
HE WHO HESITATES IS LOST, we’re told. (The quotation is actually a misquote from Joseph Addison’s 1712 play Cato, in which he says “The woman that deliberates is lost.”) It doesn’t mean that…
Don’t misquote me
YOU’LL OFTEN HEAR PEOPLE talking about Shooting themselves in the foot, or Gilding the lily, or proclaiming that Money is the root of all evil. These quotes are either wrong, or used incorrectly….
Poetry and prose
LIKE EVERY OTHER SCHOOLBOY and girl in the country, I was taught that poetry should be pronounced ploddingly, with a pause at the end of each line, making sure you hammer…
If only
WORD PLACEMENT WITHIN A SENTENCE does, of course, affect the sense of the sentence. But there are few words whose precise location changes the meaning of the sentence as much…
Updating classics
It’s hard to know where to stand on the tricky issue of updating classics to suit contemporary sensibilities. One argument is to leave them alone. But can the BBC really…