Awful, embarrassing news about our education system from the American grammar blogger David Crystal. (Spotter’s badge to the estimable John E McIntyre of The Baltimore Sun.) Asked to include an “appropriate” adverb in the phrase “The sun shone ________ in the sky”, children were marked down for using “bright” and “dutifully”. Crystal points out, rightly…

Does anyone else slightly want to cry at that thing John Humphrys does on the Today programme about once every two years, when new slang words are put in the dictionary? You know, the thing where he pronounces each of the terms that the Youth of Today use, in a voice that suggests he is…