4 September

Expressions explained | To give someone the sack.

Posted in false friends and idioms

To give someone the sack, also: to sack someone; to get the sack If she comes late again we’ll have to give her the sack. They sacked him for hitting a colleague. John got the sack from his last job. To give someone the sack or to sack someone means to fire or dismiss them. […]

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18 August

Clearer emails. Part II: Writing times

Posted in staying on track

In Part I we looked at how to write dates clearly, this post follows on from that and deals with the correct formats for times. The 24-hour clock The first point to mention is that the 24-hour clock is much less common in English than in German, for example. It’s basically only used in timetables, in some computer […]

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29 June

Clearer emails. Part I: Writing dates

Posted in staying on track

Something people in my lessons are often unsure about is how to write dates and times. This short article aims to provide a few simple rules for writing dates clearly and correctly. Off we go … In British English the format is *day month year*: 10 June 2015. There’s no need to write the th (10th […]

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