The Last Post: Adventures with the Written Word

Words evolve. Their spellings and definitions can vary over time, and sometimes terms are replaced altogether. This article explores the changing meaning of the word infrastructure . Aerial view of highway intersection. Designed by  Freepik Etymology The Oxford Dictionaries website defines infrastructure as ‘ The basic physical and organizational structures and facilities… needed for the operation of a society or enterprise ’. The word was coined in 19th-Century France and literally means ‘substructure’. It was originally used to refer to foundations for  railways, roads or buildi ngs . Changing Context Usage didn’t really take off until the middle of the 20th Century, when Western Europe was simultaneously rebuilding structures after World War II and preparing for the Cold War. The New York Times u sed the word in 1952 to refer to the vast programme of ‘… Allied airfields, barracks, railways, roads, depots and joint headquarters … ’ being developed by NATO . Beyond Publi...

Web analytics services – such as  Google Analytics  –  allow companies to measure, collect and analyse data. Their purpose is to measure business goals and find areas for improvement. These services are useful for writers, editors and other professionals because they allow insights into performance and optimisation of content. This article provides a brief overview of the detailed analyses available. Analytics services. Designed by  macrovector on  Freepik Google Analytics 4 (GA4) GA4 is the new version of Google Analytics. It replaces Universal Analytics (UA), which was discontinued in 2023. The new version has been rewritten from the ground up, and is entirely event-driven. It allows automatic (and more precise) tracking, along with more flexible analyses.   You can install GA4 manually or via  Google Tag Manager (GTM) . How Does the Service Work? The Google tag (GTAG.js) is a small piece of JavaScript  code used on every page of your website. I...

Punctuation has been around a long time, but it's still causing controversy in the digital age.  The Greek scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium invented the first formal system of punctuation in around  200 BCE .  In 2025, em dashes are often considered a sign of AI usage. But do you know the differences between hyphens and dashes, and when to use them? Hyphen, en dash, em dash: James Hutchinson Hyphens A hyphen (-) is a symbol used to join two (or more) separate words together. Hyphenation indicates a combined meaning, and adds important clarity to otherwise ambiguous phrases. When two adjectives are joined together to modify the same noun, this is known as a compound adjective . Example:   Humans are carbon-based lifeforms. En Dashes An en dash ( – ) is a symbol principally used to indicate a range between two figures.  However, it can also be used to separate two related parts of a sentence, with a single space appearing on either side.  It is the same le...

Happy Halloween 2025! You may be trick-or-treating this year, attending a costume party or hiding at home with the lights off. But are you familiar with these phobias, and their origins? Unusual phobias: James Hutchinson + AI coulrophobia , mass noun : an extreme fear of clowns. The word’s origins are uncertain, although the Online Etymology Dictionary suggests that the prefix coulro- may be related to k ō lobatheron ('stilt') in Greek. cyberphobia , noun : an extreme fear of computers or technology; cyber- is a back-formation from cybernetics . hexakosioihexekontahexapbobia , noun : the intense fear of the number 666  (known to Christians as ‘the number of the beast’, in reference to the Book of Revelation). However, the oldest surviving copy of the text actually gives the number as 616 . See The Other Number of the Beast: 616 . pantophobia , noun : a fear of everything, or generalised anxiety. From pantos (‘all’) in Greek, and dating back to the 19th century. Original...