Sally was passionate about accuracy in spelling and grammar. She was no snob and would happily talk of “busting her ass” reading up for a new course. She enjoyed the rich variety of English and American dialects, delighting in telling stories of students who had described Melvyn Bragg as “that bloke with the dodgy barnet” or someone who had called a difficult person a “lairy bint”.

However, clarity was non-negotiable. She hated misplaced apostrophes and once nearly had an accident while driving because an incorrectly placed apostrophe on a road sign made her swerve and brake, in sheer horror. She lobbied for Peter Symonds’ College to drop the apostrophe in its name, to avoid all the confusion caused by people calling it Peter Symond’s College or Peter Symonds’s College. I remember that she was much amused by a sign in our office saying “stationary cupboard”. As she pointed out, the cupboard was hardly likely to move.

What she enjoyed most of all was looking up the origins of words. She was, in her own words, an enthusiastic “looker upper”. I received several emails from Sally discussing Latin words as well, including such gems as sexungula (six claws) to describe a particularly rapacious woman. This would then lead to discussions about the connections between Latin and Sanskrit, a language I had studied at school in India.

I shall miss those discussions. They inevitably resulted in Sally looking up a term in one of her many reference books. Although she teased me about my dreadful habit of saying “He was, like” where I should probably have used “He said”, she was not conservative in the least about language, recognising change as inevitable and even necessary. Sally would note processes such as verbing in phrases like “We accessed the files” (rather than the more traditional “We gained access to the files”), and thought they showed creativity. She trusted the instincts of the majority of language users rather more than the rules invented by grammarians. Both students and teachers appreciated her enthusiasm and lively intellectual curiosity.

- Kalpana Shenoi