English, Jack

In his new book, Musicophilia , Oliver Sacks seems to have created a new word for those sticky songs that you can't get out of your head...

The ETJ list is often a source of interesting questions. Recently, Peter Warner observed: "Listening to a British presenter, I realize...

About a month ago, Russel Smith, writing in the Globe & Mail , discussed a tendency for the meaning of technical terms, such as price p...

Believe me, English really doesn't have a future tense. Some may think this is simply a labeling preference, but it goes beyond that. Th...

A student (college-level native speaker of English) writes, "It is time to rethink the path society is on." Something in my brain ...

CBC started the week reporting on the marches in "Myanmar, formerly known as Burma". For the last two days, however, it's been...

In today's Toronto Star, Andrew Chung writes , "Promises are the currency of elections. With no platform to judge, on what other ba...

Today, Annie Kidder at People for Education posted a comment to a previous post . It's substantial enough that I'm reposting it her...

Since the good folks at Language Log reminded me that today is Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day, I asked my students if pirates have any particular l...

One of the readings included in our Comm 200 packet for students to respond to is "Dot-com this!" by Stephanie Nolen from The Glob...

Over the weekend The LA Times published a review by Douglas Hofstadter of Steven Pinker's new book The Stuff of Thought (The Times ...

CBC's " And sometimes y " has started a new season with a new host . Unfortunately, I've missed both episodes so far and t...

Horizons BetaPro funds are running a marketing campaign featuring a dictionary-entry style design (the ads don't seem to be on their we...

For a conservative magazine, Report on Business is trying remarkably hard to be hip. The September cover reads: DOES JIM FLAHERTY HAVE A HA...

With the Toronto International Film Festival in full swing, the Toronto media is tripping over itself to avoid using the title Young People...

I have a good deal invested in the Academic Word List (AWL). I have developed a lot of materials based on it and even spent many hours wri...

It's not up on the web site yet, but here's the press release from the Extensive Reading Foundation . -------- Today, the Extensive ...

Today, my 3-year old say to my mom, "*I'm going to the toilet of yours." It struck me that this would be grammatical (though s...

You'll recall that a few days ago, Joshua Myerson asked about expressions such as "short sleeve(d)" & "large size(d)...

Loblaw -family supermarkets in Ontario have made a deal with Ontario Hydro to cut electricity usage in exchange for lower electricity prices...