Reference and languages books
Book of the day
The Truth About English Grammar by Geoffrey K Pullum review – the pants rule and other pipe dreamsA breezy guide to grammar sides with the ordinary Joe against the nitpickers
Susie Dent: ‘English has always evolved by mistake’
The queen of Countdown’s dictionary corner on the power of positive language and finding joy in ‘mubble fubbles’
The Art of Explanation by Ros Atkins review – talk like a pro
The BBC’s analysis editor shares his tips on how to communicate with clarity and confidence
Open door
How misusing words can even change their dictionary definitionsElisabeth RibbansCoruscating was originally a sparkling synonym, but now we understand that it’s something more scathing
Ancient texts shed new light on mysterious whale behaviour that ‘captured imagination’
An unusual feeding technique only recently observed by scientists was documented nearly 2,000 years ago, a study suggests
Have some dignity, Oxford English Dictionary. No one says ‘goblin mode’
Rachel ConnollyI know its word of the year was put to a public vote, but the result smacks of a stunt trying too hard to go viral, says writer Rachel Connolly
‘Sums up 2022’: Permacrisis chosen as Collins word of the year
Dictionary defines word as ‘extended period of instability and insecurity’, with Partygate, Kyiv and ‘warm bank’ also making list
Putin's press
How swearing became a weapon of resistance for UkrainiansTheir enthusiastic use of bad language contrasts with Putin’s linguistic prissiness – and shows that Russia doesn’t own Russian
How Words Get Good by Rebecca Lee review – the secret life of books
An editorial manager at Penguin tells the inside story of how an idea gets from an author’s head onto your bookshelves
Cryptic crosswords for beginners
Crosswords for beginners: from Inspector Morse to Barbara Windsor, it’s all Latin to me‘Insurrection’ named the American Dialect Society’s word of 2021
Dictionary.com names allyship as word of the year for 2021
Site took unusual step of anointing a word it added just last month, though allyship first surfaced in the mid-1800s
NFT beats cheugy to be Collins Dictionary’s word of the year
The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English – a lexical treasure chest
Language used to describe the climate becoming more urgent, study finds
Oxford English Dictionary found between 2018 and 2020 use of ‘climate crisis’ increased nearly 20-fold
Index, a History of the by Dennis Duncan review – a delightfully readable A to Z
Can a good index be compiled by computer software, or is there an art to this overlooked endeavour?
Passing the ‘chimp test’: how women were key to the birth of language
Crossword blog
Crossword blog: the many pronunciations of ‘garage’ and ‘eyrie’
Crossword blog
Crossword blog: Boris’s bendy bananas – and do we say ‘stroke’ or ‘backslash’ in web addresses?Steven Poole's word of the week
Sugar-tax goes sour: why does the word ‘nanny’ terrify Tories?
About 659 results for Reference and languages books 
