WHY DO PEOPLE buy books on English usage? The obvious answer, “for authoritative advice”, doesn’t square with what people actually buy. For decades the best-selling grammar book in the ...

In the late 1990s, a friend told me she had used the word “exponentially” in a debate with her brother-in-law. “That’s not a word!” her brother-in-law insisted. “Of course it is,” my friend replied.