…And Read All Over

...And Read All Over · andreadallover.com · American English

A blog about language and linguistics by Joe McVeigh

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Last post: Sep 15, 2026
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NPR’s Code Switch and great linguistics episodes
Sep 15, 2026 · original
I have been critical of NPR’s Code Switch program in the past (in the very distant past, before Corona times). But I have to say that they have really stepped up their game when it comes to episodes about language. (Their other episodes are good as always, but I’m a language scholar so I can judge those ones better) Here are a few of their recent-ish episodes that discuss language. They have interesting guests and they discuss language in a nuanced way. But they still manage to stay focused on the topic at hand – something I definitely struggle with when talking about language. https://www.npr.org/2026/03/21/nx-s1-5755013/what-trumps-language-has-in-common-with-cult-language https://www.npr.org/2025/10/22/nx-s1-5546796/racist-slurs-naughty-words-and-how-dictionary-editors-define-them https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1197956092/in-lakota-nation-people-are-asking-who-does-a-language-belong-t
Google’s Bad Voice
Jan 16, 2026 · original
Google has a style guide for technical writers and from what I’ve read, it’s pretty good. It’s short and sweet on the details, but that’s fine. The guide is direct and it’s not meant as a general writer’s guide. But it makes comments on the passive voice, so you can probably guess what’s coming. First, the good stuff. The guide correctly identifies the passive voice. Progress! The guide doesn’t identify all the ways that the passive voice can appear, just the BE + past participle way, but it gets that way right. Good job, Google. Then the guide gives advice that writers should use the active voice instead of the passive voice. This is where Google’s guide makes some questionable claims . It says: I have never heard about that first bullet point. How do they know that people convert sentences in their head? How could they even know? If Google has that kind of technology, they need to give
Song lyrics and culture
Dec 30, 2025 · original
An article in the Sunday Times crossed my eyeballs this week. It’s called “Can song lyrics tell us how society is changing?” and the obvious answer is But there’s a bit of linguistics in here (and no, it’s not good), so let’s dig in. The article is by Tom Calver and he says “I have downloaded and analysed the full lyrics for the 40 biggest songs in every year going back to 1985, numbering 720,000 words from 1,600 tracks.” Ok, cool! That’s kind of a small corpus, but it covers all of what it is supposed to cover – lyrics from the top 40 songs in the UK charts from the last 40 years. Super. Calver then gets into his analysis: The first obvious finding is that music used to be more overtly fun. By assembling a list of “party” words — “club”, “bottle”, “VIP”, “DJ”, “dance” — we can track their frequency over time. The year I turned 18, 2011, was the partiest year on record, led by Mr Worldwi
George Will’s incorrect and dangerous complaints about language
Aug 11, 2025 · original
George Will wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post titled “Five words that today are gratingly misapplied or worn out”. It is not good. Let’s see why. First of all, George Will is still alive?! Holy shit! Second of all, this post stinks. George Will clearly had a deadline to meet and he had no ideas, so he barfed out nonsense about language. This is not surprising because George Will has a history of bad linguistics . I’ll start by pointing out Will’s errors in is wrong, but stay tuned in the end for why his article is also dangerous. Here’s Will’s first complaint: This is wrong. George Will is wrong about this. The word massive has been used for things that have no mass since at least 1581.That’s 450 years ago. Entry for massive in the Oxford English Dictionary. George Will wants you to speak and write as if you were born before the Elizabethan Era. Will is not a serious man. Thi
Helsinki’s largest paper believes in language nonsense
Sep 22, 2024 · original
A couple of weeks ago, Helsinki’s daily paper Helsingin Sanomat published an article called “ Lauri Lassila huomasi, että osa hänen ystävistään ei osaa puhua enää suomea, vaikka haluaisikin ” (Lauri Lassila noticed that his friends can’t speak Finnish anymore, even though they want to). It might seem like a harmless article about the youths. But as usual with this kind of article, there are some malicious messages in it. Let’s take a look at why this article should never have been written. First, the (little bit of) good news The people interviewed in this article are taking an interest in language. Hooray! They should enroll in the university to study the subject. Or get in touch with some of the linguists that work there. I’m sure they could tell them about resources to check out. The city library system has lots of books on language and linguistics. Just stay away from anything writte
