Grammar Underground with June Casagrande: Recent Episodes
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I have a friend who uses the word “irregardless.” I hold my tongue. Sometimes I think it would be in her best interest to know she’s using a word so universally despised. But, as I’ve learned the hard way, people don’t appreciate having their language nitpicked — even if the criticism is dressed up as constructive.
“Irregardless” is one of those words that strikes us as just wrong. But the twist is: It’s not. It’s a real word, listed right in the dictionary. It means “regardless.” So we can hate it because it’s unnecessary. We can hate it because it’s likely some users are conflating “regardless” with “irrespective.” But we can’t say it’s not legitimate.
Quite a few words work like this. We hate them. We’re right to hate them. But we can’t condemn them because they’re not wrong. Here are some more to loathe and let live.
Impactful. I’ve been criticized for using this word. Until that moment, I thought “impactful” was great, especially when writing about writing. What better way to say a sentence hit home than to call it “impactful”? But that one brief, fleeting criticism spoiled the word for me. I now cringe when I hear it, even though it’s perfectly correct.
Enormity. This word sounds like it’s closely related to “enormous,” so people use it to refer to size. Logophiles know that’s not the primary meaning. In its primary form, “enormity” means “great wickedness.” To anyone privy to that fact, “enormity” is about as elegant as “huge-ity” or “biggity” — pure silliness. But in fact, one of its definitions is “the quality or state of being huge.”
Spectate. Yuck, right? Here’s a real-world example of “spectate” originally from NBC News cited in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary: “Clark and Daly met outside Joe’s Pizza, both unable to spectate from the sidelines.” If this sounds to you like a word that people with bad taste willed into existence only recently, you’re right. It is a newish word. But it’s real nonetheless.
Enthuse. I consider this word an occupational hazard. Writers I edit try to find alternatives to “said” when they’re attributing quotations, and this is one of their creative solutions: “This pizza is great,” she enthused. I replace it with “said” every time, and I have an excuse. Traditional journalism doesn’t get fancy with speech tags. The words should never upstage the information. So … chop, chop. But I can’t tell the writers they’re wrong because “enthuse” is, in fact, a verb.
Burglarize. If “burgle,” is a verb (and it is), and “burglar” is one who burgles, then surely “burglarize” is both unnecessary and wrong — like saying that dancers “dancerize” or that sculptors “sculptorize.” It’s a good bet that this process explains the origins of the word “burglarize.” But regardless of whether you could call its birth a mistake, it’s a real word now.
Incentivize. Speaking of words that use “ize” to make verbs where they perhaps should not, “incentivize” rankles language lovers far and wide. It sounds slapped together by people who were more interested in sounding business-fancy than speaking well, and in fact it was slapped together kind of recently. But we’re stuck with it. “Incentivize” is officially OK now.
Conversate. If you can’t believe I’m about to defend this abomination, well, neither can I. “Conversate” is awful. Surprisingly, though, it has its fans, like a listener to a 2023 episode of the “A Way with Words” radio show. But if you want to hate it, know that plain-language media like journalism hate it, too. There aren’t a lot of editors in the English-speaking world who wouldn’t change “conversate” into plain-old “talk,” “chat” or “discuss.”
The post 'Irregardless' and other words that aren't wrong but are OK to hate first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Passive voice is widely misunderstood and often misused. Here's how and when active voice is your friend.
The post Passive Voice first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In the editing styles that put movie and book titles in quotation marks, how do you make those titles into plurals and possessives, like The future will not bring us more "Gone With the Winds" and The legacy is "Casablanca's"? No one's saying, exactly. But there's a precedent for putting the possessive or plural S inside the quotation marks.
The post If a Title Is in Quotation Marks, How Do You Make It Plural or Possessive? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you think everyone’s out to get you, you’re paranoid. But if you think words are out to get you, you’re right. English has a lot of words that seem custom-made to undermine your ability to make verbs agree with subjects, creating a grammatical error called subject-verb disagreement.
Even if you’re not familiar with the concept, you’re already pretty good at making your verbs agree with your subjects. You never say, “I is here.” You never write, “The dogs has puffy tails.” You never say, “He be the man I’ll marry.” Instead, you know instinctively that the verb should match the number of the subject: “I” is singular, requiring “am.” “Dogs” is plural, so it takes “have.” “He” is singular, so it takes “is.”
But some words make this simple process so difficult that we all make mistakes, or at least find ourselves uncertain how to phrase something. Here are some terms that, if you’re not careful, will mess up your subject-verb agreement.
