Reference > Language

From our earliest years we have heard proverbs, and many of them are repeated without much thought. Yes, 'birds of a feather flock together' and 'absence makes the heart grow fonder', but these sayings are so familiar that we are scarcely aware they are proverbs. It has been so for thousands of years, in every culture. It is only when someone like Max Cryer takes the time to look at them that we can see how these 'pearls of wisdom' have played such a key role in the moral guidance of every society. Sometimes the wisdom is distinctl... read more

Exercise Book collects over fifty creative writing exercise used by Bill Manhire and his colleagues, not only at Victoria but throughout New Zealand and around the world. The celebrated writer/teachers who have contributed include Elanor Catton, Curtis Sittenfeld, Emily Perkins, David Vann, Elizabeth and Sara Knox, Dora Malech and Kirsty Gunn. This book will be an indispensible resource for teachers and students, and excellent stimulation and entertainment for anyone wanting to give writing a go.
Exercises give your body a wo... read more

"The way you speak is who you are and the tones of your voice and the tricks of your emailing and tweeting and letter-writing, can be recognised unmistakably in the minds of those who know and love you". (Stephen Fry). From feral children to fairy-tale princesses, secrets codes, invented languages - even a language that was eaten - "Planet Word" uncovers everything you didn't know you needed to know about how language evolves. Learn the tricks to political propaganda, why we can talk but animals can't, discover 3,000-year-old clay ... read more

Collins Easy Learning Grammar is an accessible guide to English grammar and punctuation. With clear, concise explanations on everything from adverbs to word order, and from apostrophes to semicolons, this book is indispensable for understanding correct usage. Collins Easy Learning Grammar is a uniquely helpful guide to all areas of English grammar and punctuation, providing clear guidance through the intricacies of the English language. Each grammatical and punctuation point is clearly described in a user-friendly format that com... read more

'If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic I'd nominate her for sainthood.' Frank McCourt The international bestseller, reissued and with a new introduction. A witty, entertaining, impassioned guide to perfect punctuation, for everyone who cares about precise writing. When social histories come to be written of the first decade of the 21st century, people will note a turning point in 2003 when declining standards of punctuation were reversed. Linguists will record Lynne Truss as the saviour of the semi-colon and the avenging angel of the... read more

The perfect answer to the question 'what's been said about this?' This fully revised and updated edition of an Oxford classic is a truly unique reference book which brings together phrases, proverbs, and quotations in a single thematic volume. Apt and memorable sayings are arranged under a wide range of subjects, giving explanations and origins of the expressions and tracing the links between them. Oxford's unique language research highlights sayings from languages around the world which have become popular in English. Here you can... read more

- The Art of Christian Conversation is a unique, multi-purpose gift & resource. - It is the ideal gift for Christians, and those exploring, providing fresh opportunities for all to share their ideas and thoughts, affirming their faith and enriching their relationships.

Being a writer is good because you get paid to write stuff up, you can stay home and work in your pajamas and you get to travel because it's research. Being a writer is bad when you're sitting all by yourself staring at a blank page. Brigid Lowry knows the highs and lows of being a writer, but she still thinks it's a joy. In this book she takes you on a journey to discover yourself and what you really want to say AND how to make it juicy and original. So, what do you need to begin? Where can you find ideas? How can you make your wr... read more

Anthony O'Hear presents a personal tour of the most impressive, influential and era-defining books mankind has ever produced."Paradise Lost", "The Canterbury Tales", "Dom Quixote": great literature can be read by anyone, with a little help. Anthony O'Hear leads the way with this captivating journey through two-and-a-half millennia of books as dark, powerful, erotic, thrilling, politically astute and awe-inspiring as any modern bestseller.We begin with Homer, whose poems of epic struggle have made him the father of Western literatur... read more

..Including how to know the difference between your and you're. This is by no means a formal grammar book, just some simple rules, explained in simple terms. Apostrophes, commas, confusing words, plurals, and quotation and exclamation marks - don't make basic English mistakes again.

Love sells and sex sells and you can earn your living writing about them for novels, novellas and short stories as well as serials for magazines, anthologies and websites. This book holds the secrets of how to achieve success.

This fascinating book takes invented languages and explores the origins, purpose, and usage of these curious artefacts of culture. Written by experts in the field, chapters discuss a wide range of languages - from Esperanto to Klingon - and uncover the motives behind their creation and the outcomes of their existence.

Agatha Christie's life and career told through the decades, from the never-before-published original ending to her first book to the unused ideas for her last, complete with two unpublished Agatha Christie stories - including a lost Miss Marple. In this follow-up volume to the acclaimed Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks, Christie archivist and expert John Curran leads the reader through the six decades of Agatha Christie's writing career, unearthing some remarkable clues to her success and a number of never-before-published excer... read more

More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...In this hymn to the mother tongue Bill Bryson examines how a language 'treated for centuries as the inadequate and second-rate tongue of peasants' has now become the undisputed global language (more people learn English in China than live in the USA). He explains how the words shampoo, sofa, slogan, OK and rowdy (and others drawn from over fifty languages) got into our dictionaries and how the major dictionaries were created. He explo... read more

The third edition of The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature is the complete and authoritative reference guide to the classical world and its literary heritage. It not only presents the reader with all the essential facts about the authors, tales, and characters from ancient myth and literature, but it also places these details in the wider contexts of the history and society of the Greek and Roman worlds. With an extensive web of cross-references and a useful chronological table and location maps (all of which have been broug... read more

This volume presents hard-to-grasp concepts in an easy-to-get format, with practical advice, examples and discussions on usage and style. This fourth edition has been completely revised and updated.

Get the lowdown on the best fiction ever written.Over 230 of the world's greatest novels are covered, from Quixote (1614) to Orhan Pamuk's Snow (2002), with fascinating information about their plots and their authors - and suggestions for what to read next. The guide comes complete with recommendations of the best editions and translations for every genre from the most enticing crime and punishment to love, sex, heroes and anti-heroes, not to mention all the classics of comedy and satire, horror and mystery and many other literary ... read more

The itching desire to put our thoughts, dreams, experiences and purely creative words on paper lurks within us all and each year thousands of people join creative writing classes to learn the skills and gain the confidence to satisfy this urge. Joan Rosier-Jones, successful novelist, non-fiction author and teacher, is one of the leading mentors in creative writing and in So you want to Write shares her knowledge and depth of experience with you. Based on her successful classes, the book covers a wide range of subjects including,... read more

The Possessed draws on Elif Batuman's articles in the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine , and n+1 to tell the true story of one woman's intellectual and sentimental education and her many strange encounters with scholars devoted to classic Russian writers. In a series of intertwined essays about her life and other people's lives in the world of Russian literature and scholarship, Batuman has written a funny, smart and self-deprecating book about Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov and the academics who worship them. It is full of stories ... read more