They is a third-person pronoun, usually referring to a group of something.
It is possible, however, to use they in reference to a single something (the same is true for the possessive, objective, and reflexive forms of they: their, them, and themselves). This is sometimes called the singular they.
Whether you like the tiny emotion-pictures or despise them, emojis are heavily used throughout messaging apps.
If you’re new to emojis, or you’ve long been expressing your joy with crying smiling faces and your sass with reception desk workers, you can up your game. Check out these tips to make your texts as emoji-filled as possible.
Emojis may not be language, but some of the more commonly used symbols do have accepted meanings.
All of a sudden is an idiom that is a more poetic way of saying “suddenly.” A common mistake to make, especially for English learners, is to write all the sudden or all of the sudden. On a sudden is a historic but outmoded variant. Currently, all of a sudden is the only accepted usage.
Although all of the sudden has been used in centuries past, all of a sudden is the phrasing that eventually stuck.
Is life getting in the way of your book habit? The more hectic your schedule, the harder it is to find time to indulge in your favorite work of fiction.
Fortunately there’s a new invention called a “podcast” that may just satisfy your craving for juicy storytelling. As an audio-only experience, podcasts can be enjoyed at times when it’s simply not practical to read a book—like while driving a car during your morning commute, standing squished against strangers in a bumpy train car, or working at your computer.
Isn’t English grand?
Even if English has been called “a bastard tongue” by many, I still love it. Complex, creole, and occasionally confusing, English is a language that has borrowed and stolen some of the best elements of other languages to make something all its own. Who couldn’t love the language that gave us hilarious-sounding words like “wabbit” and “nagware”?
And with 1.5 billion active speakers, it’s also one of the most widely adopted languages in history.
Merry LitMas!
Joy to the world, the bookish holiday has arrived! How will you celebrate?
We will be cracking the spines of a few of our favorite reads from this year (which, incidentally, make great last-minute gifts for that other holiday that rhymes with LitMas). We may curl up with a book and some tea, stretch out with cocoa and a sweater, or bring a book to a favorite literary haunt.
This week, Svetlana Alexievich broke new ground in the literary world by becoming the first journalist to win the Nobel Prize for her nonfiction writing. In other news, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has commissioned a rewrite of Shakespeare’s plays and the Internet can be both a friend and foe when it comes to your writing. Check out the full stories below:
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (A Song of Ice and Fire) (Fiction) George R.
It’s that time of year again. The days grow longer and the sunshine is determined to scorch. The parks fill up with children while picnics spread out in red and white gingham patches. The dog begs to go outside as we put away our heavy coats, hanging them neatly in closets. Long pants give way to shorts as coconut-scented oils fill the air with their perfume. It’s summer.
Guest post by Annie Martirosyan
There are a number of words in Shakespeare’s plays and poems which are deceptive to modern ears. They may seem familiar words but, in fact, camouflage a quite different meaning lost to modern English. In Linguistics, these words are called False Friends. A False Friend is a word which has kept its form but has strayed from its original sense (or was a completely different word) so that the modern English word is false when compared to the original sense or word.
Edward Lear’s first influential limerick collection, A Book of Nonsense, hit bookstore shelves nearly 200 years ago. Lear didn’t invent the limerick, however; the snappy five-line poems probably sprang to life on the streets and in the taverns of 14th century Britain. Over time, people from all walks of life — children, scholars, drunks, beggars — have delighted in the witty limerick.
Academia teaches us to use proper nouns, pronouns, and punctuation, but what about other types of writing? What about types of writing, like fiction or poetry, which capture a reader in ways beyond the period or comma?
April is National Poetry Month, and a great time to help writers to answer these questions — even if in an intangible way. For example, to strict grammarians, poetry may seem as though it has no rules.
If you have ever taken a writing or literature class, you probably heard someone refer to a protagonist.
Around 400 people gathered on Sunday, November 6, at a Kuala Lumpur coffee shop called The Bee. Inside, there was barely enough room to stand, but that didn’t stop people from having fun and enjoying what they’d all come to witness—Malaysia’s very first pun competition. Adequately titled Pun Competition Malaysia, the event was a massive success, and by the end of it, Malaysia had its first winner of “The Punniest Ever” title, a guy called Zim Ahmadi.
