Welcome to Jose Carillo's English Language Forum!

ENGLISH USAGE ESSAYS FROM THIS FORUM’S EARLIEST YEARS
As a 2024 midyear retrospective, we are presenting a selection of 12 English usage
essays featured in Jose Carillo's English Forum during its first five years (2003-2008). Most of these early essays focus on the general aspects and use or misuse of
English as one of the world's major languages; the rest of the over 2,300 essays in
the Forum from 2003 onwards until today take up the elements of English as a
structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary
through which people convey meaning both in spoken and written forms.

• 1 - The Misuses of Language
  

• 2 - The Language of Science and Literature
  

• 3 - The Grammar of Manners
• 4 - The Battle for Our Minds
• 5 - The Wisdom of Lewis Carroll
• 6 - The State of Our English

• 7 - Giving Justice to Tolkien


• 8 - In Defense of the Web
• 9 - When Wordplay Goes Overboard
• 10 - The Days of Our Lives
• 11 - Don’t Worry About English Slang!
• 12 - A Great Accent Alone Isn't Great English
  

Do you have any question about the English language—its vocabulary, its grammar and usage, its construction and structure, or its idioms and other peculiarities? Or do you have the knowledge or expertise—and, of course, the time—to help English-language learners seeking to understand and navigate these aspects of the language better?

Or maybe you happen to be just a concerned English user disturbed by the misuse of English—whether subtle or blatant—in the publications or books that you read or by the people whom you deal with, or perhaps dismayed by how badly English is spoken in a TV or radio program or some other public platform?

If so, then Jose Carillo’s English Forum is the perfect place for you. Here, freely and at any time of the day, you can:

• ask questions about any aspect of English that confuses or mystifies you,
• give advice to people asking for informal instruction on the correct or better use of English, or
• simply relate your experience or encounter with English misuse at work, in school, or in the mass media.

Here, for starters, are some sample questions that will be most welcome in this Forum:

1. Is “not unless” a redundant phrase?
2. Is the phrase “most often than not” correct usage?
3. Which is correct, “on behalf” or “in behalf”?
4. When do you use “would” and when do you use “will”?
5. Do you say “Best wishes!” to an ailing person?

If you want to know the answers to these questions now, Click here.

This Forum will be focusing exclusively on English and its usage, and aims to be a vibrant venue for healthy and civilized discussions, not angry or violent ones. In the process it hopes to generate clarity and light, not semantic heat and verbal pyrotechnics, over English. It will therefore give no room to unbridled rants—whether pro or con—on any issue about English and its uses.

The English this Forum will be using, by the way, is the American standar, but the Forum won’t be averse to questions or explanations about how American English differs from British English or from other English standards or variants.

So, if everything’s clear to you now on what this website is all about, simply click on to see what Jose Carillo’s English Forum has to offer for you. Good luck in your continuing quest for better English!

Joe Carillo