Most Frequently Viewed Questions about English

What is the Oxford Comma?

The Oxford Comma is an optional comma before the word and at the end of a list.

Example:

We sell books, videos, and magazines.

It is so called because it was traditionally used by printers, readers, and editors at Oxford University Press. Sometimes it can be necessary for clarity when the items in the list are not single words:

Example:

These items are available in black and white, red and yellow, and blue and green.

Some people do not realize that the Oxford Comma is acceptable, possibly because they were brought up with the supposed rule (which Fowler would call a superstition) about putting punctuation marks before and.

What is the difference between Street and Road?

The terms may frequently apply to exactly the same thing. However, road is a general term, whereas street is narrower in sense and chiefly urban in application: a street typically has buildings on either side and is paved or metalled.

Is there An Official Committee which regulates the English language, like the Académie française does for French?

No. There never has been any group or body with this authority and it is not the purpose of the Oxford English Dictionary Department to act in this way. There was considerable interest in the standardization of English in the 17th and 18th centuries which among other things resulted in the publication of Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary in 1755. However, despite the support of writers such as Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift, efforts to improve the language or to establish an English Academy were unsuccessful.

English is now used in so many countries and in so many contexts. That it is doubtful whether anyone would take much notice of an Academy even if one existed, though there are organizations dedicated to maintaining or improving standards of English usage such as the Plain English Campaign which tries to encourage the use of clear English rather than jargon especially in commercial, legal and official publications and the Queen's English Society which aims to counteract the perceived misuse and debasement of English.

What is the origin of the Dollar Sign ($)?

Many suggestions have been made about the origin of the dollar symbol $. One of the commonest is that it derives from the figure 8 representing the Spanish Piece Of Eight. However, it actually derives from handwritten ps: an abbreviation for Peso in old Spanish-American books. The $ symbol first occurs in the 1770s inmanuscript documents of English-Americans who had business dealing with Spanish-Americans and it starts to appear in print after 1800.

The name Dollar however derives from the Dutch or Low German word daler (in German taler or thaler) − originally Joachimstaler referring to a coin from the silver mines of Joachimstal in Bohemia (now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic) which opened in 1516.

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