@jayles - as long as it means 'full of' - here's a list of 332:
http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/ful/

@Brus -Yes, I think it is indeed. What's more, you have introduced me to a word that is new to me. A word that definitely exists, but is hard to get much information about (only one British dictionary seems to list it - Collins - and it's not a lot of help). So my (genuine) question is - .did you choose 'humourful' because it has a semantic nuance that is different from 'humorous' or because you like the sound - for the fun of it, so to speak.

Actually I may have found the answer in a book called 'The making of love' - 'For people with a reasonably confident, mutually tolerant and humourful sex life' - full of humour is not I suppose the same as being humorous (which is perhaps more jokey?). Here's one from a life of Shakespeare published in 1908, where I'm not so sure I see such a difference:

"and first taking his due lead before all other men in The Merchant of Venice, then sinking almost his history in the humourful comedies of Falstaff and the brilliant plays of the Second Period that succeeded them"

The earliest example I can find is from 1868, "Who, indeed, can understand the humourful bright soul, if the author of the Biglow Papers cannot?" (FJ Furnivall talking about Chaucer)

So I guess 'full of humour' is slightly different from 'humorous'. Incidentally, I wonder why, in British English, we keep the u in 'humourful', but drop it in humorous. Strange!

Anyway, thanks for that.

Incidentally, there's been one structure that has been bothering at least one linguistics blogger lately:

"It was one of his better films, if not one of his best"

''if not"here can mean "maybe even" or "although not". When spoken, rising or falling intonation at the end would tell which the speaker meant. But on paper, without context, it could go either way.

Even in print, context would sometimes, but not always tell us which was intended. I imagine these two are inclusive:

"A fantastic split-pusher and snowballer, if not one of the best."

"It should no longer be a secret that Chien Noir is one of Kingston's best restaurants, if not one of Canada's best."

This on the other hand isn't, even if only by a small margin:

"If not one of Sheldon's best works, it definitely comes close."

@Chris B - My impression is that official (green) government footpath signs have been shown in km at least since the seventies. But a quick look at Google Images suggests it's rather a mixed bag.

Around 2000 the British government introduced a law to make food shops sell loose food (sliced ham etc) in metric. But there was such an outcry that it was rescinded, or at least softened, a year later. So for some things we have a choice - 100 grams or a quarter of a pound, for example.

P.S. - EFL teaching also recognises that English has different registers. What is appropriate in 'normal spoken English' is not always appropriate in very formal English.

Unfortunately some people think that formal language is the only correct language, and that basing ordinary grammar on 'normal spoken usage' is somehow dumbing down. Isn't that rather a case of the tail (the 'rules') wagging the dog (the language?. Do you really think that saying 'It is I' makes someone more intelligent (rather than simply sounding like a bit of a prat)?

@Nana - OK, I'd like to respond to this by commenting on Chris Haller's comment form way back on this thread. Chris sees two schools of thought on grammar - those who put the rules first, and those who put usage first, and says he's proud to be one of the first group.

I'm curious to know where Chris and you think grammar rules originally came from, if not from usage. The earliest English grammar books appeared in the late sixteenth century century and were purely observational - they looked at how English was used and tried to show it as a system. One of the most accessible is that of Ben Jonson - "The English Grammar" of 1640. It was Jonson who said "Custom is the most certain mistress of language".

Then along came the prescriptivists, who felt the need to tidy the language up a bit, either by aligning it more with Latin, making hard-and-fast rules from what had merely been majority use, or just making up rules according to their own whims.

At this point let's make it absolutely clear that the vast majority of English grammar is totally uncontroversial. I think we can all agree that a sentence like "If I will see him, I tell him" is ungrammatical. There would be nothing illogical in using a future form in both clauses, as for example happens in Polish. But our system of conditionals has developed through usage.Not surprisingly, as they are the only area where we still have grammatical case, pronouns represent the area where there is probably the greatest disagreement.

Generally recognised as the first prescriptivist is Robert Lowth. In his "A Short Introduction to English Grammar with Critical Notes", 1762, he took Shakespeare to task for writing "Who servest thou under" and "Who do you speak to". And prescriptivist grammarians have insisted on "whom" ever since. Yet as early as 1772, other grammarians, like Joseph Priestley (whose "The Rudiments of English Grammar" had originally appeared a year before Lowth's book) commented "Dr Lowth says that grammar requires us to say 'Whom do you think me to be'. But in conversation we always hear 'Who do you think me to be' ".

Priestley also wrote:

"All our grammarians say, that the nominative cases of pronouns ought to follow the verb substantive as well as precede it; yet many familiar forms of speech, and the example of some of our best writers, would lead us to make a contrary rule -, or, at least, would leave us at liberty to adopt which we liked best. ... Who is there? It is me. ... It is not me you are in love with. Addison. (It cannot be me. Swift. To that which once was there. Prior. There is but one man that she -can have, and that is me. Clarissa."

The problem comes when 'the rules' are completely out of kilter with standard educated practice. Suggesting that the norm is "Hi Mum, it is I", when only a tiny minority of educated speakers would say such a thing, isn't doing anyone any favours either - it is totally artificial. Which is why EFL learners are taught "it's me" - in other words, natural English. Back to the common sense of Priestly:

"But our grammarians appear to me to have acted precipitately in this business,
and to have taken a wrong method of fixing our language. This will never be effected by the arbitrary rules of any man, or body of men whatever; because these suppose the language actually fixed already, contrary to the real state of it: whereas a language can never be properly fixed, till all the varieties with which it is used, have been held forth to public view, and the general preference of certain forms have been declared, by the general practice afterwards.

