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I've always loved a good romance - or at least I have since I was about twelve or thirteen years old. The best romances, I've always thought, are the ones where you just long for the couple to be able to get together, to be together, despite all the odds stacked against them, despite misunderstandings and barriers.
The other thing that's important in a really good love story is that it's not just about the relationship- I feel more drawn in and engaged if there's a full and satisfying storyline beside the romance.
I mainly read historical fiction, so the following selection will be biased in that direction, but I'll read a romance in any genre. Firstly three recent stories I've loved:
Ann Turnbull's No Shame No Fear and the sequel Forged in the Fire. These two novels follow the fortunes of Quaker teenager Susanna in a time when her people were harshly persecuted in the 1600s. These two are an engaging and captivating read, with just the right mix of adventure, action, heartbreak and young love. Wonderful! I also found the Quaker world fascinating.
Another beautifully written love story is Sally Gardner's I, Coriander. This was another teen novel that swept me off my feet and kept me reading until the early hours. Here is a handsome prince in a fairy-tale world that runs alongside the real historical setting of Oliver Cromwell's drab and Puritan England. Coriander falls in love with him, but they don't inhabit the same world - until he makes the transition in the most unexpected way, sending a shiver of sheer delight through the reader. This is a exquisitely constructed love story.
Thirdly (to turn contemporary) is Sarah Dessen's The Truth about Forever. An American high school romance, this is far out of my usual field of interest, but I was captivated by this slow-moving, almost sensual love story. I thought it was beauifully structured and the device of the truth game that brings the two characters together was genius. By far my favourite Sarah Dessen novel.
For my last two choices, I shall turn to the stories that beguiled my own teen years. Firstly Pride and Prejudice. I know, I know, everyone quotes this one, but I discovered it at fourteen and simply adored it. Though it should really not have much to say to modern teenagers, who no longer have love and marriage at the centre of their lives and ambitions, Jane Austen nevertheless taps into such timeless truths and creates such lovable and memorable characters, that the books continue to captivate readers.
Having read my way through Jane Austen, and hungry for more, at fourteen fifteen years old, I discovered Georgette Heyer. I feel her books have dated far more than Austen's, although they are written much more recently, but if you can see past the changed meanings of many words, they are still bubbly, witty and delighful love stories. Don't expect any serious issues or deep meaningful engagement here. Think light, frothy but beautifully crafted entertainment. Try These Old Shades, my enduring favourite of Heyer's novels.

John McGrath built and maintains Wordie.org, a collaborative dictionary and social network for logophiles. By day he’s a software developer at Curbed.com. McGrath has kindly agreed to be the first in our series of guest language bloggers.

Through what must have been a series of clerical errors akin to Major Major Major Major’s promotion by an “IBM machine with a sense of humor,” OUPblog has asked me to write a guest post.

I’m manifestly unqualified to do so–I’m a programmer, and am closer to being that IBM machine than a lexicographer. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, I am no Ben Zimmer. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

First I would like to respond to the comments on my discussion of spelling reform. I was aware of the continuing efforts by some groups to simplify English spelling, but I think their chances of success are slim, because there is no public awareness of the damage done by our erratic spelling system. We need respelling bins, similar to the now ubiquitous recycling bins. (more…)

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My son was reading my post from yesterday and was scolding me for writing about my emotions describing them as “emotional diarrhea.” Of course, he speaks impeccable English and feels entitled to correct me. But, can he correct what is like for me to feel? Oh, well, at least he tried.

To celebrate the holidays we asked some of our favorite people in publishing what their favorite book was. Let us know in the comments what your favorite book is and be sure to check back throughout the week for more “favorites”.

Dylan Moulton is an Associate Marketing Manager at Palgrave Macmillan.

The book that stuck with me this year was Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us. With so much attention directed to the environment lately, it’s a thought experiment with teeth. The imagery of a human impact on the earth – that millions of years from now Manhattan could be a lush forest while the only evidence of human beings may lie in degraded plastics – not only lingered but sparked conversation.

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Life in England is difficult for those of the Quaker faith, something that fifteen-year-old Susanna has experienced personally with her father in prison for refusing to pay church tithes. To help her family, Susanna leaves her small country town to become a servant to another Friend of Truth in neighboring Hemsbury. Things are not any easier in Hemsbury, especially after the Quaker laws are

Lost in the hubbub about the new words and disappearing hyphens in the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is a more subtle type of editorial revision. The Shorter, as a dictionary built on historical principles, provides information about the age of words and their main senses. The date range of earliest known use is noted in each entry by E (early), M (mid), or L (late) plus a century number: thus “M18″ means a word was first recorded in the mid-18th century. This style of dating is admittedly approximate, but giving the exact year of a word’s first recorded use would lend a false sense of precision. We very rarely can determine the first “baptismal” usage of a word with any confidence. But even with dates given by rough century divisions, the editors of the Shorter have been able to revise the dating of nearly 4,500 words and senses based on discoveries of earlier recorded uses, known as “antedatings” in the dictionary world. Much of this new antedating information is derived from the ongoing work done for the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Since I dabble in what my colleague Erin McKean recently called “the competitive sport of antedating,” I thought I’d share a discovery of mine that made it into the new edition of the Shorter.

(more…)

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Dictionary Day has been a lot of fun and we hope you will continue to celebrate all week by taking advantage of the the free access to Oxford Language Dictionaries Online. Our final quiz is about Italian words. Which quiz did you do best on, French, German, Spanish or Italian?

Question 1: In English we turn as red as a beetroot; what vegetable do we resemble in Italian?

Question 2: If someone offers to go alla romana on a meal out, what do they mean?

