Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2010

Don't you hate when they spell it "hicoughs?"

What will be suitable at a Scottish- English
wedding (she is English, he is Scottish): a tie or
a bow tie? The wedding does not take place in a
church but in a hotel, and I am sure that I am not

I was going to save this for an SDC question but I'm too itchy to know
what AUE thinks about the ASA's L'Oreal adjudication. (Also, I
couldn't think of a Bifidobacterium question that only insulted the
current French president's honesty.)

From CBS Marketwatch:
Republican hopes of recapturing the House of Representatives in
November lay in districts like Virginia's 11th
end quote

I'm preparing my GRE test and this is my latest composition.  This
time I think I've corrected most of the grammar mistakes but I am not
quite sure if the words are accurate and if the logic sounds
reasonable.

I've had no particular business reading Chancery judgments apart from
entertainment. They have an element of drama about them, since there
are usually vast sums of money destined to find new homes as a result
of the elegant subtleties considered in the judgements.

For your enjoyment:
Notes from the NY Times newsroom on grammar, usage and style.
http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/red-pencils-ready-7/

Foreword
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Here is a pic of the front page of the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/pageone/scannat/index.html
As you can see, some of the headlines are italicised, some capitalize
the first letter of each word, some capitalize every letter of every

There is a discussion raging in another forum (nl.taal)
on the in principle simple question:
Is the nickname 'Dirty Harry' for Truman contemporaneous,
i.e. was it used in his time as president,

Should I write "a historical perspective" or "an historical
perspective"? I was quite happy with the first until I came across a
recent paper which used the second. The author is from the US so I
wondered if it was a more prevalent usage in Leftpondia. Any thoughts?

"The town's poor seem to me often to live the most
independent lives of any. May be they are simply
great enough to receive without misgiving. Most
think that they are above being supported by the

From the July 17 issue of /Science News/, page 15:
"During the last couple of decades, scientists poring over satellite
images have noticed several large icebergs breaking up as they
wafted along a particular stretch of the Antarctic coast."

I'm interested in the work of the architect Norman Foster. I heard about him
being commissioned for a redesign of the New York Public Library and I can
fine plenty of references to this from about two years ago. I can't find
anything more recent and I can't find anything about ...

I had a pleasant ruminate during my commute - thank's Rob!
I wondered what it might mean for somebody to understand English very
well.
I'd imagine that such a person would be able easily to understand, at