Whenever I have mentioned any variety in the grammatical forms that are used to express the same thing, I have seldom scrupled to say which of them I prefer; but this is to be understood as nothing more than a conjecture, which time must confirm or refute."

And time has indeed confirmed that, even though the 'rule' may say that a copular verb is followed by a predicate nominative (or subject complement as we call it in EFL), most educated English speakers have a great reluctance to use nominative (subject) forms when they are not followed by a verb. It is simply not natural English. And natural English is far more important in my book than any arbitrary rules.

@TEAS grammar tutor - so I'm all the happier that I teach EFL and that exams like IELTS, FCE, CAE, CPE and TOEIC reflect normal spoken English, and certainly wouldn't penalise you for saying, for example, "it's me". A context formal enough to warrant 'It is I' would be very unlikely to come up in any of these exams. Neither would students be penalised for using 'who' in object position, unless it followed a preposition. I suppose TEAS is more directed at academic English, but why nurses need to use 'I' after a linking or copular verb beats me.

As for 'This is she / her / (your name) ' - I think that we Brits usually just say 'speaking' or 'so-and-so speaking' when answering the phone. Apart from a certain Hyacinth Bucket, of course, who answers the phone, "The Bouquet residence, the lady of the house speaking."

The only time we're likely to say 'This is ....' would be when we're calling somebody else, when obviously we would say neither 'she' nor 'her', but our name.

It's perhaps also worth noting what happens when we use 'by the time' with future reference, where (like with other time expressions), 'by the time' is usually followed by present simple or present perfect, and we use 'will' or the future perfect for the other verb:

"By the time you read this, I'll have left the country"
"At this rate, by the time you've finished making that scarf, it will already be summer"

It's not that hard: A film director makes ten films. His first four films were duds or simply average. Of the later six, three were exceptionally good. Any of those last three could be called "one of his best films". But any of those later six, especially the earlier three, could be called "one of his better films".- "This is certainly one of his better films, but not, perhaps, one of his best".

@PhilMink - I think your last part more or less agrees with my previous comment:

"One of his better films" suggests that they weren't all good.
"One of his best films" doesn't tell us either way whether some were not quite up to scratch.

Here are a few examples where 'one of the more / better' and 'one of the most / best' are used together:

"Once, when I was reporting a story for The New Yorker on Rio’s underworld, he insisted on joining me in one of the city’s more violent favelas, el Complexo de Alemao, for a couple of tense meetings I had with one of Brazil’s most sought-after gangsters. Throughout, David was cool as ice." - Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker 2013

'JEAN-LUC GODARD's "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," which was shown yesterday at the New York Film Festival, is not one of his better films, although the title, I think, is one of his best.' - Renata Adler, New York Times 1968

"Le Masque de fer is one of Henri Decoin's better late films ... Le Masque de fer is by no means one of Henri Decoin's best films but it is nonetheless a highly enjoyable romp" - filmsdefrance.com

" Leszek Balcerowicz (one of the best finance experts in the world). .... The Tusk government is one of the better ones of the 3rd republic." - The Economist - This faithfully reflects the different levels of respect for Balcerowicz and Tusk in Poland.

"While the drawing is one of Google's more conventional doodles in recent times, it's also arguably one of the most beautiful to date" - The Telegraph

"James Taylor is one of the world's greatest guitarists, one of its best songwriters and, if you go for the nasal tone, one of its better singers." - The Times, London - a neat trio of descending compliments

""Though not one of Pearl Jam's more famous hits, "I Am Mine" is one of their most defiant tunes"- about.com

And at Google Books:

"one of the most striking features of this transition is that it took place not during one of the more dramatic episodes of climatic and environmental change within the long time span of the Pleistocene ..." - The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe, Barry W. Cunliffe 2001

"One of the more common causes and yet one of the most overdiagnosed aetiologies of forefoot pain is the condition popularly referred to as 'Morton's neuroma' " - An Atlas of Foot and Ankle Surgery, 1998

"Once considered one of the more egalitarian societies, Israel is now one of the most unequal." - Into the Promised Land: Issues Facing the Welfare State, 2001

"By the early 1990s the UK had moved from being one of the more equal European countries to one of the most unequal" - The Blair Effect 2001-5, Anthony Seldon and Dennis Kavanagh, 2005

"One of the more unexpected patterns found in the Census data, and one of the most difficult ..." - The American Archaeologist: A Profile, 1997

"The Theaetetus, though it is one of the most analytical of Plato's dialogues and also, superficially, one of the more discontinuous in its argument ..." - The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy, Bernard Williams, 2009

And one from 1808:

"Among these promiscuous observations, it would be unpardonable to omit iron, which is one of the more constant associates of silex. ... and if we add its wonderful property of magnetism, it seems to be one of the most fertile for the imagination of every philosopher." - The Philosophical Magazine, Alexander Tilloch 1808

@jayles - OALD marks shall as (especially British English). I still occasionally use it as an alternative to will in the first person, which I don't think is done much in North America. But I agree its use id declining.