Modern English is increasingly gender-neutral. Efforts to render forms of address such as “mw. mr.” too literally come out as confusing or plain laughable. Professions and roles in which the person’s gender is irrelevant don’t need to be gendered.
Author Archives: Mike Wilkinson
Species names
A goldfinch isn’t a goudvink. A coal tit isn’t a koolmees. Your pond is unlikely to be visited by a ring snake or a salamander.
One doesn’t
One no longer uses the indefinite third person singular, as the grammarians like to call it. Unless one is called Prince Charles.
It ain’t necessarily so
It’s an everyday word in Dutch that’s in every toddler’s vocabulary: nodig. The nearest single equivalent in English (necessary) isn’t.
Don’t contribute
Well, I’m perfectly happy for you to have your say in this blog. What I mean is don’t overuse the word in English.
An insurance
Nobody has an insurance.
What’s this blog and why?
You may well think your English is great – after all, you can communicate with your English-speaking colleagues well enough and write reports and articles that people can understand. But there’s always room for improvement. Usually a lot of improvement
Decimal points
It’s the kind of thing that ought to belong in Elementary Dunglish but, surprisingly or not, it remains the commonest simple mistake of all.
The random nervous system
A prime example of the kind of slip-up that makes a document leave a very dubious impression.
Advanced Dunglish 