Recent Posts
The Engine Room
Return To Blog Listing
A blog about English language use, publishing and the media in general – brought to you by a sub-editor (copy editor) on a weekly UK magazine and his former chief sub.
If you have a question about vocabulary, grammar or punctuation, why not ask
Recent Posts Tagged With 'books'
Free translations, guides, books and, er, sex
I've been meaning to share these links for a while:Bab.la Phrases: translations of useful phrases to and from any two of 14 languages - with a special focus on formal writing (business and academic). Bab.la is also offering downloadable travel surviv...
Blog recommendation: Awful Library Books
Today's blog choice is Awful Library Books, which lists library holdings that are "amusing and maybe questionable for public libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection". Most of the books aren't actually awful, just dated...Sarah ...
Win a copy of Uglier Than a Monkey's Armpit
So recently I've been dipping into Uglier Than a Monkey's Armpit, a collection of insults and curses from around the world.For some reason I've found the African-language insults the most entertaining, such as the Afrikaans "jy was uit jou ma se gat ...
Chocs and cigs and ripping and topping
I blogged about Books v. Cigarettes, a collection of essays by George Orwell, a few weeks ago - but there's one more passage I'd like to share with you. Here he's writing about the years immediately preceding the First World War:It was the age when ...
Love, Death, Madness, and an American Biography
I've recently finished reading The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus, a biography of Mark Roget by the Boston-based writer Joshua Kendall. You have to love that title.The book made for a pacy read - partl...
