Print this article Color illustration depicting four Red-bellied woodpeckers, Melanerpes carolinus or Centurus carolinus (Linnaeus), with two females perched on the lower branch of a woody tree and two males above, one perched on a branch, the other perched on the aperture of a hole in the trunk, from the volume Birds of America, authored by T Gilbert (Thomas Gilbert) Pearson, 1923. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
We used to love putting labels on things. Of course, it started in a garden, a hotbed of growth and mutation: “And the Lord God caused to sprout from the soil every tree lovely to look at and good for food . [and] fashioned from the soil each beast of the field and each fowl of the heavens and brought each to the human to see what he would call it, and whatever the human called a living creature, that was its name.” After Adam came Noah, the floating zoologist, another ready inspiration to collectors and classifiers such Carl L
From the NS archive: Just the poet to make us yawn again 24 May 1999: Ted Hughes made the Poet Laureateship seem exciting. But for his successor New Labour has gone to a tired, old, Oxbridge voice.
The position of Poet Laureate in England – that is, the national poet ostensibly chosen by Buckingham Palace, but in fact, in recent decades, nominated by the Government and approved by the Queen – has long been controversial for its intermingling of art and politics. Several notable names – Walter Scott and Philip Larkin among them – have turned down the offer (which offers in exchange an annual stipend and a large quantity of sherry). Ted Hughes had held the position for 14 years until his death in 1998; his successor was to be appointed by a New Labour government. Michael Glover, writing here in the New Statesman in 1999, speculates that this was the opportunity for a “People’s Poet”, or at least one more modern than the man who ended up in the job: Oxford-educated, co
each other or one another?
Some traditionalists say the former should apply only to two people (“Iniesta and Xavi hugged each other”) and the latter to more than two (“all 11 Spanish players hugged one another”). HW Fowler was unimpressed by this argument and in practice very few people make the distinction.
The possessive is singular: they shook each other’s hand
EADS
European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company; the group includes the aircraft manufacturer Airbus and is the major partner in the Eurofighter consortium
earlier
often redundant: “they met this week” or “it happened this month” are preferable to “they met earlier this week” or “it happened earlier this month” and will save space