A wide range of newsletters, clippings and cuttings, catalogues and correspondence arrives (and is welcomed) on ET's editorial desk. From the mass that goes into our files comes this mix of lost apostrophes, curious usage and abusage, and arcane expressions.

A wide range of newspapers, news-letters, cuttings and clippings, catalogues and correspondence arrives (and is welcomed) on ET's editorial desk. From the mass that goes into our files comes this mix of couth comments, odd usages, consumer-conscious acronyms, sexual neologisms, and arcane expressions.

The telephone and the tape recorder have separately added new dimensions to the art of oral communication. Their coming together in the telephone answering machine, however, has produced a third dimension all of its own.

Popular journalism in Britain has a language all its own, shaped by the pressures of editorial deadlines and a perennial need for stereotyped characters performing in life's daily dramas

In ET1, Jenny Cheshire looked at male bias and in ET2 Mary Brown Parlee discussed ‘genderlects’ and conversational politics. A Danish linguist now presents some evidence that women and men do use the language differently.

The following extract from The Story of English (BBC/Faber, 1986) takes us from the Scotland of James VI in the early 17th century through Northern Ireland to the Appalachians and beyond.

In the first issue of ET we took a look at the many uses of ‘Anglo’. Now, on behalf of fellow Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish, freelance writer JANE MARSHALL argues for less ambiguity and more accuracy in the British use of an ancient affix.

The Dictionary of American Regional English is not only a great national scholarly project but also a pioneering venture in lexicography. How did dialectology and the computer work out together in the preparation of Volume I?

In ET8, October 1986, EAN TAYLOR wrote about arcane expressions used by banks and building societies in England. Now he considers the phraseology of British life insurance/assurance, its euphemisms and jargon, and would welcome information about parallel usages elsewhere.

Responding to Stephen Wade's ‘Anglo-Irish Literature’ (ET8, Oct 86) EOGHAN MAC CORMAIC has written from, Long Kesh Prison in Northern Ireland and PÁDRAIG Ó CONCHÚIR from East Ham in England.

‘Scholars’ views on which dialects are worth studying, even on what is and what isn't a dialect, almost invariably embody some sort of hidden ideological agenda.' Is it so?

In ET6, Gillian Kay described how Japanese absorbs and re-shapes the words of English. There is, however, another trend in Japan, in which English is used as a social and commercial accessory.

Elizabeth Kirkpatrick, recently editor of the Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary, has just completed the latest revision of Roget's Thesaurus for Longman. What is the history and purpose of this now venerable tome?

The most venerable purism of them all in English has been resistance to Latinate words, and the most vigorous resistance fighter was William Barnes of Dorset.

To the making of wordbooks there is no end, and a recent addition to the long list is the Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary (1987), compiled by MARTIN H MANSER and NIGEL D TURTON (with a preface by DAVID CRYSTAL). Its publishers describe it as ‘a unique new dictionary which combines the elements of thesaurus, usage guide, lexicon and historical survey’. The PWD has 838 pages, and costs £4.95 in the UK, $12.95 in Canada, $16.95 in Australia, and $19.99 in New Zealand; there is no indication of how many words are covered. The three columns reproduced below show how the compilers have combined snappy, stripped-down definitions with boxed notes about usage and etymology. The PWD is an entertaining book, marred only by the quality of the paper used for the first edition.