An assessment of how an electronic network that originated in the United States using only American English has become a global resource

A wide-ranging report on British, American and other national publishing houses competing on a global scale

ON DECEMBER 2, 1993, David Nyhan of the Boston Globe published an article entitled “The Thought Police Strike Again.” In a parody of novelist Raymond Chandler's immortal Los Angeles detective, Philip Marlowe, Nyhan wrote:

“I was in my office, on the fringe of the ghetto, feeling gypped because a check had bounced, watching the crazy divorcée in the next office, a real babe who used to be a nifty co-ed before she married her hillbilly. He was a piece of white trash whose holy roller ancestors fought the Indians.

THOMAS M. PAIKEDAY lists some more new words and meanings that do not yet appear in mainstream dictionaries.

An analysis of the cultural differences in rhetorical styles across the many varieties of English worldwide, particularly as expressed through writing

In this issue, DALE ROBERTS considers a range of recent, especially American, usages.

A survey of the past, present and future of pidgin and creole Englishes, how they have been studied, and how attitudes towards them have changed

ROBERT ILSON takes up the issue of possible missing indefinite articles in phrases such as ‘He's nice man’, raised by Tom McArthur in ‘Is it new way of speaking?’ (Comment, ET40, Oct 94)

There are some subtle influences from English at work on other languages, graphically demonstrated by this account of how mainly American movies and TV programmes are dubbed into Italian

The following is the text of the editorial of The Sunday Times (London), 10 Jul 94, reprinted in full without additions or deletions with the permission of Times Newspapers Limited.

THE ARTICLE ‘Singlish’, in which Duncan Forbes describes the background and nature of the English spoken by Singapore Chinese students, interested me greatly, not only because I always read with great pleasure the reports and discussions on world Englishes, but also because I myself am a Chinese English teacher and teach English in China.