Couple. This word means two of something. But is it plural? Yes and no. Compare these two examples, both of which are correct: “The couple is in therapy.” “The couple are going their separate ways.” In the first, we use the singular verb “is.” In the second, we use the plural verb “are.” That’s because “couple” is what’s called a collective noun, a category that includes “family,” “group,” “team,” “band,” “bunch,” “minority” and “majority.” Many collective nouns can change number depending on whether you’re focusing on a single unit or whether you’re talking about people or things acting independently of each other. Go with your gut and you won’t go wrong.
Politics. Her politics are very reasonable, but politics is a difficult profession. If “politics” were plural, you would say, “Politics are a difficult profession.” If it were singular, you’d say “Her politics is very reasonable.” But obviously those are wrong. The correct verb form is whatever works best in your sentence. Other words, notably “ethics,” work the same way.
Each. “Each is able to choose for himself.” But “A number of families will attend and each have their own objectives.” Just like “politics” and “couple,” “each” seems to be sometimes singular and sometimes plural. But unlike those other words, “each” has a strong leaning: It’s almost always singular unless that’s just too weird.
And. In simple sentences, this conjunction makes subject-verb agreement a breeze: Raoul and Sven work together. But there are lots of situations in which “and” can complicate matters. Consider “Their high water and fiber content makes these vegetables heart healthy.” Is the subject of the verb the singular “content”? Or is it the implied plural “fiber content and water content”? I don’t know.
Or. Like “and,” “or” is a coordinating conjunction. But unlike “and” it can’t make a subject plural. “Jenny and Trey have your keys,” but “Jenny or Trey has your keys.” In more complicated sentences, this fact gets lost: “Crossing tracks or trespassing on private property are two of the most common occurrences.” The “or” creates a subject-verb agreement error because only one of those two things is the subject of the verb.
“As well as.” Expressions like “as well as” and “along with” work like “and.” They connect nouns. “Steve, as well as his dogs, love the park.” But the commas are your clue here that these nouns aren’t connected the same way that “and” would have connected them. The dogs are not part of this sentence’s subject. Steve is the only subject of that verb, so it should be the singular “loves.”
Of. The preposition “of” is handy for tacking descriptive information onto nouns: A flock of birds. A team of rivals. A bunch of grapes. Notice how in many cases the head noun can be singular even though the noun after “of” is plural. That can make it tough to know which one the verb works with. When in doubt, go with whichever best captures your meaning: A flock of birds is overhead, but a team of rivals are fighting among themselves.
The post Couple, each, politics: Some words make subject-verb conjugation hard first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you're using vis-a-vis to mean "regarding," you should probably learn its primary meaning first.
The post Vis-a-vis first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When I started as an editor, the only things that looked like news articles were news articles. You could rest assured that the people who wrote and edited them were journalists whose job was to follow a very specific, regimented procedure called journalism.
Those days are gone. Now, even savvy news consumers find it hard to know whether they’re reading quality information produced exclusively for readers’ benefit or something with an agenda.
The agendas may not be nefarious. They may not even be hidden. Sponsored content, for example, is clearly labeled (or it should be) and may contain real value for the reader as incentive to sit through the sales pitch. Think: an article like “10 Fun Things to Do in Austin” sponsored by just one of those things, like a concert venue, or by the local visitors bureau.
But most not-really-journalism articles are much worse — everything from deliberate spin and sensationalist clickbait to scams and foreign propaganda.
In all those years of editing, I learned a few subtle tells of (let’s call it) fake news. Here are a few red flags to look out for.
Facts reported in quotations. “Peptides are short chains of amino acids,” said Dr. Murray. Writers who aren’t experienced journalists see nothing wrong with a quote like this. But real reporters understand their job is to verify facts and stand behind them — not palm off this responsibility onto a speaker. Quotations are for opinions, reactions, unique insights and facts that can’t be attributed to a better source. “Our research has shown peptides may do such and such thing. It’s remarkable,” Murray said.
Titles capitalized — or there at all. I attributed the last quotation to just Murray, not Dr. Murray. That’s because journalism outlets aren’t keen on using titles. “Dr.” is unpopular with a lot of news styles, which prefer to give a clearer explanation of a doctor’s credentials: Alicia Murray, a pediatrician at St. Larry’s Hospital. Business titles are usually lowercase in real news: “said Moneybank vice president Jeff Reed.”
Poor use of single quotation marks. Most writers I've worked with haven't fully mastered the use of single quote marks. Most editors I've worked with have. So a writer will put single quote marks around a word they're calling attention to, like 'boomer,' and an editor will change it to "boomer." When you see single quote marks used this way, it often means you're looking at an article that didn't come from real news pros. Similarly, professionals know that the punctuation here is wrong: “He turned around when Kim yelled ‘ouch’.” The period goes before the single quote mark, not after.
