David Crystal's blog mainly focuses on English usage. As the author states in his initial post, the blog is intended to create a public space where the questions people address him can be accessed by anyone interested in the topic, allowing readers to participate and sparing the writer repetition.
The Engine Room deals with language use, publishing and the media in general. Posts are usually short and light to read. It contains a section on rare 'words of the day'
Literal-Minded provides linguistic analyses based on samples of real speech or written texts.
Hello – just wanted to say thanks for the mention.
ReplyDeleteIt would nice to think that the flattering message in the previous comment was sincere and meant exactly what it stated, but it sounded too much general, very appropriate to be placed in any blog regardless its contents. When copying the whole paragraph and pasting it between inverted commas in the Google search engine box, a total of 54,700 matches are reported.
ReplyDeleteIs it ‘manual spam’? Quite probably. Then, what is the illocutionary force of this message? Making readers visit a given website? Is it worth it? Can this practice be profitable to someone?
It is really sad to imagine someone in a poor country repeating once and again this text pasting routine for a few dollars and still sadder to think that a probably western based firm can gain clients through this method.