language use & abuse – Page 5 – don't confuse the narrator

purging the purple

I don’t usually just point readers to another article elsewhere, but Michael Erard’s Escaping One’s Own Shadow over on the New York Times opinion pages strikes me as well worth reading and too complex to really do justice to here.
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the RAE gets a round tuit

I’ve never really understood what the “urgente” refers to in the title of the “Manual de Español Urgente”. If it was a quick guide, surely it would be manual urgente? So, under what circumstances would we be writing “urgent Spanish” and need to check whether we had the details right?

That said, La Fundación del Español Urgente (Fundéu BBVA), have brought out a new Spanish language guide which was launched yesterday, with the title “Escribir en internet: guía para los nuevos medios y las redes sociales”.
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4-ever?

This bench in the village reminded me of the story about the little boy who told his aunt, “I love you millions and billions.”

“I love you, too, dear,” she replied.

At which he burst into tears, sobbing, “Only two?”

where (how? when?) to begin?

Since I came across a story about procrastination on the BBC Magazine page, I have, of course, been putting off blogging about it.

There’s so much there that I could comment on that I hardly know where to begin. Instead, I’ve been following links to other stories and generally wasting time.

I would like to get this posted today, though, so have finally selected three points to focus on.
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