mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
There are many, many blogs dedicated to the use of the English language. Some are fairly comprehensive; others are tightly focused on one aspect of language usage that should be corrected, protected, or mocked. Here is a sampling of those blogs for your enjoyment.
Punctuation
Apostrophe Abuse and Apostrophe Catastrophes give us examples of apostrophes that shouldn’t be there, and some cases where they should be but aren’t. The picture above, from Apostrophe Abuse, makes mistakes in both apostrophe and quotation mark use.
Then there’s the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks, which never runs short of material, since it seems memo, ad, and sign makers adore putting quote marks around seemingly random words.
Lower Case l looks at words in which all the letters are capitalized except the L, which happens a lot more than you’d expect.
The tagline at Criggo says “Newspapers are going away. That’s too bad.” This refers to the entertainment value of the weird things that make it to print because of a deadline rush, miscommunication, or lack of editing. Probably Bad News also collects news items that use odd or confusing language and misprints, but includes internet and television news as well as newspapers.
Say What?! documents signs that make you look twice because of misprints, poor grammar or spelling, confusing syntax, and/or double entendres.
Published mistakes are on the internet are commonplace (especially in my posts), but they are usually corrected as soon as they are noticed. Rest assured there is no shortage of people waiting to point out such mistakes. The fluid nature of internet publishing makes these everyday mistakes hard to blog about. However, internet automation lends itself to a special brand of language comedy. Autocomplete Me publishes screenshots of the Google search feature that suggests what you might be searching for based on previously used search terms that contain the first letters or words you type. You have to wonder about those other searchers. The blog also accepts screenshots from other sources, like Bing and Captcha.
Bad Writing
[Citation Needed] does nothing but repost weird, grammatically wrong, or confusing sentences from Wikipedia.
Writing Advice
The Subversive Copy Editor has advice for writers and for those poor souls who have to deal with them. Other blogs featuring writing advice include Grammar Monkeys and Copyediting. A subcategory of language blogs focus on the misuse or overuse of a particular phrase. The Rosa Parks of Blogs collects examples of “Absurd Comparisons By Real People Using Famous People”. Literally, A Web Log tracks the abuse of the word “literally”, which is overused and usually misused. You’ll find more cliches and examples of bad writing in the blogs It’s Your Damned Language and Terribly Write.
Words
Dictionary Evangelist is one of many blogs devoted to words. Another is Wordlustitude, “a dictionary of rare, raw, real words” collects examples of made up terms in publications and defines those odd words. An example is employer-icide, meaning probably just what you think, used in a blurb for an upcoming movie. Other examples include thingy-majiggy-bobdoohicky-thang-thang and geekphoric.
Language as Art
Josh Millard turned a little idea into a flier which turned into a meme and then into a blog called Useless Fliers. Other people are now putting useless fliers up in far-flung places.
Letterheady from Shaun Usher brings us letterheads that are worth a look because of who they come from, great design, and for the fact that some people still write letters on paper. Letterheady is a companion blog to Letters of Note, where you’ll find interesting letters of all kinds that deserve to be recorded for posterity. The Ampersand is a photo blog dedicated entirely to instances of ampersands spotted all over.
These are just a few of the many blogs dedicated to the English language. If you know of more, please share them in the comments.
See also: A Sampling of Niche Blogs, Niche Blogs: Awesome Animals Edition, Niche Blogs: Focused on Food, and Niche Blogs: Found Photos Edition.
Comments (23)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
Oh, how I love Harpo.
And I think all these great links will keep me busy for a month. Thanks!
posted by adriana on 7-29-2010 at 12:30 pm
Thanks for the nod to Terribly Write. Readers will find some brief, entertaining (and occasionally snarky) tips on writing correctly, all illustrated by the writings of Yahoo’s professional staff. The sheer quantity of errors they make every day provides constant fodder for TW.
posted by Laura on 7-29-2010 at 12:53 pm
Oh.my.word. Thank you for making me wish I had a three-hour lunch break. This will keep me entertained for days! :D
posted by Grobanite33 on 7-29-2010 at 2:17 pm
It’s more general than most of the blogs you mention, and can sometimes be fairly esoteric, but LanguageLog is sometimes a fun blog to noodle through. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
posted by John Bejarano on 7-29-2010 at 2:46 pm
Oh! Finally! This is like a phone book for web sites! Thank-you sooo much.I now really have reason to be on this thing…
posted by Cheryl Melton on 7-29-2010 at 3:52 pm
I regularly get asked to stop editing signs in supermarkets.
