Photo: majorten.com ENGLISH IS BAFFLING, isn't it? No wonder. It’s a real mongrel language, influenced by German, Greek and Latin in particular. We stole pyjamas and bungalows from India. We plundered French cafés and restaurants. We pulled chocolate and moccasins right out of the hands of native Americans. And Japanese pub singers were enjoying karaokes well before we jumped on stage. So, if you can’t stay composed enough to compose, if you think grammar is more grating than

Photo: Sam Williams/Pixabay “THE JOB IS CHALLENGING. But we have a good team. And we’re all trained to diffuse situations and contain physical outbursts.” I received this exact message during the week from a nurse working in mental health. Spot anything wrong with it? I’m not talking about the fact that she played down what is clearly an extremely difficult job. I’m talking about one of the words she used. Calm offensive In case you missed it, what she meant to write was that

Photo: Techslide HOW DO YOU SEPARATE good spellers from bad ones? Simple. Ask them to spell the word ‘separate’. ‘Separate’ is the most commonly misspelled word in Britain today, according to a report in this week’s Sun newspaper. The report says we get it wrong at least twice as often as any other word. It was typed incorrectly into Google’s search bar 92,100 times in the past month, with most tapping in ‘seperately’ and others going for ‘sepperately’ or ‘seperatelly’ (maybe

Wrong side of the law? Dominic Cummings hits the news. Photo: The Times "I CAN REALLY HEAR YOUR VOICE when you write," a client said to me recently. She’s not the first. If you’ve heard my Geordie accent, you may be wondering whether that’s a good thing. But I’m sure it was meant as a compliment. "How do you do that?" she then asked. "Erm, I’m not sure," I replied. But I thought about it because she and others want to know how. Maybe not for writing a formal piece if they hap