Comment is free

You will be pleased to note that comment approval for the Engine Room is now turned off, which means that as soon as you leave a comment, it will appear on the blog.

Of course, as sub-editors Apus and I have an eye for the legally contentious, and we reserve the right to pull anything that might get us sued. No, don't take that as a challenge...

Can't keep a good beard down

For a brief period yesterday, Google searches for 'pogonotrophic' put the Engine Room as the number one result – ahead of such respected sites as beardcommunity.com. Being an authority on all things pogonotrophic (as a result of choosing pogonotrophy as a word of the day), we can presumably expect beard-related Google ads on the blog before too long...

Coincidentally, a friend of a friend of mine was pogonophobic – pogonophobia being the fear of beards. Eventually he grew a beard himself in what I can only surmise was a form of immersion therapy. Too late – he had already acquired the nickname 'Poggy' (and bears it to this day).

Perhaps you'd like to learn the names of some other great phobias...

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to The Engine Room. I'm JD, and I'm a sub-editor (copy editor if you're American) on a weekly magazine we dare not name. My chief sub, Apus, will be joining me on this blog in a few days, when he's remembered how to turn his Mac on.

We love language. Its intricacies, idiosyncracies, other things ending in 'acies'. We're the kind of people who point out misplaced apostrophes in shop signs. And this is our blog on language use - hope you enjoy.

One last thing. Feel free to leave comments or contact us on engineroomblog@gmail.com - we'd love to hear from you. As long as you know what a non-defining relative clause is...

Yes, I am joking.