My publications broadly fall into three groups: articles & chapters, blogs, and reviews. Each of these serve different, but complementary purposes.
Articles & Chapters
The articles and chapters I write are mainly to communicate within the scientific community. These publications disseminate specialist knowledge – in my case social-historical linguistic knowledge – and require peer reviewing to ensure the high level of quality and reliability associated with scientific research.
2019
Language Standardization. In Mark Aronoff (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.
2018
Modern English Usage from Britain to America: Bryan Garner follows Henry Fowler from A Dictionary of Modern American English Usage to Garner’s Modern English Usage. English Today 34: 4, pp. 1–9.
The Usage Guide: Evolution of a Genre. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.) English Usage Guides: History, Advice, Attitudes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2017
Linguistic Prescriptivism. In Mark Aronoff (ed.) Oxford Bibliographies in Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press.
2016
A Perspective on Prescriptivism: Language in reviews of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. In Carol Percy and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.) Prescription and Tradition in Language: Establishing standards across time and space. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Codification of Correctness: the normative sources of Joseph Priestley’s The Rudiments of English Grammar. In Massimo Sturiale & Giovanni Iamartino (eds.) Language and History 59: 1, pp. 14–24. (19 July)
2015
Attitudes to Prescriptivism: An Introduction. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 37: 3, pp. 233–242 (published online 5 August 2015)
The Hyper Usage Guide of English Database User Manual. Website Bridging the Unbridgeable: linguists, prescriptivists and the general public (February)
2014
Rules of engagement? Usage and normativism: public discourse and critical language awareness. English Today 118. Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 11–12. (8 May)
2013
Joseph Priestley, Grammarian. The Joseph Priestley House Newsletter. (Spring issue)
2012
Long-s in Late Modern English manuscripts. English Language and Linguistics. Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 319–338. (with Lyda Fens-de Zeeuw)
2011
Joseph Priestley, Grammarian: Late Modern English normativism and usage in a sociohistorical context. Utrecht: LOT Dissertation Series.
2010
Deontic and Epistemic Modals as Indicators of Prescriptive and Prescriptive Language in the Grammars by Joseph Priestley and Robert Lowth. In Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade & Wim van der Wurff (eds.) Current Issues in Late Modern English, pp. 57–88. Bern: Peter Lang.
Prescription or practice? Be/have Variation with Past Participles of Mutative Intransitive Verbs in the Letters of Joseph Priestley. In Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber & Robert Mailhammer (eds.) English Historical Linguistics 2008: Volume I: The History of English Verbal and Nominal Constructions, pp. 63–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Blogs
I have written blogposts for the blogs of the main research projects that I have been involved with.
Bridging the Unbridgeable
This blog provides – but is primarily meant to receive – feedback on all sorts of usage questions, such as why people should object to split infinitives or to the use of like. The blog presents news and information on usage guides, and also invites people to share new developments. Incidentally, the Bridging the Unbridgeable-blog is also an example of my early user experience design.
The Codifiers and the English Language
This project traced different aspects of the process of linguistic influence: between individuals, within social networks, from grammars and grammarians on other grammars as well as on speakers and writers of English. The weblog was used to establish a community of scholars working in the same field but also beyond, primarily to share knowledge with the outside world but also to profit from knowledge of people interested in the project.
Other blog posts
When Did We Start Caring About “Hopefully”? 250 Years of English Usage Advice. Lexicon Valley blog at Slate.com. (7 August 2014)
A Time For Critical Language Awareness. Cambridge Extra blog. (27 June 2014)
Bruggen Slaan in Cambridge. NWO Humanities blog. (22 May 2014)
Reviews
The reviews I write are also mainly published in academic journals. However, compared to the articles and chapters, they serve a slightly different purpose. Reviews help to expose the content of others’ publications to a wider audience and help persuade people to read them.
2020
Review of Norms and conventions in the history of English (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 347) by Birte Bös and Claudia Claridge (eds.). English Language and Linguistics (11 August).
2016
Time for a new (but not ‘New’) Fowler. Review of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage by Jeremy Butterfield, 2015. English Today. (15 February)
2014
‘The Sense of Style,’ a milestone on winding road to better writing (appeared online under the title Can something be totally unique? Steven Pinker’s new book says yes). The Washington Post. (6 November)
Review of Internet Linguistics by David Crystal. English Studies. Vol. 95, No. 5, pp. 590–592. (8 July)
2010
Review of Language and Letters of the Bluestocking Network: Sociolinguistic Issues in Eighteenth-Century Epistolary English by Anni Sairio. English Studies. Vol. 91, No. 7, pp. 812–813. (27 October)
2009
Review of Corpus-Based Language Studies: an Advanced Resource Book by Tony McEnery, Richard Xiao & Yukio Tono. Language and Literature. Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 394–395. (27 October)
Robin Straaijer 