English Today: Volume 5 - Issue 3

English: the collected works
John Simpson
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 3-8
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
A co-editor of the revised and integrated ‘Oxford English Dictionary’ describes his work during the last five years.

Rave reviews
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 9-11
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
We provide below excerpts from some of the early reviews of OED2e. The gamut of responses is as wide as the range of the dictionary itself.

The computer as style guide
Nicholas Wright, Rosemary Tilley
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 12-16
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
A report on the nature and teething troubles of software packages that advise on writing skills.

Axing the apostrophe
Adrian Room
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 21-23
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
What would English be like if it completely lost its most contentious and troublesome punctuation mark?

French leave and Dutch courage
Christopher Lawson
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 24-26
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
An Englishman looks at what English idioms say about the nations of Europe and their citizens.

Gaijin
Peter Duppenthaler
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 30-35
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
An American teacher of English in Japan describes how the Japanese see the aliens in their midst.

What's in a surname?
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 36-41
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
TO JUDGE by the evidence on the right, names can mean a great deal to some people!
I must confess to never having been really happy with my name, one of the commonest in England and Wales. For this reason I began, at a very early age, somewhat secretively, to read telephone directories. I was in search of “the name”. There always seemed to be something limp-wristed and anaemic about mine. After all, even Tommy Atkins received his apotheosis in Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads:
“God Bless You, Tommy Atkins, we're all the world to you.”

English through the looking-glass
Tony Fairman
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 42-47
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
A reply to the replies of the grammarians in April, continuing the debate on description, prescription, and the standard language.

English Today