Initials in parentheses. This one is far from universal. Some quality publications including magazines write: The Association of Retired Tuba Players (APTP). But most news organizations observe this Associated Press Stylebook rule: “Do not follow an organization’s full name with an abbreviation or acronym in parentheses or set off by dashes. If an abbreviation or acronym would not be clear on second reference without this arrangement, do not use it.”
Dashes in ranges. Forget what you've heard about dashes being a sign of AI writing. There’s no basis for that. But dashes in number ranges can be a clear sign you're not reading professional journalism. “Children ages 5–8 are admitted free.” Many journalism outlets are steeped in a tradition of using words instead: “5 to 8.” The dash is especially telling when a number range is preceded by the word " between,” which logically pairs with “and,” as in “between 5 and 8 years old.” Even if you could argue that a dash can represent the word “to” in 5–8, in no circumstance does it mean “and.”
Present tense speech tags and fancy speech tags. Speech tags, or quotation attributions, are terms like “the mayor said.” Many news agencies prefer this past-tense approach to alternatives like “says the mayor.” And when “said” is replaced by a fancier word like “enthused” or “reflected,” that’s a red flag, too.
The post Subtle tells for fake news first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Also delicious is the apple pie.
Flipping around a sentence like "The apple pie is also delicious" so that the adjective comes before the verb is perfectly grammatical, and it can be a good way to vary your sentences. But it could also mean you have nothing of substance to say.
The post Predicate Adjective at the Beginning of a Sentence first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In the British comedy series “Trying” (highly recommend, by the way), a schoolteacher played by Sian Brooke tries to convince a fellow teacher that she doesn’t have romantic designs on a handsome single dad.
“I am really, genuinely, honestly not interested in him. OK?” Brooke’s character insists.
Her colleague isn’t buying it. “No,” she replies. “One adverb too many. Now I’m sure.”
Years ago, I dedicated a whole chapter of a book to the lesson the “Trying” writers delivered in just one minute of dialogue. The lesson is this: Adverbs, especially used to excess, can backfire, undermining the message and discrediting the person delivering it. Used poorly, they tell your reader or listener: “My nouns and adjectives aren’t adequate on their own. They need bolstering. They need to be beefed up by additional words that drive home the fact that they mean what they’re supposed to mean.”
The evidence is hidden in plain sight in the great writing we enjoy every day. It’s the stuff we don’t notice because it’s not on the page. Take note of how often your favorite writers don’t use adverbs and you’ll see what I mean.
For example, here’s a passage that did not appear in Patrick Radden Keefe’s “London Falling”: “By the time Zac Brettler finally arrived at Mill Hill, he was completely surrounded by the next generation of eagerly aspiring Lebedevs.”
Those adverbs would have done a disservice to this otherwise solid sentence: “By the time Zac Brettler arrived at Mill Hill, he was surrounded by the next generation of aspiring Lebedevs.”
The following passage did not appear in Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “1929”: “Riordan had gently sat down in a generously overstuffed armchair in the corner of his bedroom, gingerly pulled out a pistol he had surreptitiously taken from the bank’s cashier desk, and violently shot himself in his right temple.”
Now see how much more impact the real passage had: “Riordan had sat down in an overstuffed armchair in the corner of his bedroom, pulled out a pistol he had taken from the bank’s cashier desk, and shot himself in his right temple.”
Even an innocuous seeming adverb in a short sentence can weaken the message. Compare, “The boss is extremely angry” to “The boss is angry.” In the latter, the anger is more menacing because it needs no assistant.
The lesson here is not that adverbs are bad. They’re crucial. And when you realize what a huge word category adverbs are, including terms like “therefore,” “tomorrow” and “here,” you see that most of them aren’t even optional. The lesson is that manner adverbs should be used sparingly.
Manner adverbs are those “ly” words we know so well, like “slowly” and “happily,” along with some that don’t end in “ly” but that also modify actions or adjectives, including “fast,” “late” and “very.”
They can be a sign that your verb or adjective is too weak. “She loudly closed the door” would be better as “She slammed the door.”
Or they can be a sign that you think that your verb or adjective is too weak, even though it’s fine: “The views are truly breathtaking.”
Of course, sometimes manner adverbs work beautifully. That’s especially true when they form the predicate of your sentence, as “beautifully” does above. Other times, they carry real meaning. “Extremely wealthy” can tell your reader something “wealthy” alone cannot. “Drove recklessly” can tell your reader something that “drove” cannot. The examples are endless.
So try your sentence without the adverb first. If it loses nothing of substance, keep it out. But if the adverb adds important information that your verb or adjective can’t convey alone, keep it in.
