I was reading a bestseller the other day, or rather I was trying to. But I couldn't. I'm going to try to explain why I couldn't...

So what does the opening of La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Keats have to do with the world's largest chain of coffee shops? O what can ...

A Word A Day , has just put up the word  fluke . Fluke has several meanings: it can be a funny little fish, the point of an anchor, or a st...

I have been having fun today. I have been rewriting, improving and cutting. Here are the first ten pages of Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit b...

This from Wilt by Tom Sharpe. Mr Wilt is being questioned about the disappearance of his wife. 'Interesting word "rehearsal...

Have a look at this paragraph from the opening chapter of the 1939 novel Gadsby  by Ernest Vincent Wright, and see if you can tell what...

I'm reading Wilt by Thomas Sharpe at the moment. It's terribly good fun so far but I have been troubled, dear reader, sorely troubl...

There was a splendid article in The Independent the other day. Well, like most people who praise newspaper articles, I simply mean that I...

I worry about these posts on useful words , you know. Sometimes I wonder what the merry hell is the point of telling you, dear reader, abou...

Professor Kathryn Sutherland , who, through no fault of her own, is an academic at St Anne's College at the University of Oxford in the...

People didn't stick their heads into ovens with the gas on, jump in front of subway trains or come plummeting like dead weights out of ...

According to Brewers the idea of Martians living on Mars was invented by H.G. Wells in 1898. According to Wikipedia the idea was popularise...

The Inky Fool doesn't usually get involved in politics. Why fall into a camp when you can stay in a hotel? However, the guards at Guant...

I never take much notice of publishers. I don't go into a bookshop, stride up to the counter and ask, 'Do you have anything publish...

There's a good little article by Nicholas Shakespeare on Graham Greene's voice and technique here . Without wishing to pick too m...

Contemplate the title of this post. It is less natural than the original. It is less clear than the original. It is less snappy than the or...

Last night, as the clock struck twelve, I was busily proof-reading when a chap asked me what  exactly a Grand Panjandrum is. There was an...

I am as hungover as an avenue of willow trees. So all you're getting today are three descriptions of wages of gin. This from Lucky Jim ...

Why use one syllable, gentle reader, when you could use six? Why use words that other people will understand when you could be incomprehens...