We begin our basic patterns of deception with an easy fix: lack of contractions. In Real Life Authentic human speech patterns include slurring words together.… Read More »Contractions or the Lack Thereof | Liar Liar
Twelfth century England marks the transition period between Old and Middle English. William the Conqueror’s victory in 1066 ushered in a slew of French nobility… Read More »In the Silence of the Darkest Century
Anachronism, that bane of all historical fiction writers, can crop up when you least expect it. Obvious New World acquisitions—such as cocoa and tobacco—are easy… Read More »Anachronism: Out of Place in Time and Space
Prescriptive Rule: “Never use a body part as the subject of your sentence.” E.g., “Her shoulders rose in a hapless shrug.” (This structure is deemed bad, according… Read More »The Case of the Autonomous Body Parts
If English language elements are a collection of family members, the Subjunctive Mood is the sickly great-uncle, bed-ridden and lingering at death’s door for… Read More »If I Were Any More Uncertain, I’d Be Subjunctive
I was raised on the King James Version of The Bible (the good ol’ KJV). In addition to its spiritual tutelage, this translation quite nicely… Read More »Standing on Formality
It never fails to amaze me the outrage that people can muster up about language use. An example from the recent past lies in the… Read More »Hopefully You’re Not Offended by This
We find one of the longest battles in English linguistic history in that simple, problematic word “ask.” You wouldn’t think that three small letters… Read More »When Someone Has an Axe to Grind
True story: “its” as a pronoun didn’t come around until Early Modern English. Up until the late sixteenth century, the 3rd-person gender-neutral possessive pronoun… Read More »When Resistance Really Is Futile