Some random thoughts on tell about

When reading ESL teachers' blogs I sometimes come upon as instruction like - 'tell about something that happened to you this week'. Now that doesn't sound quite right to me; I expect to read 'tell me' or 'tell us' about something. Without a personal object, I'd expect 'talk about something that happened to you this week'.

At first, I thought this was because the teachers weren't native speakers, but then I noticed a couple of examples from American writers, so I thought I'd have a bit of a closer look

Some random thoughts about hurt people and dictionaries

We can often use participles (usually ending in -ed or -ing) as adjectives. A present participle (-ing form) usually has an active meaning and a past participle (3rd form) usually has a passive meaning:

• The winning team was cheered loudly by its supporters.
  = the team which won - active meaning
• The players of the defeated team looked exhausted.
  = the team that was defeated - passive meaning

In this post, I'm interested in one particular pair of adjectives made from past participles (PPs): injured and hurt.

Random-ize: Bentley's Miscellany and the spelling of -ize suffix verbs

Founded by the publisher of the Standard Novels series, Richard Bentley, his Miscellany was a literary magazine, publishing novels in installment form. The first editor was Charles Dickens, whose second novel, Oliver Twist, first appeared in the magazine, starting in the first issue.

This is part of an investigation I've been doing into the use and spelling of -ize suffix verbs and their spelling (-ize or -ise) in British English. For more details, related posts and the methods I've used, see the -ize / -ise page. For more on the spelling of -ize verbs in periodicals, see the Periodicals start page.

Random-ise: The Spectator and the spelling of -ize suffix verbs

The Spectator started off life as a liberal-radical periodical, and is now the intellectual forum of modern conservatism. It bears the same name as, but has nothing to do with, a famous 18th century magazine published by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele from 1711 to 1712.

This is part of an investigation I've been doing into the use and spelling of -ize suffix verbs and their spelling (-ize or -ise) in British English. For more details, related posts and the methods I've used, see the -ize / -ise page. For more on the spelling of -ize verbs in periodicals, see the Periodicals start page.