Index

• Phonics & Spelling
  
  Grammar
  
  
  • Pronouns
    
    
  • Suffixes and Prefixes
    
    
  • Adjectives
    
    
  • One
    
    
  • Prepositions
    
    
  • Plurals
    
    
  • Verbs & Adverbs
    
    
  • Other Grammar topics
    
  
  
• Words not Vocabulary
  
  
• Metaphors & Special Phrases
  
  
• Punctuation
  
  
• Christmas
  
  
• School and Education
  
  
• Copyright and other Intellectual property rights
  
  
• English Varieties: UK, US, HK, India...
  
  
• The History of English
  
  
• Other Topics
  
  

  
  

• John Larrysson's Kitchen
  
  
  
  
  • a Boy Can Cook !
    
    
  • Dessert not Desert
    
    
  • Protein: Egg, Dairy, Meat and Beans
    
    
  • Bread and Carbohydrates
    
    
  • Salad
    
    
  • Drinks
    
    
  • Problems with Words for Foods
    
    
  
  
  
• The Little House in the Big Woods
  
  
  
  
  • Chapter 1 - Little House in the Big Woods
    
    
  • Chapter 2 - Winter Days and Winter Nights
    
    
  • Chapter 3 - The Long Rifle
    
    
  • Chapter 4 - Christmas
    
    
  • Chapter 5 - Sundays
    
    
  • Chapter 6 - Two Big Bears
    
    
  
  

Phonics & Spelling

• The Letter A a
  
• AW
  
• The Schwa Sound
  

• B
  

• CK
  
• CC
  
• Stranger Pronunciations of C
  
• SC
  
• The Letter C is Useless
  

• Silent D Is Not Always Silent
  
• D
  

• The Magic-e
  

• PH in Suffixes and Prefixes
  
• The F sound: FF & GH
  
• The F Sound
  

• Hard And Soft G Spelling Patterns
  
• Common G Spelling Patterns
  
• How We Got Hard And Soft Gs
  

  
  No English words end with the letter i?
  

• NG
  
• The Oi/Oy Sound
  

• Long U or Long OO
  
• When is Initial U Short and when is it Long ?
  
• The Long U Digraphs
  
• Magic E and the Long U Sound
  

  
  

• Pronouncing The Letter Y At The Front Of A Word
  
• Pronouncing The Letter Y In The Middle Of A Word
  
• Pronouncing The letter Y At The End Of A Word
  
• The letter Y & The Double Vowel Rule
  

• The Last Letter is a Foreigner
  
• The Spellings of Z
  
• The name of Z
  

  
  

• Silent letters
  and why English spelling is such a mess (2): Fake Latin
  
• Silent letters
  and why English spelling is such a mess (1): Old English
  

• I Both Love and Hate Spell-Checkers
  

• The Rule: I before E, except after C
  

pronouns

• 'I' or 'Me'? And other leftovers from ancient English…
  
• You Is a Flawed Pronoun
  
• The Four words for You
  
• You, the Easy Pronoun
  
• We is an incomplete pronoun
  
• Singular They
  
• Who or That
  
• Who or That for Animals
  
• Who or That for Organisations of People
  
• Whose for Objects
  
• One as a Pronoun
  

Suffixes and Prefixes

• -ING Endings
  
• The Confusing Use of Ex-
  
• -ize Endings Are Not American English
  

Adjectives

• The Order of Adjectives
  
• When to Use Fewer or Less and Why the Rule Is Wrong!
  

One

• One and Oneself
  
• One as a Pronoun
  
• Stranger Uses of the Word One - Possessive & Contraction
  
• One in Fixed Idiomatic Phrases
  

Prepositions

• Between vs. Among
  
• Prepositions - in ten? at ten?
  
• Place Names (use of in & near)
  

Plurals

• Strange Plurals : Animals
  
• Strange Plurals: Foreign Words
  
• Strange Plurals: Old English Words
  
• Strange Plurals: Things That Are Naturally Plural
  

Verbs & Adverbs

• When to Use Is or Are
  
• Cannot or Can Not
  
• Two Conversations about Grammar
  
• Do Books Talk?
  
• Double Had
  
• Try and vs. Try to
  

Other Grammar Topics

• Double Negatives
  
  
• Ye and the Lost Letter
  
  
• And at the Beginning of a Sentence
  
  
• Countable Nouns
  
  
• When to use the
  
  
• Consistency of tense
  
  
• Like vs. As (1)
  
• Like vs. As (2) The Many Uses of Like
  
  
• Double Words
  
• Double Had
  
  
• The Ultimate Penultimate
  
• The Split Infinitive
  
• Passive Voice
  
  
• A Famous Fake Rule
  
  
  
• Using the Wrong Grammar Word
  
• Why do some people insist on obscure language rules?
  
  
  
  
• The Grammar of Y at the End of a Word (1 of 3) - Words of Old French Origin
  
• The Grammar of Y at the End of a Word (2 of 3) - Words of Old English Origin
  
• The Grammar of Y at the End of a Word (3 of 3) - The Exceptions & A Summary
  
  

Words

Note: Vocabulary is a set of words not a synonym for words.

• The use of Sir in Hong Kong English
  
• Are Titles Real or Not?
  
• Noting And Combining Titles
  
• How To Shorten A Name In English
  
  
• The Names of the Week
  
  
• What do they do? Medical Jobs
  
• English Problems in Medicine
  
  
• Confusing Words
  
  
• British Synonyms
  
  
• Parcel & Package
  
• Is shredded really an exclusively British word?
  