The post Adverbs: The descriptors of last resort first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You know what a synonym is. But can you say the same for homonyms, homophones, homographs and antonyms?
The post Synonyms, Antonyms, Homonyms, Homophones and Homographs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When your most important or interesting information is in a subordinate clause instead of the main clause, it can dampen the effect. Here's how to spot and fix upside-down subordination.
The post Upside-down Subordination: A Subtle Problem Undermining Your Writing first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Does this answer make you cringe? If so, you’ll be disappointed to hear who says it, often, in grocery store checkout lines, when greeting friends and when meeting new people: your local grammar columnist.
I say “I’m good” all the time, knowing that a lot of language buffs see that as an error. To them, “I’m good” means either I’m virtuous (a good girl) or highly skilled at something (good at math.)
Their preference is legitimate. “I’m well” is more proper. It’s definitely the answer you want to give in white collar job interviews or when setting an example for children. But “I’m good” is an acceptable way to say “I’m well.” And it’s my preferred alternative anytime “I’m well” feels too formal or snooty, which is most of the time. I find my justification in the dictionary.
Look up “good” in Merriam-Webster and you’ll see a lot of stuff you expected: 1. “of favorable character or tendency,” as in “good news, good fortune, good grades or a good feeling about the game.” The next definitions also line up with expectations: 2. “bountiful, fertile: good land,” 3. “handsome, attractive: good looks” and 4. “of a high or desired quality: we ate at a good restaurant.”
If you stopped reading definitions at that point, you would continue to think it’s wrong to say “I’m good” when talking about health. But if you read all the way down to Merriam’s eighth definition of “good,” you’ll see this: “free from injury, sickness, or disease.”
In other words, “good” can mean “well.” So when someone asks how I am doing and I answer, “I’m good,” no grammar rules are broken.
People who oppose “I’m good,” in my experience, have difficulty explaining why they think “well” is the only correct option. In many cases, they say it’s because “good” is an adjective and “well” is an adverb. That sounds like a solid argument at first. But on closer inspection, it doesn’t hold up.
Yes, “well” is the adverb form of “good”: I do well at math because I’m good at math. But that’s not the form of “well” you use in “I am well.” That “well” is a completely different word — an adjective that means “in good health.”
The structure of our reply proves it. A sentence that begins with “I’m” or “I am” calls for an adjective, not an adverb, to modify the pronoun “I.” That’s a job for adjectives. “I’m happily” and “I am correctly” illustrate how adverbs don’t work in this structure. Therefore, just as “I’m happy” and “I am correct” use adjectives, so does “I am well” — and so does “I am good,” no matter your definition of good.
This business is even more confusing when you consider what happens in this exchange:
“How are you doing?”
“I’m doing well, thanks.”
In this case, “well” is the way to go, not because you need the adjective “well” to describe your health but because you need the adverb “well” to modify the verb “doing.”
For that reason, you’ll probably want to opt for “I’m doing well” instead of “I’m doing good.” But as regular readers of this column may have anticipated, there’s a twist. “I’m doing good” is poor form, but it’s not exactly wrong. Dictionaries do allow “good” to be used as an adverb, in which case it’s synonymous with the adverb form of “well.”
If this is more effort than you want to put into a simple greeting in the grocery store checkout, just follow this simple guide: “Well” is always right and proper. “Good” is always technically OK, though not always proper.
The post 'I'm good' vs. 'I'm well' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When is a noun not a noun? When it's acting like an adjective, like "chicken" in "chicken soup" and "air" in "air travel." Here's everything you need to know about attributive nouns.
The post When Nouns Are Adjectives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Terms like “couple’s massage,” “couples’ retreat,” “shopper’s paradise,” “chocolate lover’s package,” “teachers college,” and “farmers market” are anything but straightforward. In fact, when I surveyed working copy editors to include their opinions in my punctuation book, they split on how to handle a lot of these. So not only are the rules unclear, but they’re open to the full range of interpretations.
For certain terms, like "teachers college," style guides have specific rules. AP says no apostrophe in "teachers college." "Farmers market" often has no apostrophe. "Couples’ retreat" might be plural possessive whereas "couple’s massage" is often singular possessive.
At the heart of all these issues are two questions that will lead you to the best choice: 1. Is the emphasis on the singular noun or the plural? 2. Is actual possession intended?
If you’re talking about “a shopper’s paradise,” it seems to me that you’re emphasizing a singular fictional individual who serves as a sort of representative: the shopper. If you’re talking about a “couples’ retreat,” to me that sounds like it’s emphasizing multiple couples at once. Thought it’s sort of a toss-up whether it’s possessive or not. It would make just as much sense to think of “couples” as an adjective here: couples retreat.
