23 April: Correct-your-English Language Day
As a World Language, the English language is important enough as it is. So why have an English Language Day on 23 April, Shakespeare’s birthday? This year, we would therefore like to promote the CORRECT use of English for a change by having a Correct-your-English Language Day instead.
Just for this one day....
Just for this one day, we encourage you to avoid making grammar or spelling mistakes, and to just use words in their precise, etymological meanings (as writers of usage guides tell us to do). Just for a day, avoid splitting your infinitives, put 'only' only in its proper place in the sentence, say 'I shall' instead of I will, and for goodness sake, just for once avoid using 'literally' as a general intensifier. And while you go about it, point out such mistakes to others when they make them. Let's have Correct English, even if it is for one day only.
Then tell us all about it
And then: tell us about what all this did to you. Did all this language awareness make you speak better English and write better texts? Or were you relieved the day was over, and you could go back to being as relaxed in your linguistic habits as usual? Did people like you better for telling them if they made a grammar mistake? Did you discover what your own pet linguistic peeves are compared to those of others? Did you have any interesting discussions about language use and linguistic correctness?
HUGE database
Please tell us about your experiences on our Bridging the Unbridgeable Blog. We are a project at the University of Leiden Centre for Linguistics doing research on English usage guides and English usage problems, and are especially interested in what the general speaker thinks of particular usages that have been experienced as problematical for many, many years. If you wish to see what such usages are, have a look at our usage surveys (and fill them in for us, either before or after 23 April!), and if you wish to have language advice, make use of our Hyper Usage Guide of English, our HUGE database. Access is free upon application.
(20 April 2015: Carmen Ebner, Lida Fens-de Zeeuw, Viktorija Kostadinova, Morana Lukač and Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (Leiden University Centre for Linguistics)