  
  
• Orientalism
  
• East and West
  
• High-Register Synonyms
  
• Holiday, Vacation and Leave
  
• No Perfect Synonyms
  
  
• Dangerous Euphemisms
  
• Euphemisms:Polite Lies
  
  
• RACE, the R-Word
  
  
• Overseas and Abroad
  
• The use of the word international in Hong Kong English
  
• Names of Cockroaches
  
  
• Dead Metaphors
  
• Herb Island
  
  
• The New Abbreviations
  
  
• Counting Words (3 of 3)
  A Dozen Other Counting Words
  
• Counting Words (2 of 3)
  The Multiplicatives and So On
  
• Counting Words (1 of 3)
  Cardinals, Ordinals and Prefixes
  
  
• "I Could Care Less"
  
• Discourse Markers: When words don't mean anything
  
  
• Common Titles - Mr Surgeon
  
• Common Titles - Mr
  
• Common Titles - Mrs, Miss or Ms
  
• Do Eskimos really have
  one hundred words for snow?
  
• Nice
  
  
• This is the year A.D. 2013 (or it was when I wrote this column)
  
  
  
• Words for Cows
  
  
• What do political words mean?
  
  
• Last Names and Family Names
  
• An Unsung Hero
  
• Words Commonly Confused in Hong Kong
  
• Non-Literal Literally
  
• Which Floor Is It?
  
  
  
• Octopuses, Octopi, Octopodes
  
  
• 26 Alphabets
  
• Anniversaries
  
  
• How much is a ...
  
  
• The 3 most dangerous words in English
  
  
• Married maids
  

Metaphors & Special Phrases

• English Errors by Native Speakers - Mixed Metaphors
  
• Sensible Nonsense (oxymorons)
  
• How to Use Idioms in One Simple Rule
  
• One in Fixed Idiomatic Phrases
  

Punctuation

• The Misuse of Capitalisation
  
  
• One Space or Two?
  
  
• Two Old Latin Symbols
  
• Parts of a Book (3 of 3)
  
• Parts of a Book (2 of 3)
  
• Parts of a Book (1 of 3)
  
• Money Symbols (2 of 2)
  
• Money Symbols (1 of 2)
  
• Plurals, Capitalisation and the Alphabetical Order of Compound Words
  
• When a prefix is hyphenated
  
• Hyphens in Compound Words
  
  
• Should a litre be abbreviated with a capital L or a small l?
  
  
• The Apostrophe ' (Part 2, The Messy Part)
  
• The Apostrophe ' (Part 1, The Simple Part)
  
  
• Capitalisation in Captions, Titles and so on…
  
• Capitalisation in sentences
  
  
• Commas and quotations
  
• Comma rules simplified and the comma splice
  
• The Oxford Comma
  

Christmas

• Winter Wonderland
  
• Good King Wenceslas (3 of 3) What is the meaning of the words? (Second Half)
  
• Good King Wenceslas (2 of 3) What is the meaning of the words? (First Half)
  
• Good King Wenceslas? (1 of 3) Who was Good King Wenceslas?
  
• Deck the Halls (2 of 2) To Troll a Christmas Song
  
• Deck the Halls (1 of 2) To Deck the Halls with Evergreen
  
• A Christmas Song Explained
  
• Christmas Cake & Pudding
  

School & Education

• Strange Reasons Not To Fail A Student
  
  
• Early to University (3 of 3): How to Get It Right
  
• Early to University (2 of 3): What the Police Told Me
  
• Early to University (1 of 3): My School Mates
  
  
• Late Homework
  
  
• Standard English
  
  
• How To Get A Guaranteed A+ Mark on the TSA
  
  
• Why is an English boy
  doing so badly in my English class?
  
  
  
• What is a Native Speaker?
  
• What is a NET?
  
  
• Online Dictionaries
  
  
• I Both Love and Hate Spell-Checkers
  
  
• How Many Words Are There in English?
  
  
  
  
• What Is English
  
  
• Keep It Simple
  A Short Guide to Good Writing
  
• How to Learn English
  
  
• Letter Writing Format
  
  
  
• How to Read a Poem Part 1 of 2
  
• How to Read a Poem Part 2 of 2
  
  
• How to choose a dictionary
  

Copyright and other Intellectual Property Rights

• Copyright: 2016 Public Domain
  
• Copyright: 2015 Public Domain
  
• Copyright: 2014 Public Domain
  
• Trademarks
  
• Book Review - Intellectual Property in Hong Kong
  
• Public Domain and US Government Publications
  
• Good Safe Public Domain Sources
  

English Varieties

British English

• British and American English
  
• The Myth of British English
  
• -ize Endings Are Not American English
  
• Many British Englishes: The South
  
• Many British Englishes: The Midlands and the North
  
• Scottish English
  
• What Is Hong Kong English? (1 of 2)
  
• What Is Hong Kong English? (2 of 2)
  
• Is it really British Food?
  
• Is shredded really an exclusively British word?
  
• Parcel & Package
  

Indian English in Hong Kong

• Indian English in Hong Kong 1 of 2
  
• Indian English in Hong Kong 2 of 2
  

History of the English Language

• The Invention of the Alphabet
  
• The Invention of Writing
  
• The Viking share of the English Language
  
• How to Fake a British Accent?
  
• The Origin of English
  
• Shakespeare's New Words
  
• Why bother with Shakespeare?
  

General Topics

• Victoria Day
  
• John Larrysson Column:Twenty Years in Hong Kong
  
• Book Review - The Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography
  

John Larrysson's Kitchen:

Introduction