As it’s a new year (and it’s Sunday and I’m feeling lazy), I thought it would be an appropriate time to look back on my 10 most-viewed posts from last year, including my thoughts on why they might have been more popular.

10. An Irish type of English: in what I fear will be a recurring theme in this list, this might have been a slightly misleading title, as it ended up being mostly about surnames, albeit Irish ones. But I think a lot of people are interested in the meanings and origins of surnames.

9. Wherefore Must Thou Misquote Me?: Well, Shakespeare and common misconceptions are always good draws!

8. Revert Back to Me: a classic combination of a phrase that people aren’t quite sure is correct and want to find out, and a phrase that drives colleagues crazy when it appears in emails.

7. Barcelona: again, I feel a little guilty about this, as people might have been expecting an account of my trip to Barcelona, when in fact I wrote it before I left, recounting the fascinating story of two Catalan words which have entered the English language. I had a lovely time there by the way, and you should definitely visit, if you were wondering.

6. Moist: I think half of the people who viewed this were a little disappointed as they were looking for something else…

5. Merry Holidays, Happy Christmas!: who doesn’t love Christmas!?

4. Is Good Grammar Necessary?: This post was indicative of a trend which surprised me at first but in retrospect makes sense: posts about grammar and basic details about English usage tended to be more popular. I realised that because there’s a gap between the average person’s ability to use English fluently and their knowledge of some of the basic aspects of the structure of the language, people are curious about how the language works.

3. Pineapple: no idea!

2. Brexit: A Political Portmanteau: makes sense, as everyone was, and still is!, talking about it. Though I didn’t really give my thoughts on it, just looked at the word itself and portmanteaus in general. Which was probably my way of dealing with the shock of it (I still can’t bring myself to write even indirectly about Trump).

And finally…

1. Semicolon: like no.5, this is one that surprised me until it didn’t. As I saw more and more people visit this post (and there’s a big gap between this and no.2) I didn’t understand why, as it seemed like a very simple, purely informative post. Then I realised that no-one has any idea how to use semicolons, and people are therefore always googling how.

So that’s my top ten: an eclectic bunch to say the least. Here’s to managing to scrape together another ten barely legible pieces in 2017!