All Style/Grammar posts

Words that were formed by mistake 3: misdivisions

Having already seen how an apron, an auger, an adder and an umpire used to be a napron, a nauger, a naddre and a noumpere, here are some more words that have been oddly divided on their way into the dictionary. Newts and nicknames Old English efeta is the word that gave us the great [...]

More words that were formed by mistake

As with the first list of words formed by mistake, I’m not passing judgement on these malformations. Okay, may be a little bit with webinar and leverage as a verb. With most of these words I’m simply enjoying their irregular routes into the dictionary. Some have charmed their way in, others got misheard, all have [...]

Words that were formed by mistake

Words come into being in all sorts of ways. They are adopted from other languages (anorak), created by affixing (beauti-ful) or removing affixes (editor), and made by joining (football) or blending (blog) words together. Some words get converted to a different part of speech (to table) or are based on sound (click). There are acronyms [...]

Tautology, or how to write better than Tolkien

Few things have given me more pleasure than reading The Hobbit to my boys. I loved the book as a child and bringing it to life with silly accents and descriptions of Smaug that make my seven-year-old cower under his covers is priceless. The Hobbit is a charming adventure, and it doesn’t matter to me [...]

Readability tools that actually improve your writing

On the Internet, writing clear text that a 12-year-old can read is something to aim for, not be ashamed of. The clearer and simpler you write, the more people will understand what you are saying. Search for readability tools and you’ll find loads. Many of them will give you a list of scores for a [...]

Why the word webinar is half-cocked

You may have trouble reading this if semen makes you giggle. Webinar comes from seminar plus web. The word seminar means ideas (semen) plus a context in which to share those ideas (–ar). Webinar is supposed to mean a place to share ideas on the web. Surely if you wanted to coin a new word [...]

Google’s own guide to content that rates highly

Confession time. I work with website content every day but I don’t think I’ve ever stuffed a keyword. Sure, I’ve added the odd one to the final copy if the subject doesn’t quite speak for itself, but in the main, a website is about what it’s about. I’ve been relying on Google to lead people who are searching for that subject to the site.

And, in nearly all cases, that’s been happening.

According to Google’s recent update, my faith in this simple approach will now be rewarded even more.