The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20061219221031/http://www.economist.com:80/research/johnson/
Johnson | Economist.com
Economist.com Economist.com ADVANCED SEARCH



Tuesday December 19th 2006 denotes premium content | Log in | Free registration | Help

OPINION
WORLD
BUSINESS
FINANCE
SCIENCE
PEOPLE
BOOKS & ARTS
MARKETS
DIVERSIONS
Cities and Countries

EIU online store


Articles by subject
Backgrounders
Surveys
Economics A-Z
Style guide



Management
Reading

Business Education
Executive Dialogue




Full contents
Past issues



Free registration
Web subscriptions
Print subscriptions
Academic offers
Gift vouchers
Mobile editions
E-mail alerts
RSS feeds




Books, diaries and more



Classifieds
Business Recruitment, Tenders, Franchise Opportunities, Properties: click here



The Economist Group
The Economist Intelligence Unit

Economist Conferences

The World In

Intelligent Life

CFO

Roll Call

European Voice

Economist Diaries and Business Gifts



Economist.com
The Economist
Contact us
Media Directory
Advertising info
Job opportunities



Media Directory
Staff Books



Printable page

E-mail this

Johnson
May 10th 2004
From Economist.com


FROM 1992 until 1999 The Economist published a monthly column on the English language, under the by-line 'Johnson', as in Samuel Johnson, the famous man of letters and dictionary-maker. The columns, and a few later, longer articles, (listed below) were all written by Stephen Hugh-Jones. He writes now:

“My aim was to entertain readers, not learnedly instruct them; quite shamelessly, I'm an enthusiast of language, not linguistics, a curio-collector, not a professor. We were once taken to task by an academic: why did we not cover language as seriously as other topics? I answered him that one can describe a car as riding smoothly, without dilating on the geometry of its hyperdihedral MacPherson struts. I suspect the real answer was simpler: we could have offered the coverage he wanted, but it for sure wouldn't have been me that wrote it. And, yes, to be wholly serious for once, that 'me' is indeed English, whether pedants like it or not.”

Johnson's manifesto | “-ee” endings | The BBC | Prepositions | Pedantry and precision | Indian English | French and English | Scrabble | “Might” and “might have” | The “New Shorter” OED | The “Wordplay” exhibition | William Tyndale | Greek and Latin | Appropriating names | Terms for females | Britain and America | Dennis Potter | English dialects | American sporting metaphors | Lost words and black talk | Words with opposite meanings | Quaint rules | The politics of language | Hemispheres and language | Borrowed English | “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language” | Changes of name | War and language | “The United States” | Context | “May” and “might” | Plurals | The “Oxford English Grammar” | Apostrophes | Caribbean English | Film dialogue | English dialects | Neudeutsch | The vocabulary of prejudice | Shibboleths | Trademarks | The language of politics | Sporting metaphors | Mediocrity | The Scottish Language |Standard English | Border-crossing words | Famous last words | Chaim Bermant | The language of command | The language of soccer | Classical etymology | Three new English dictionaries | the case against capitalism | Hurrah/boo words | Received pronunciation | English, the world language








Websites

The online version of “The Economist Style Guide” provides guidance on English usage.





OPINION | WORLD | BUSINESS | FINANCE & ECONOMICS | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
PEOPLE | BOOKS & ARTS | MARKETS & DATA | DIVERSIONS | PRINT EDITION


Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2006. All rights reserved.
Advertising info | Legal disclaimer | Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Help



Mobile editions RSS feeds E-mails Subscribe Email and Mobile Editions Help