Positive “anymore”
Mar 16, 2024 · original
I recently heard from an old friend who had stumbled upon my website . He said he was shocked when he read this line from my bio : My family says that anymore at the end of the last sentence sounds wrong, but it’s all good. This line piqued his interest because he also puts anymore at the ends of sentences, but his wife doesn’t – even though she grew up somewhat close to where he did. And she has commented about how his family does it as well. My website made him think that maybe this wasn’t something that only his family said. And indeed he’s right! It’s called “positive anymore” and there are millions of English speakers that say this. But there are also many millions more who do not, so they may notice it when they hear someone say it. There’s a Wikipedia page on the topic – which doesn’t do a great job explaining things, so let’s try to do better. The word anymore is usually used in
More misidentified passives
Aug 8, 2023 · original
But this time it’s… on purpose ? What?! Yesterday, Benji Smith became the main character on Writer Twitter . It turns out that Mr. Smith has created a database of novels that he obtained through probably illegal means. Smith used this database in his Prosecraft project, which published statistics about each novel, such as its word count, the number of adverbs in each, and something called the “vividness” of the writing style (I’m not really sure what that means and Smith doesn’t provide a good definition). He was also using this database to promote his word processor program Shaxpir 4, which is why he’s almost certainly breaking the law. But one of the other things that he claims to analyze is how many passive verbs are in the novels. And Smith has a very interesting (aka “bad”) definition of “passive voice”. Smith writes : To measure passive voice […] we measure the total number of help
George Packer and the Atlantic’s sad defense of inequity
Aug 4, 2023 · original
Content warning: This post is about harmful language and it contains words that are used to dehumanize people. Please take caution. In April 2023, the Atlantic published a 2,500-word opinion piece complaining about language equity style guides. The attack on these guides is misleading, wrong, and harmful. It continually misrepresents the style guides. It shows a misunderstanding of the content and the point of them. It refuses to accept others and expresses contempt for anything that doesn’t fit the author’s narrow and outdated idea of language. And it gives fuel to the fascists in their culture war. Equity style guides are written to address and remedy the ways that language has been used to marginalize people in society. The guides come from healthcare providers, universities, and non-profits. Their aim is to help writers use non-harmful language related to diversity, equity, race, sex
Dr. Andrew Thomas tries to mansplain mansplaining
Jul 28, 2023 · original
Is this dude about to mansplain mansplaining? Hoo boy. Here we go. This is going to be a long post. I’ll go through each part of the article with my usual irreverence, but don’t be fooled. Thomas’s ideas about language are a real danger to women. So I’ll comment seriously on that as well. Let’s get to it. tl;dr – Andrew Thomas is incredibly wrong about mansplaining. He cites no sources to back up his claim that men and women have different communication styles, except for one limited study from 40 years ago. Modern linguistic research disproves Thomas’s ideas, and in fact his ideas are about 50 years out of date. Mansplaining is one part of systematic discrimination that women face. Thomas tries to water down the meaning of mansplaining. Thomas’s ideas are dangerous because they will be used to silence and exclude women in society. Here’s how Thomas’s post on Psychology Today begins: Man
Janne Saarikivi’s Fascism Lite, or how to fearmonger with statistics
May 26, 2023 · original
On May 15, Janne Saarikivi published a turd of an opinion column in YLE (Finland’s national broadcasting company). The article is a prime example of nationalistic fearmongering. It has the appearance of being well-thought out and reasoned, like the contemplations of a reflective scholar, but a peek under the hood shows that it’s just repackaged right-wing ideas. The problem is that Saarikivi’s article is likely to convince readers who do not have any knowledge about his topics. And that’s a lot of people. So strap on your Nokia boots and let’s wade through this bullshit swamp. First, Saarikivi’s article is in Finnish, so I’m going to be translating a bit here. I don’t pretend to be a professional, so plug the article into your favorite online translation service if you want another take. Second, it’s going to take a lot more words to refute Saarikivi than he used in his article. This is

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