LANGSCAPE is a Cambridge University Press project associated with both ‘English Today’ and a new international usage guide for the year 2000 by Pam Peters, author of the ‘Cambridge Australian English Style Guide’ (1995). Like the Australian publication, the international work will be distinctive in its use of empirical evidence from computer corpora as well as data elicited from surveys of users of English round the world. Because English is a world language, any account of usage that is limited to one person's views and resources is inadequate. The first topic and questionnaire (‘The ubiquitous letter e’) appeared in ET53 (Jan 98), the second (‘To capitalize or not to capitalize’) in ET54 (Apr 98), the third (‘Differing on agreement’) in ET55 (Jul 98) and the fourth (‘Permanent loans: plurals for Latin borrowings’) in ET56 (Oct 98). See the accompanying box for further information on the Survey.

Some observations relating to the development of a South African model for teaching, learning, using, and identifying with the language

Some aspects of the sociocultural and linguistic problems of teaching English to students of one of Nigeria's major language groups

A response to John Honey's article ‘The straw hippopotamus’ (ET55, Jul 98) and his recent book ‘Language is Power’ (1997)

The Editor-in-Chief of the Simplified Spelling Society responds to David Crystal

A further reply to Michael Bulley's criticism of Chomskyan linguistics

TIM CONNELL considers some cases of particle abuse in British English

An account of the teaching of EFL to university non-English majors in the 1990s

FRED PARROTT takes an acerbic look at a trope greatly favoured by insiders