I swear it’s a pre-requisite for a supermarket job.
Explains why I didn’t work in one for long.
posted by Bakedpotatoes on 7-29-2010 at 5:32 pm
This was so funny! I laughed so hard I thought I was going to have an asthma attack.
posted by Kelly on 7-29-2010 at 11:34 pm
Oh no….I can see many many hour’s waisted on these “horrific” misues of the english language
posted by KerriD on 7-30-2010 at 12:12 am
Unfortunately, ProbablyBadNews was absorbed into Fail blog. =( They still post things every now and then, but it’s just not the same.
posted by Logan on 7-30-2010 at 12:16 am
oooh, I’d so hoped to make this list. :(
Some very nice choices, though!
posted by lynneguist on 7-30-2010 at 6:42 am
You also need to check out http://www.languageandgrammar.com and the accompanying book by Paul Yeager, “Literally, the Best Language Book Ever: Annoying Words and Abused Phrases You Should Never Use Again”. Both the blog and book are very funny and full of information.
posted by Tom on 7-30-2010 at 8:16 am
I love the “blog†of “unnecessary†quotation marks. However, I don’t think that the poster with the chicken should be on that site.
The “bird” and the “worm” in the expression are not literally a bird and a worm. They are college students and summer courses.
The quote marks are being used “appropriately”.
posted by colin on 7-30-2010 at 8:37 am
Kerri, that was literally the best comment ever!
And it’s delightful that the stationery sample comes from Harpo Marx of all people. Honk Honk!
posted by KKB on 7-30-2010 at 8:48 am
colin, I think I “know” what you “mean”.
posted by Miss Cellania on 7-30-2010 at 9:22 am
Suprised that my favorite, Engrish.com, isn’t mentioned…
I’m going to have to check all of these out though!
posted by Tara on 7-30-2010 at 10:10 am
I went to the University of St Andrews for grad school and they take punctuation very seriously. They spent part of our orientation explaining that there is no period after “St” and no apostrophe in “Andrews.” So seeing coverage of the British Open with “St. Andrew’s” was a bit painful.
posted by Megan on 7-30-2010 at 10:42 am
*sigh*
Oh…I just lost the whole weekend…but strictly for educational purposes, no? I mean, these will be used in the classroom, so I shouldn’t feel guilty! :)
Thank you, thank you, thaaaaaaank you.
posted by Helenann on 7-30-2010 at 11:08 am
I saw Sean’s Painting “Doing it right the first time” the other day… Guess that means Sean’s Painting will have to come back…
posted by Lucy on 7-30-2010 at 11:14 am
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! That food stamp sign is on Washington Street in Boston! I pass it every Wednesday on the Silver Line bus. A co-worker and I have both taken pictures of it; I wonder if he uploaded it to the blog? Too funny.
posted by Kristin on 7-30-2010 at 3:30 pm
On the baseball item, I must nitpick. Being banned for life is, in fact, different from being banned forever insofar as bans can be lifted posthumously. For example, Chicago White Sox player Shoeless Joe Jackson was banned for life, but there continues a movement to get Major League Baseball to reinstate him so he can be elected to the Hall of Fame. If the movement succeeds, his ban would have lasted his lifetime, but not forever.
posted by Al on 7-30-2010 at 6:12 pm
I’m so glad to find out I’m not the only one who is horrified at the way English is abused these days.
posted by Joe on 8-2-2010 at 2:08 pm
Thanks for this, the sites are brilliant.
Also try http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com :)
posted by Y on 8-3-2010 at 9:28 am
What about PassiveAgressiveNotes.com? I love that blog.
posted by Janellionaire on 8-3-2010 at 2:54 pm