Hard at work on Magazine Activity 2014

Gabby working on her article for BITE BACK magazine.

Article: On Internet Slang, IMHO

Interesting article on the grammar and usage of Internet 'slang'. 

On Internet Slang, IMHO
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/fashion/on-internet-slang-imho.html

'Grammar nazis' and Language Change

Great little article on prescriptivism, language change and variation today. As so often, a headline with a question that can clearly be answered 'no', but a good read nonetheless.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10692897/Are-grammar-Nazis-ruining-the-English-language.html

Peer Magazine takes shape

Students are posting their articles to the freshly-inaugurated 'Peer' website. Looking pretty sweet!

SQ guest editing this year's magazine activity

Corey and Lewis from SQ are back again kindly hosting and designing for our magazine-in-a-day activity. Students hard at work journalisting in the background.

The word detective

Marking the retirement of the editor of the OED, this BBC articles shows some of the detective work that goes into tracing etymologies for dictionaries.

The word detective
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22378819

Reinventing the book with Shakespeare

Ebooks can become rich collections of resources incorporating text-crunching computation. Here's an example using Shakespeare texts. 

Why a 17th-Century Text Is the Perfect Starting Point for Reinventing the Book
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/why-a-17th-century-text-is-the-perfect-starting-point-for-reinventing-the-book/263034/

Higgs boson metaphors

You've got to use language to explain science – and when science is all 'quantum' and weird at the fundamental level, you've got to use metaphors. 

Note: 'molasses' is American for 'treacle'.

Higgs boson metaphors as clear as molasses - The Boston Globe
http://bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/07/14/metaphors-and-higgs-boson/UjdsEySmG63XIAcNN7LNSO/story.html

The Magazine Activity Team at Work...

Notes, transcripts, earphones and blazing hot copy. Note product placement of SQ. :)

As a Linguist…

Interesting running commentary from a linguistic researcher, with all sortsof puzzles and corners of language under discussion. Nice style model for blog posts too.

As a Linguist… | Observations on language, literature, and other interesting phenomena

The virtual linguist

The virtual linguist has bitesize commentaries on language items in the news and elsewhere.  Worth a browse.

Language Wars (newyorker.com)

A contemporary argument for prescriptivism.

Language Wars
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/05/language-wars-descriptivists.html

Publication of Dr Johnson's Dictionary today

15th April 1755, folks.

Publication of Dr Johnson's Dictionary
http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/publication-dr-johnsons-dictionary

The confusing language around programming languages.

What's basically an article offering an erratum for an embarrassing subediting cockup is deftly turned into a comment piece on contemporary language development. Now that's classy. 

The confusing language around programming languages
http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/developer-blog/2012/mar/16/language-of-programming-languages

Guardian Saturday Interviews Archive

The Guardian's archive of Saturday Interviews - let me know if this link lapses; it's linking to tags on their website.  Quite a range of interviewees here!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/series/saturday-interview?INTCMP=SRCH

A sign of the Times’s? (grammarphobia.com)

This issue came up in both AS and A2 classes this week. Even professional publications meet difficulties deciding on a rule in some cases, and there's disagreement at the top. 

This doesn't, of course, mean you can ignore all rules of apostrophes. ;)

A sign of the Times's?
http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/11/times.html

Fry's Planet Word

Stephen Fry is, of course, a national treasure; and also, conveniently, a fan of language and linguistics. This TV show starts Sunday and runs for 5 episodes which cover a range of language issues, beyond just English. Set your recorder, log on to iPlayer, or even actually watch it on good old live telly. Fry's Planet Word

Happy Birthday Smiley!

September 19th is not only famous for being international Talk Like A Pirate day. :-)

Sept. 19, 1982: Can't You Take a Joke? :-)
http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2011/09/0919fahlman-proposes-emoticons/

The depressing tale of Johann Hari

Johann Hari is a smart political commentator and a successful journalist... or at least, he was until a few weeks ago. This interesting but antagonistic piece explores how journalistic shortcuts and plagiarism are costing him his reputation, if not his career, and contains some implicit advice for budding interviewers.

The depressing tale of Johann Hari
http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/09/unethical-journalism

Is Miliband morphing into Blair? A voice coach writes ...

An older article, but interesting.... 

Is Miliband morphing into Blair? A voice coach writes ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/sep/23/davidmiliband.tonyblair