THE annual conundrum is upon us. As the calendar flips over from December 31 to January 1, the perennial question remains to puzzle us. We step across the threshold from 2021 into 2022 with still no satisfactory answer. We may be bleary-eyed, hungover and half-awake; or euphoric,  full of good cheer and a friend to all. The one constant, however, is that those are merely passing moods. All else remains unchanged. A new year, unlike a change of underwear, makes not an iota of difference. So why all the fuss and madness? The world and all its many troubles will… Continue reading

WAR has been declared.  It has long been simmering with spasmodic outbreaks of invective hurled across the Great Grammatical Divide separating the two sides. But now it is out in the open. Apostrophe or no apostrophe, that is the question (as the greatest source of precise English would likely have defined it). It is no longer a matter of fusillades of mud-slinging between grammarians and the anti-punctuation heretics. It is now a costly matter of law. To be settled in the courts, no less. One more battleground in the widening split between the woke and non-woke. And all because one… Continue reading