If you disagree, your opinions are valid, too. But if you want to know mine, here are the picks I’d probably make:
farmers market
chocolate lover’s package
couples’ retreat
couple’s massage
shopper’s paradise (especially if it began with “a” – a shopper’s paradise. Not because the “a” necessarily modifies “shopper.” It could be modifying “paradise.” But because its presence there creates that singular vibe anyway.)
The post Apostrophe in 'couples massage'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Both are correct, but "flush out" and "flesh out" have different meanings.
The post 'Flush Out' or 'Flesh Out'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It is possible, in grammar and in life, to unlearn something you learned wrong. But man, does it hurt. Especially in grammar where, for some reason, people (present company included) get very invested in tidbits of knowledge, be they real or not. We latch on to a supposed fact like “it’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition,” then we spend years silently mouthing “gotcha” every time we see a sentence like “That’s the man I gave my ticket to.” Worse, we flaunt our supposed knowledge every chance we get, often starting with, “Actually, did you know it’s wrong to …” then watching the room clear.
So when we learn our precious kernel of wisdom is wrong, for example finding out that there is no rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.
At least, that’s how I felt when I learned that “FBI,” “AKA,” “TBD” and other initialisms can rightly be called acronyms. Let me explain.
The word “acronym,” formed from the Greek “akros,” meaning “tip” or “end,” and the English “onym,” meaning name, is quite new. The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology found its first use in 1943, but Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary found an example dating back to 1941. Either way, it was hardly used at all before the mid-1950s. In fact, my 1955 Oxford Universal Dictionary doesn’t list it.
And “tip” and “name” are a clue to its original meaning. Take the “tip” of the words in “radio detecting and ranging,” put them together into a name, and you might come up with “radar.” In fact, that’s both the meaning and the origin of “radar.” And it’s a classic example of an acronym.
Take the tips of the words “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus,” make them into a name, and you might get “scuba.”
Take the tips of the words in North Atlantic Treaty Organization, make them into a name, and you might get NATO.
Note that you don’t pronounce that “en-ay-tee-oh.” Instead, the letters are pronounced as a single word, much like NAFTA and FOMO and SCOTUS.
That, as I learned long ago, is what makes an acronym something other than an abbreviation or initialism. “An acronym is a word formed from the first letter or letters of a series of words: laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation),” writes the Associated Press Stylebook. “An abbreviation is not an acronym.”
Long before I understood that rules in style guides like AP aren’t universal — they’re just guidelines to apply when using that style — I took this “acronym” business to heart. I believed it, repeated it and applied it as a rule in my writing and editing. Years later, when I learned that dictionaries are more universally authoritative than style guides, I looked it up. The dictionary I used at the time, Webster’s New World College Dictionary, said the same thing AP did. Indeed, that’s where AP got their rule. Merriam-Webster’s had the same definition, but they went on to say that you can use “acronym” as a synonym of “initialism” if you like.
In other words, you — that is I — couldn’t rightly say it’s wrong to call “FBI” an acronym just because you pronounce its letters individually. It may be first and foremost an abbreviation, but at least one very authoritative dictionary says the word “acronym” can apply here.
It was like all that effort I put into learning the definition was for nothing, and all the times I said, “Actually, did you know it’s wrong to use ‘acronym’ unless the letters are pronounced as a word,” I wasn’t as smart as I thought. Lesson learned.
The post Is every abbreviation an acronym? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some numbers are better spelled out, others work better as numerals. Following one of the major style guides can ensure you're consistent.
The post Writing Numbers first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some adverbs clutter up your sentence, causing more harm to your message than good. "Actually," though useful sometimes, is among the worst culprits.
The post 'Actually' and Similar Adverbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The major publishing styles have changed a lot of rules, especially for punctuation. Prefixes are less likely to need hyphens, "etc." is no longer necessarily followed by a comma in book publishing, and more. The revised edition of The Best Punctuation Book, Period reflects all the newest rules. You can find it wherever you buy books and e-books.
The post The Best Punctuation Book, Period now fully revised first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"My sister Jennifer" has a different meaning from "My sister, Jennifer." A comma tells the reader that the name "Jennifer" in no way narrows down who I mean by "my sister," so I must have only one sister. The absence of a comma tells the reader that the name is restrictive information necessary to know which sister I'm talking about. Here's the full explanation.
The post Commas for Setting Off Nonrestrictive Information first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A friendly reminder: Don’t say “between you and I.” And don’t say “The boss wants to talk with Bob and I” or “Thanks for meeting with John and I.”
