The Origins of Christmas Words
Christmas is right around the corner, and as keen readers will know we like a good holiday here at ELB. Christmas is a holiday with deep and diverse historical roots, and the language surrounding it reflects this: while the name very clearly evokes the Christian...
Should you write “all right” or “alright”?
In today’s new article I’m taking a look at the difference between ‘all right’ and ‘alright’, something which has come up a few times for me in my editing work and a point I’ve considered probably more than I should have in my...
Do we write “for ever after” or “forever after”?
“For ever after” is a phrase I found curious recently, as it highlights some interesting points about how English works as a flexible, evolving language. The phrase can be written in two different ways, changing the meanings of the words, with no real agreement on the...
How Phrasal Verbs Can Form Compound Nouns
I always find it interesting to look at ways that words connect, so we can see how one type of word might become another. I was struck by a specific area of this recently while editing a crime novel, which included a lot of compound nouns that stem from phrasal verbs....
What are homonyms, heterographs and heteronyms?
I had an idea to discuss contronyms this month, which are a specific type of homonym, but I realised I don’t have an article on homonyms here. These are an interesting (and difficult) aspect of English, where we have a great many words that can either look or sound...Want to Master English?
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