www.alphadictionary.com

An editor friend on Facebook posted the link to this site. Good discussion on difficult words, but a bit prolix.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17777556

Interesting, but rather poorly transcribed. At least I hope some of the egregious use of the English language was not pleasing in such a report.

Just to make one point, "Together with" is not correct. It is redundant, as anyone who has taken or taught the ToEFL will know. It is currently required in American English reporting, but I would not have expected to see it in Brit Speak. Especially when griping about low quality English.

I don't approve of the definition given of sesquipedalian, either.

I could go on, but I don't want to rant.

As I said, he's prolix. A good editing and tightening up would help immensely. He IS making a valid point, I think.

As I said, he's prolix. A good editing and tightening up would help immensely. He IS making a valid point, I think.

I agree, in principle. However, if you can't make a point about using good words and grammar without doing so yourself, you pretty much invalidate the point. Wouldn't you agree?

I do agree. I also know from experience if you want to get published and paid, you have got to follow the style sheet and submit to editing. They even have the right in most cases to edit without your prior approval, which in one case I objected to strongly since it changed my meaning radically. You can't simply say from arrogance that you won't change anything because it's too precious. Unless you have a weird contract, no edit, no publish. No publish, no pay.

Slava: I have taught ESL as a volunteer for many years. My students are usually currently university students or are not seeking academic approval. I am not familiar with the contents of the ToEFL, nor where and how it is applied. I know some of my ESL students could not possibly pass a very rigorous test and they are enrolled in graduate courses at the University of Texas at Dallas. I am constantly surprised at the English deficiencies of students whose first language is not English. The only pretest course for people with English as a second language that I am familiar with is for the citizenship test. We have large class enrolments for the citizenship pretest course at our free ESL school. Have you found a need for ToEFL pretest instruction? Perhaps I should look into it.

Perry: As a systems engineer i wrote thousands of technical pages for proposals, specifications and user's manuals. I fought a constant and losing battle with the Tech Pubs people. But I am slow to learn. I have never been published apart from technical writing. My son self-publishes books on the Christian faith and gets by with whatever he wants.