It’s me. Me, me, me. In all those sentences, “I” is a poor choice. Yes, you could argue that the “I” form is idiomatic. But why would you want to? You’re just inviting judgment. And because it’s just as easy to use “me,” there’s no reason to come off like you don’t know the difference between object and subject pronouns.
And if you don’t know the difference now, you will in about thirty seconds. Here goes: “I” is a subject pronoun, which means it acts as the subject of a verb. “Me” is an object pronoun, which means it works as the object of a verb or the object of a preposition. So it’s:
I am here = I is the subject of the verb am
I believe in hard work = I is the subject of the verb believe
I knocked his block off = I is the subject of the verb knocked
Kiss me = me is the object of the verb kiss
He saw me = me is the object of the verb saw
Come with me = me is the object of the preposition with
Talk to me = me is the object of the preposition to
Easy right? Yes. And contrary to popular belief, it’s just as easy when you introduce another person. Nothing changes.
She and I are here = I is a subject of the verb are
Brad and I believe in hard work = I is a subject of the verb believe
My trusty robot and I knocked his block off = I is the subject of the verb knocked
Kiss my baby and me = me is the object of the verb kiss
He saw Craig and me = me is the object of the verb saw
Come with Claire and me = me is the object of the preposition with
Talk to Steve and me = me is the object of the preposition to
When in doubt, just try the sentence without the other person. If it’s “me” when Steve, Claire and the gang are absent, it’s “me” when they’re present, too.
The post A friendly reminder about "and I" vs. "and me" first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people will tell you that "only" can go only one place in a sentence: immediately next to the word it modifies, like "only one place" in this sentence. But in fact, "only" can work multiple places in the sentence, so I could have said: Some people will tell you that "only" can only go one place in a sentence. Moving "only" to before the word "can" is just as correct.
The post Where to Put 'Only' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When it comes to grammar and word usage, English speakers can trust their gut. For example, if you know that “fewer” is usually better than “less” for countable things, you might nonetheless hesitate to say something like “I have one fewer dollar than I did yesterday.” “Fewer” just sounds worse than “less” here. That instinct is right: “less” is more correct to describe singular things, like one dollar.
Punctuation doesn’t work the same way. When it comes to questions of when to use an apostrophe or hyphen or where to put a period or comma, your instincts can’t be trusted.
Unlike language, which developed naturally, punctuation is manufactured — a set of rules that humans created for use in print. And because punctuation didn’t arise organically, it has less to do with your instincts.
That’s why your gut might tell you to use an apostrophe to form the plural in “We ordered a round of Bellini’s,” when in fact you should write “Bellinis.” The reason: You don’t use apostrophes to make plurals, except when you do, for example when writing student grades: “Henry got all A’s and B’s.”
Your gut may tell you to put an apostrophe in a past tense verb like “I demo’d the entire product line,” when in fact it should be “demoed.” You may be naturally inclined to use an apostrophe in verb forms like “He always just Venmo’s me the money,” when in fact it should be, well, I’m not sure, since Venmo isn’t in the dictionary as a verb. But I’d bet the farm on “Venmoed.” The reason: You don’t use apostrophes to conjugate verbs, except when you do.
Take, for example, “OK.” If you want to use it as a past-tense verb and you don’t want to spell it out as “okay,” how would you do that? OKed? OKd? O.K.ed? O.K.d? If you’re following AP style or Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, none of those. According to those sources, you use an apostrophe to make different forms of the verb: We OK’d the project. She OK’s projects like this all the time. They’ve been OK’ing these projects for years.
Why no periods in OK? Simply because that’s AP’s preference, which needn’t apply to you if you prefer O.K. Though that does make the verb forms like O.K.’d even weirder.
But if your hunch is that this means abbreviations like US and ID have no periods, your hunch is off, at least as far as AP is concerned. In that style, U.S. has periods, ID does not and, for the record, USA doesn’t either. You can defy all those rules and still be in line with professional publishers, though, since book publishing allows all those breaks from AP style.
Quotation marks are another danger zone for go-with-your-gut writers. People seem to understand that a period or comma comes before the closing quote mark when the whole quote is something someone said: “I like the beach,” Josie said. But when the quote marks are there to call out words, people assume the comma goes outside: Today there’s a “red flag warning”, according to the posted signs. That assumption makes sense both instinctively and logically, yet it’s not true. The comma or period, in American English at least, always goes inside.
Then there’s the issue of terms like “e-reader,” “email,” “e-book” and “esports,” all of which are correct in AP style, and none of which have much logic to how they’re hyphenated.
