One of life’s great mysteries is the offside law in football. It causes a lot of discussion and controversy among football fans and commentators, as well as among players and managers. A comment on a recent controversial decision about offside made me look at the wording of the offside law. I discovered a surprising (and,…… Continue reading Obstructing vision with a transparent adverb
Tag: Ambiguity
An ambiguous older brother
If you are comparing only 2 things, should you use the comparative (eg bigger) or the superlative (eg biggest)? Style guides tend to advise us to use the comparative. But I came across a case where the comparative could be ambiguous. Suppose you are writing about 3 brothers from the perspective of the youngest. You…… Continue reading An ambiguous older brother
Flushing out the Oxford comma to clear the NHS backlog
In early September this year, the new UK Prime Mister, Liz Truss (remember her?) appointed Conservative MP Thérèse Coffey as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Soon after, the press reported that Thérèse Coffey had sent staff in her new departmental fiefdom a strict manual on writing. I haven’t seen the writing manual…… Continue reading Flushing out the Oxford comma to clear the NHS backlog
Time to stop talking about the time
The conjunction while can have 2 meanings: a temporal meaning, introducing a subordinate clause that refers to an action occurring at the same time as an action described by the main clause: They whistled while they worked.a concessive meaning, as a synonym for although: While they aren’t perfect, they are good enough. Avoid while for…… Continue reading Time to stop talking about the time
Even more cautiously optimistic
Talking a few days ago about reopening society after the lockdown, Boris Johnson said he was cautiously optimistic. Coming back to that topic last week, he said that he was now ‘even more cautiously optimistic’. He probably meant to say that he was now even more optimistic, but his careless phrasing was ambiguous. His words…… Continue reading Even more cautiously optimistic