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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Written language

May 2024

  • Julia Cameron, the author of "The Artist's Way," at home in Santa Fe.

    Self and wellbeing
    ‘My own inner critic is a bully’: Julia Cameron on creative demons and updating The Artist’s Way

  • A road sign for St Mary’s Walk in Harrogate with its apostrophe intact in May 2022.

    Are you better with apostrophes than a Yorkshire database? – quiz

May 2023

  • Drawing of a pitcher of non-alcoholic beverage with the sun rising and a person typing on a laptop.

    What makes me happy now
    What makes me happy now: not drinking

    I’m not going to lie: being sober is not a hot-air balloon ride. It’s more like a hike in the mountains

February 2023

  • Illustration of people swearing

    OMG! Is swearing still taboo?

    A judge ruled last week that using the F-word in work meetings was now ‘commonplace’. So is it acceptable to say whatever we like, wherever we are?

November 2022

  • The ivory comb, believed to have been made around 1700 BCE

    Oldest known sentence written in first alphabet discovered – on a head-lice comb

    Timeless fret over hygiene picked out on engraved Bronze age comb from ancient kingdom of Judah

August 2022

  • An interviewer and interviewee in an office

    Pass notes
    Want to land that job interview? Here are 10 spellings you need to get right

  • A person's arms are extended towards the sky holding open a book. The person is lying in a field of grass under a blue sky with a few clouds

    Stories draw us to the hero’s journey, but individual empathy doesn’t help us see the bigger picture

    Bri Lee

April 2022

  • Hoarding in Brovary, outside Kyiv, reads ‘Russian warship, fuck off’.

    Putin's press
    How swearing became a weapon of resistance for Ukrainians

    Their enthusiastic use of bad language contrasts with Putin’s linguistic prissiness – and shows that Russia doesn’t own Russian

December 2021

  • Computer Keyboard

    In our war of words, full stops are dying but the exclamation mark is doing fine

    Simon Horobin
    Punctuation has always been controversial, but right now, amid fierce political debate, matters seem especially polarised, says professor of English Simon Horobin

November 2020

  • Composite image to accompany of the words of the year 2020

    Pandemic, lockdown and Megxit: the most influential words of 2020

    As dictionaries present their words of the year, we pick 10 terms that defined the past 12 months

October 2019

  • Melissa Broder

    How the internet is changing language as we know it (ikr lol)

    Arch, misspelled, often punctuation-free: writing online has become a distinct genre. But behind the studied carelessness is real linguistic innovation

June 2019

  • Karpathos island in the Dodecanese.

    Greek to Me by Mary Norris review – 'WTF, Socrates?'

    A love letter to Greece and its language is full of delightful facts and brims with nerdish, bookish joy

May 2019

  • Editing an English language document<br>B42ART Editing an English language document

    Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer review – how to write clearly and stylishly

    This jaunty set of rules for good writing has become a bestseller in the US. But is it always right?

November 2018

  • Asterisk

    Books blog
    Th*nks for asterisks: the maligned punctuation enjoying Twitter revival

    They can sometimes draw attention to what they aim to conceal, but they have found useful new life on social media as a marker of disdain

October 2018

  • Author and former British Member of Parliament Gyles Brandreth looks at 'Growler,' a Steiff rod-bear circa 1904 at Christies auction house in central London, 30 August 2006. Brandreth is the founder and owner of the world's oldest Teddy Bear Museum, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, in England, and is selling the collection of over 1,000 bears and the museum as a going concern. The collection also includes 'Paddington Bear' from the original series and the original 'Fozzie Bear' from The Muppet Show. AFP PHOTO / JOHN D MCHUGH (Photo credit should read JOHN D MCHUGH/AFP/Getty Images)

    Have You Eaten Grandma? by Gyles Brandreth review – good grammar, with jokes

    The former Conservative MP has written an entertaining guide to how to write properly, with an anecdote about the Queen’s loo breaks thrown in

November 2017

  • Arwa Mahdawi

    We need new words to explain these curious times. How about ‘coffused’ or ‘procrastinetflix’?

    Arwa Mahdawi
    Troubled by conflicting advice over how much coffee to drink, or putting off a deadline with a quick Stranger Things binge? Don’t worry I’ve got the neologisms for you. And plenty more where those came from
  • Odysseus killing the suitors of his wife, Penelope

    The Guardian view on translation: an interpretative and creative act

    Editorial: Translators bring with them their personalities and prejudices. So it matters that a woman has finally tackled the Odyssey
  • Blue-sky punctuation … a road-traffic sign with an exclamation mark.

    Have fun, full stop: don't worry about errors, let’s learn to love punctuation

    Philip Cowell
    It’s worth learning the incomplete rules of English usage – but only as a way to better enjoy breaking them, says punctuation enthusiast Philip Cowell

October 2017

  • Curse<br>For Willpower feature for Weekend. Comic book style curse speech bubble. Vector file is layered and grouped for ease of use. Download includes EPS8 file and hi-res jpeg for maximum compatibility.

    Philip Pullman's swearwords are a useful lesson for children

    Emma Byrne
  • Sam Leith

    Write to the Point by Sam Leith review – a useful, persuasive guide to English usage

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