Question 3: You want to translate the news to your Italian friend – what are the Italian terms for climate change? fair trade? PFI?

Question 4: You are familiar with your everyday cappuccino, but what did the word originally describe? And what do latte and macchiato mean in Italian?

Question 5: What’s the Italian for weekend, marketing, pub, happy hour?
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When a new edition of a dictionary is published, you never know what people are going to pick up on as noteworthy. Last week, when the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary was officially launched, much of the surrounding publicity had to do with the all the brand-new material: the 2,500 new words and phrases and 1,300 new illustrative quotes. But what’s gotten just as much attention is something that’s missing. The hyphen, that humble piece of connective punctuation, has been removed from about 16,000 compound words appearing in the text of the Shorter. The news has been making the rounds everywhere from the BBC to the Wall Street Journal. “Hyphens are the latest casualty of the internet age,” writes the Sydney Morning Herald. “Thousands of hyphens perish as English marches on,” a Reuters headline bleakly reads. A satirical paper even warns of a “hyphen-thief” on the loose. But don’t worry, hyphenophiles: the punctuation lives on, even if it’s entering uncertain terrain in the electronic era. (more…)

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I've been remiss in not posting about the latest Growing with Grammar program by my friend Tamela Davis, for Grade 5. More good stuff for home educating families looking for more choice. And more Growing with Grammar posts and reviews (for Grades 1&2, 3, and 4) here, here, and here. I'm a big fan of Patricia T. O'Conner's Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English,

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Jonesin’ Crosswords we have a fun way for you to discover the new words in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. To learn more about the SOED check out Ben Zimmer’s columns here and here.

“In the Language”–*New entries from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition.
by Matt Jones

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Today’s an exciting day for OUP, as we launch the sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. If this were a birth announcement, we’d have to give the vitals: Oxford University Press joyfully announces the arrival of twin volumes, weighing a total of 13.6 pounds (6.2 kilograms), with 3,800 pages, 6 million words of text, more than half a million definitions, and 84,000 illustrative quotations. Welcome to the world, Shorter volumes 1 and 2! (Oh, and your diminutive friend too, the Shorter on CD-ROM.) (more…)

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Ben’s column this week looks at the fascinating history of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. He explains how the OED, quite possibly OUP’s most important book (well, series of books), got trimmed to a manageable two volumes and why this development was important. Enjoy!

In 1902, a fellow named William Little took on the task of making a “shorter” version of the monumental Oxford English Dictionary. When it was finally published in 1933 (more than a decade after Little’s death), the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary took up two thick volumes totalling 2,500 pages. Still, the abridgment proved to be a more convenient (and more affordable) alternative to the massive OED. This month sees the publication of the sixth edition of the Shorter, and the two volumes now span more than 3,700 pages, packed with more than half a million definitions covering ten centuries of English. Little’s dictionary, it turns out, is far from little. And despite its name, it’s not getting any shorter! (more…)

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Today we are happy to present the third post in Diane and Michael Ravitch’s series on Moreover. They are the authors of THE ENGLISH READER: What Every Literate Person Needs To Know, .

For decades, professors of pedagogy have preached the gospel of Relevance. According to this gospel, students will have greater motivation to learn if their lessons are about their own lives, or if they can read stories about people just like themselves. (more…)

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Yesterday we co-posted the first of a series of blogs by Diane and Michael Ravitch, authors of The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs To Know. Today we present the second article, also available at Moreover, by Diane Ravitch.

I confess that I am distraught by the contemporary paucity of allusion. (more…)

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Last week for my inaugural column here at OUPblog I talked about how new words bubble up into the English lexicon and how Oxford lexicographers judge which ones deserve inclusion in new editions of our dictionaries. But we’re keeping tabs on many other more subtle aspects of our changing language beyond the flashy lexical newcomers. Take spelling errors, for instance. Dictionaries are, of course, expected to give the standard spellings of words and phrases, reflecting what is generally considered the most correct and acceptable in written English. But sometimes common misspellings tell us fascinating things about how writers navigate the tricky waters of English orthography. And sometimes once-nonstandard spellings become so widely accepted that they even (gasp) make it into the pages of the dictionary. (more…)

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By Anatoly Liberman

Even though etymology rests on the solid foundation of the comparative method, its conclusions are tentative, like those of all sciences dealing with reconstruction. Knowledge of sound correspondences and historical facts may prevent researchers from making silly mistakes, but it often fails to point the way to the best solution. In tracing the prehistory of words, serendipity and inspiration still play (and will always play) a role. The next two essays on this blog owe their existence to a happy coincidence. In some British dialects, pimp means “small bundle of firewood.” This fact (recorded in the OED) has been celebrated, to use a trendy word, in several books on language, though I am not aware of anyone’s attempt to explain the second meaning. Nor did I intend to delve into this problem, but, when I read about pimp “bundle,” I decided, out of curiosity, to look it up in several dictionaries. One definition struck me as nearly incredible: pimp “faggot.” Faggot, it will be recalled, besides being an insult, means “bundle of sticks.” How could one opprobrious word become the definition of another? This is what made me study both of them. My conclusions have a few holes, but perhaps they will partly dispel the obscurity enveloping the etymology of pimp and faggot. At the moment, all dictionaries say: “Pimp. Origin unknown.” (more…)

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By Kirsty

“Why British English?”, I hear you ask. Well, that’s because the OUPBlog is going international, with the new UK Early Bird. I will be posting from the UK office of OUP, bringing you the British take on all things blog-like. By way of introduction, I thought I’d take you through a lighthearted tour of some of my favourite examples of British English. (more…)

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