Tag Archives: writing

The Armenian Who Learned Greek in Ancient Egypt

Or: Why my (probably) favourite historical document is a unique Armenian text without a word of Armenian. Centuries before the translation apps and pocketable phrasebooks of today, people who found themselves far from home made do with ink and papyrus. For reasons of pure linguistico-historical nerdery and joy, I’d like to introduce you to aContinue reading “The Armenian Who Learned Greek in Ancient Egypt”

The Silence of the Letters

This post was inspired by communication between me and James McConnachie, who recently and kindly reviewed my book, Why Q Needs U, for the most recent edition of The Sunday Times. The review, which can be found online here, was joyous in its wide selection of facts and features of spelling that James enjoyed. It concludes with aContinue reading “The Silence of the Letters”

‘Why Q Needs U’: New book due for release in October!

At last, the cat has been let out of the bag: my first book, entitled Why Q Needs U, is due for publication at the start of October this year! The announcement appeared in The Bookseller yesterday, which shared a few details about the book and its bewildered author, and started the marketing countdown toContinue reading “‘Why Q Needs U’: New book due for release in October!”

Relics in Roman Writing

Reading time: 5 minutes When we look at impressive Latin inscriptions from the days of Rome, there is something very fixed and familiar about the look of the letters. We recognise the roughly square-shaped capital letters like A, B and C as our own, and they more or less serve the same functions now asContinue reading “Relics in Roman Writing”