Search

At the ‘English Usage (Guides) Symposium’, Cambridge 2014, I was invited to account for my revision of Plain Words (Gowers, 2014), the style guide originally written by my great-grandfather, Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966). And because, by the time I gave that talk (see Gowers, 2018), I was already writing my own book on the English language, intended as a sort of adjunct to Plain Words, the arguments aired at that Cambridge gathering were particularly interesting to me. That said, they also left me more daunted than ever by my own project.

Pam Peters of Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia, provides the second part of a two-part concluding review of a project which is an important contribution to the creation of her prospective international English style guide (to be published by Cambridge University Press).

PAM PETERS of Macquarie University, New South Wales, Australia, provides the first part of a two-part general concluding review of the Langscape Project, a major contribution to the creation of her prospective world English style guide (to be published by Cambridge University Press)

Despite the recent publication of a Canadian style guide and The Oxford Canadian Dictionary, a claim that there is no such thing as a distinctively Canadian variety of English

LANGSCAPE is a Cambridge University Press project associated with both ‘English Today’ and a new international usage guide for the year 2000 by Pam Peters, author of the ‘Cambridge Australian English Style Guide’ (1995). Like the Australian publication, the international work will be distinctive in its use of empirical evidence from computer corpora as well as data elicited from surveys of users of English round the world. Because English is a world language, any account of usage that is limited to one person's views and resources is inadequate. The first topic and questionnaire (‘The ubiquitous letter e’) appeared in ET53 (Jan 98), the second (‘To capitalize or not to capitalize’) in ET54 (Apr 98), the third (‘Differing on agreement’) in ET55 (Jul 98), the fourth (‘Permanent loans: plurals for Latin borrowings’) in ET56 (Oct 98), and the fifth (‘Jots and tittles’) in ET57 (Jan 99). See the accompanying box for further information on the Survey.

A report on the nature and teething troubles of software packages that advise on writing skills.