#1 - Introduction: who this blog is for and what it is about

There are a number of reasons why I am starting this blog. I want to get better at writing, for one, and that takes practice. Then I have some ideas for building an app for English learners, so I want to start building an audience for that. I am planning to thrash out these ideas here.

But enough about me and my motivations, we should really be focusing on you, dear reader. I am hoping you are an English learner or language enthusiast, or ideally both. If you are learning English, you can use this blog to practise reading a variety of English. Posts will include valiant attempts at humour (please be gentle), opinion pieces, dialogues, and plenty of stuff about the English language and its quirks and expressions.

I will be ruminating on the English language, and thinking about what clear communication is, and how it can be achieved in English. On that topic, let me make my first recommendation. Oxford Guide to Plain English by Martin Cutts is a book that explains how to write clear English so well, I could not put it down. I am going to set myself some homework to reread this book and write a post about it sometime soon. Do take a look at it yourself too. It is perfect for English learners.

But I do not want this blog to be just me lecturing you about stuff. How tedious that would be, for both me and you! My aim is to challenge you here, but I would welcome your challenging me back. If you subscribe to this blog, you will receive posts by email which you can reply to directly. Feel free to disagree with me, point out weaknesses in my arguments, correct or improve my English where you can, or even agree with me if you want to be teacher's pet: everything is welcome.

(By the way, did you notice that, like Puss in Boots, I have not used any contractions like “I’m”, “you’re” and “haven’t'“ in this post? I am undecided if I will keep this up in future posts or not, but thought I would try it out for now.)