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labourer hauling load of bricks

Today’s CPD reflections: “hard-worked”

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A recent e-newsletter for language professionals contained the term “hard-worked”. It made me pause and reflect, possibly because at first glance I may have read it as “hard-working”, and I’m tired of politicians going on about “hard-working families”.

Further ‘research’ seems to indicate that the term isn’t particularly common, although – not entirely surprisingly – there is an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, as a subheading under the very long entry for “hard”. Note in particular the oxen example in the OED.Continue reading full article…

per cent or percent?

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Across the board, dictionaries suggest that percent, written as one word, is American English, whereas per cent, written as two words, is British English. The European Commission (Directorate-General for Translation) English Style Guide concurs, although it is not prescriptive and notes that per cent is normally [blog author’s emphasis] written as two words in British English. Wikipedia even goes as far as describing the frequency of use of the two-word form in British English as “sometimes”. In any case, the online free dictionary suggests that the use of the two-word form is diminishing. No evidence is given for this statement, but it would be in line with the (in many case entirely ‘sensible’) trend of compounding. Not to mention the fact that, from a German Prozent perspective, the one-word form simply ‘feels more natural’.