Anyone who knows, or intuitively understands, that two words describing a noun are hyphenated ends up writing some compounds correctly, “a well-appointed office,” which is right, and other compounds incorrectly, like “a beautifully-decorated office,” which is wrong because adverbs that end in “ly” are exceptions to this hyphenation rule.
If you want to get words right, don’t overthink them. If you want to get punctuation right, ignore your instincts and stick to rules: Don’t use apostrophes to make plurals unless it’s absolutely necessary. Don’t use apostrophes to conjugate verbs unless the dictionary says otherwise. Always put a period or comma before a closing quote mark. Don’t hyphenate “ly” adverbs. And check a dictionary to see if periods are preferred in abbreviations.
The post Punctuation is an artificial construct, which is why it's less intuitive than grammar and usage first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you want to follow publishers' rules, keep "that" and "which" in separate lanes. If you just want to be correct, trust your instincts.
The post 'That' and 'Which' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One of the craziest things about the English language is our bizarre dependence on the letter S. We give it way too many jobs.
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S has to work like any other letter, representing a specific sound (spill, brass, star).
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We also use S to form plurals (apple —> apples).
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We use it to form possessives (Pete’s car, Mr. Smith’s hat).
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We use it to conjugate verbs. (I walk, he walks. You think, she thinks.)
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And we use it to stand in for our most common verb in contractions (Joe is nice —> Joe’s nice).
Other languages don’t have this problem. For example, in Spanish, S is used to make plurals (un gato, dos gatos). But to show possession, Spanish speakers use “de,” meaning “of” (el gato de Juan = Juan’s cat). And Spanish doesn’t rely solely on S to conjugate verbs (yo hablo, tu hablas, el habla, nosotros hablamos, ellos hablan).
Italian doesn’t even use S for its plurals. It has a different system in which one horse -- un cavallo -- becomes i cavalli in the plural.
Our weird dependence on S is at the root of a good many mistakes. For example, when people write “I went to the Thomas’s house” (which should be Thomases’) or “The dog wagged it’s tail (which should be “its”) or “Ray let’s the dog on the couch” (which should be “lets”).
The only way to avoid these mistakes is to keep track of whether your word is plural, possessive, both plural and possessive, a contraction, or a conjugated verb. And with all those pitfalls, it’s not hard to understand why someone could get so flustered as to think that one carrot plus another carrot equals two “carrot’s.”
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If you want to satisfy the most conservative readers, use "disinterested" only to mean "impartial." But you can use it interchangeably with "uninterested" if you like, as well.
The post Disinterested vs. Uninterested first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s something that drives me nuts (even though I can't really defend my position):
“Spring is a wonderful time to visit,” says tourism board representative Jane Doe.
“The potholes will be fixed by summer,” said the mayor.
“The new Jetta has also been redesigned,” spokesman Joe Dane says.
The reason these drive me nuts? I have to change them to
tourism board representative Jane Doe SAID
the mayor SAID
spokesman Joe Dane SAID
Why do I have to change every “says” to “said” and put every one of them after the name instead of before? Because that’s how I first learned to do it, darn it.
In my first couple editing jobs, I was exposed a lot to the idea that news and feature articles should 1. use everyday, conversational language and 2. make sense.
The word “says” in “Joe Dane says” suggests he does so regularly. That’s different from “said,” which suggests he said so in an interview with a reporter. A reporter can know whether Dane said something in an interview, but he probably doesn't know whether Dane runs around saying it all the time. What’s more, it wouldn’t matter that much if he did. We’re not reporting on the man’s habits. We’re reporting on the car, and Dane’s telling us once that it’s redesigned is all that’s probably relevant to the story.
As for the part about using everyday language: In conversation, you don’t say, “Said Betty, lunch will be served in the conference room.” You say, “Betty said lunch will be served in the conference room.” Putting “said” or “says” before the name is contrary to normal conversational language and often Yoda-like (Rants on, she does).
So I like my quotation attributions in the past tense and in most cases I like the “said” to come after the name. The obvious exception, of course, is when something else must immediately follow the name. Like, “The Jetta has been totally redesigned,” said Joe Dane, president of North American sales.
But here’s why I can’t defend my position: These aren’t rules. Not in the larger world, anyway. And though some publications may have a policy of not using present-tense quotation attributions or ones that put the “say” part before the name part, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it that way. It just means that no one who writes for a publication I edit can do it that way.
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Some verbs grab your reader's attention and bring them on a ride they don't want to get off. Choose them over static verbs whenever you can.
The post Action Verbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Not long ago, a cellphone was a cell phone. A teenager was a teen-ager. Goodbye was good-bye. A website was a Web site. Legroom was leg room.
Words and compounds evolve all the time. But in this corner of the language world, there’s a clear trend: Two-word nouns become one word. Hyphenated nouns do the same. And it’s not just that handful of examples I gave above.
