As the final of this year’s Eurovision hits our screens tonight, I thought it would be apt to focus attention on English sayings that include a reference to a European country, city, nationality or language. So let’s kick off this post on European sayings with three Dutch ones… Double Dutch One way to insult someone is […]
Following the historic EU referendum result, I keep hearing – and reading – that “the UK is leaving Europe”. Or that “Britain is leaving the EU”. Both of these statements are, in fact, incorrect. And difficult for a pedant like me to ignore. You see, it’s all a question of terminology… Great Britain / UK / British […]
As you may know, I’m rather partial to words. I enjoy reading them, writing them, playing with them, learning about their origin and discovering new ones. So, seeing as I’ve already written a blog post with my favourite quotes about writing, it seems only right to also do one on quotations about words – both of […]
It’s no secret that I love discovering and collecting new words. And I find it much easier to remember them if I group them into themes. I recently came across two new words about senses that complemented a few I already knew, especially as they all share a connection with nature. Some are English words, […]
Maybe you have a clear idea of what it is you want your marketing material to say, but don’t necessarily know how to put it into ‘proper English’ or ‘marketing speak’. Copywriting may not be your forte, even though you’re the expert on your business. Perhaps you simply don’t have the time. This is where I […]
Copywriting Effective copywriting will ensure that each and every word works hard for you, compelling the audience to take your desired action. Find out more ↦ SEO copywriting SEO copywriting has to achieve a fine balance between addressing the very different needs of human visitors and the search engines. Find out more ↦ Copy editing […]
My recent adventure on the high seas (well, the North Sea to be precise) got me thinking about the numerous nautical idioms that permeate the English language. As an island nation, Britain has a rich maritime heritage. Our reliance on the sea for trading purposes resulted in a wealth of mariners’ lingo – much of […]
In today’s increasingly busy online marketplace, SEO copywriting must balance the very different needs of the human visitor with those of the search engine spiders. To be effective, content has to be relevant, useful and persuasive. Relevance here is key, as Google favours content that matches user intent. Although the use of appropriate keywords is still […]
Since writing my previous blog post containing 20 titbits of word trivia I’ve been on the hunt for more weird and wonderful word facts to share with you. All of these facts are about words in the English language, so I’ve deliberately not repeated that each time. Here goes… 1. Alphabet comes from the first two […]
What are your pet grammar peeves? Which grammar mistakes set your teeth on edge? Is it the misuse of apostrophes for plurals? Perhaps the incorrect your/you’re or their/there/they’re? Maybe it’s dangling modifiers or stray semicolons that get your goat. Top of my list has to be when people mix up it’s with its. NB: This is only an issue in written […]
Having previously written posts about baking, cooking and dancing related idioms to tie in with popular TV shows, it seems only right to turn to pottery as we approach the final of this year’s The Great Pottery Throw Down. So, let’s crack on to discover which well-known pottery phrases I unearthed… What a lot of […]
Whilst proofreading several websites and documents recently, one of the common mistakes I came across involved conjunctions. Seeing as I haven’t written a grammar-related blog post for a while, I thought it would make a good topic for this week’s article. What is a conjunction? The word conjunction derives from the Latin verb coniungere, meaning […]
Following on from my previous post on names for plimsolls, attention now turns to what we Brits call the humble bread roll. As I suspected, there’s a far greater variety of names for bread rolls than there is for elasticated footwear. But I wasn’t prepared for quite how many… Origin of the bread roll A […]