language

Storytime

Niall O'Donnell 6 Comments

Hav you ever read a story that wasn’t told in the past tense? Maybe a few here and there were in the present tense, but it’s safe to assume most short stories or novels you’ve read have been told in the past tense. I was thinking about this today while reading (specifically I think a shift from past simple to past perfect simple to talk about something that happened earlier in the story triggered it).

It’s something that’s true across many languages, and we’re so used to it we don’t really notice. But if you think about it, most stories would work just as well in the present tense. And some writers do use the present tense, for certain sections of their stories at least, to provide a sense of immediacy. So why not use that for the whole story then, and for every story? Continue reading →

Then!

Niall O'Donnell 1 Comment

Yes, before you ask, I did just choose this title because the last post was called Now? Though it’d probably be more logical to have written this one first, as it’d appear below the other post. Ah well, nothing I can do about that now.

Anyway, even if my motivation for choosing this title was rather flippant, looking into it, then is quite an interesting word. Continue reading →

Now?

Niall O'Donnell 2 Comments

A pretty simple word, really, but a couple of months ago I began to think about how nuanced it is. Continue reading →

For the Love of Cats

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

I came across a video somewhere on the internet today, of someone’s front-door security-camera footage. It showed a delivery man petting the homeowner’s cat, and the uploader had captioned it something like, Check out the UPS guy loving on my cat.

Well that’s a new one, I thought. Loving on. Hating on I’d heard of, but not loving on. Continue reading →

On Christmas or At Christmas?

Niall O'Donnell 1 Comment

At Chrismas.

But look, maybe you say on Christmas, and that’s probably OK too. I suppose it all depends on what you mean by Christmas, really. Continue reading →

Christmas Crackers

Niall O'Donnell 4 Comments

I was looking at some Christmas crackers today (it’s Christmas), and I realised how the word cracker can be used to refer to very different things. There are Christmas crackers, but then there are also crackers you can eat with cheese, and something that you generally think is great can be described as a cracker).

Before I go any further, I’ve just thought to myself that Christmas crackers aren’t really popular in the United States (I couldn’t even find a picture of one in WordPress’ free-picture library, so I went with the cute dog instead), and as about half of you reading this are from that part of the world, I should explain what they are. They look like this: Continue reading →

This Event Takes Place in the Past

Niall O'Donnell 6 Comments

Huh?

No it doesn’t. Yes, it took place in the past, but that was the past, so it doesn’t take place in the past. It did, but now it doesn’t.

I got the message that forms the title of this post from my Outlook calendar today, as I was looking for a document that had been attached to a meeting from Tuesday this week (18.12.18, today is 23.12.18). Naturally, it confused me a little. Continue reading →