The English Language
Common Errors in English Usage

ENGLISH PROFESSOR Paul Brians has built an international reputation for providing convenient, amusing, and practical advice on English usage through his Web site, Common Errors in English (http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/), which has over the past six years attracted more than two million visitors and a pile of favorable reviews from sources like the BBC Online, the Los Angeles Times, and the Seattle Times. Recently it was published as a book titled Common Errors in English Usage by William, James & Co.

Brians is noted for his pragmatic approach to English usage. Social context matters. He remarks that if you were feeling threatened by someone staring at you on the subway, it would probably not be an effective deterrent to say “At whom are you staring?” instead of “Who are you staring at?” But in a job interview, you should not complain of being “disrespected” at your previous job; this street slang form of the word is not standard usage among employers and is likely to earn you further disrespect. He doesn’t insist on “correct” English. Instead, he tries to give people guidance as they choose language appropriate for their purposes, which will refl ect well on them and convey what they’re trying to say.

Brians freely admits he’s not a professional writing expert, although that’s his primary identity on the Web. His other scholarly works range from a set of translations titled Bawdy Tales from the Courts of Medieval France, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895–1984, Reading about the World (two volumes), and his newest book, just released in November, Modern South Asian Literature in English.

Brians’ office is eclectic and a seemingly perfect refl ection of his passions. There are thousands of books, as you would expect, lining the walls, but his wooden desk is covered not in handwritten manuscripts, but rather technology—two monitors, a flatbed scanner, a Mac G4 tower and a laptop, and a VCR/DVD player and video capture device. The technology is used to create presentations for his classes. He loves the humanities, he loves technology, and he loves exploring ways to combine them.