“New compounds typically enter the language in open or hyphenated forms,” writes Amy Einsohn in the second edition of “The Copyeditor’s Handbook.” “If the term gains currency, the word space or hyphen disappears and the term becomes solid.”
It doesn’t always happen. Some two-word nouns stay that way. But when change occurs, it’s always in one direction: “open” or hyphenated terms close up to become one word. It’s a one-way street.
Or it was until now. As I learned recently from a Bluesky post by Benjamin Dreyer, author of the best-selling “Dreyer’s English,” the word “backseat” has bucked the trend. It was a closed, one-word compound in the 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. But now that dictionary considers it two words: “back seat.”
At least, that’s the form Merriam’s considers most standard. The one-word “backseat” is still acceptable as a variant.
This opening of a formerly closed word is pretty historic. But “back seat” isn’t the only term bucking the trend. “Light bulb,” Dreyer pointed out, is another. As I can confirm in my 11th edition Merriam’s dictionary, copyright 2009, “lightbulb” was standard and “light bulb” was the variant. Now, we’re back to “light bulb.”
How do these changes happen?
Regular readers of this blog know that dictionaries simply reflect how you and I are most likely to use the language. Lexicography is reportage, not rule-making. Some people hate to hear this. They think it’s wrong when dictionaries “cave” to poplar usage. But that’s not, and never has been, how language works.
Every grammar rule and every word definition came from popular usage. When grammar books or dictionaries formalize our choices, we may consider these the “rules” of language, or not. But the English language we know and love today evolved from the English language someone else knew and loved yesterday, which itself was a variation on a past iteration, all the way back to people who said “thee” and “thou.”
But the evolution of “back seat” and “light bulb” has less to do with how you and I speak and more to do with how publishers write. That is, when you’re talking, there’s no difference between “back seat” and “backseat.” So, to know how something is written, dictionary-makers rely mainly on published writing. And here’s where things get really interesting. Published writing isn’t like speech in that it doesn’t usually blaze new trails in language. Publishers tend to follow rules, so when their designated dictionary says “backseat” is one word, they write it as one word.
Except they didn’t. Comparing the history of the two spellings in published writing, we can see that, shortly after Merriam’s determined “backseat” is one word, publishers rebelled. In the mid-2010s, just as Merriam’s 2009 edition should have ushered in a trend toward “backseat," this one-word form took a big dive in popularity. So it’s no surprise that a decade later Merriam’s was forced to change course.
If you want to align your writing with the pros’, use “back seat.” If you prefer “backseat,” that’s fine, too. And if you, like some people who replied to Dreyer’s post, are wondering about the adjective form, as in “back seat driver,” you should know that there is no adjective form. There’s only adjectival use, called “attributive” in grammar speak, of the noun form. That’s what we call it when a noun like “paint” is used as an adjective in front of another noun like “store.” And because Merriam’s lists “back seat” only as a noun, it’s also the form you’d use attributively: “back seat driver,” or if you like hyphens, “back-seat driver.”
The post 'Backseat' bucks a trend to become 'back seat' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some say "myriad" is only an adjective and not a noun, which means you can't use "a myriad of." They're wrong, but professional editors often prefer the adjective form.
The post A 'Myriad of' or Just 'Myriad'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I don’t remember when I first learned about single quotation marks, but I have a vague memory of assuming they were as useful as quotation marks, or close to it. Sometimes you quote someone. Sometimes you quote someone quoting someone else. Seemed sensible to me.
Real-world single quotation marks are very different from what I thought. Sure, sometimes you need to quote someone quoting someone. And sometimes you need to quote someone mentioning a book or movie title. But these legitimate uses are much rarer than I’d have guessed. In my experience, most single quotation marks are used in error. Here’s how to get them right.
Know the basics
This sentence shows single quote marks used correctly: Mike said, “I was talking to John who called Venice ‘an extraordinary vacation spot.’” You’re quoting Mike and putting that in regular quotation marks. And because Mike quotes John, John’s speech goes in single quotation marks. That’s the principle.
Know how to get fancy
A quotation of a quotation goes in single quotation marks. But if there’s a quotation nested inside that internal quotation, that gets double quotation marks. Amber said, “Chris told me Brad said, ‘Steve called him “my man.”’” Thankfully, we don’t have many occasions to nest quotes one into another like matryoshka dolls. When we do, that’s probably a sign we should reword our sentence. But in the rare cases when it comes up, it’s good to know the rule is simple. Just alternate single quotes then double quotes then single quotes and on and on.
Streamline headlines
Headlines, at least in news editing, use single quotation marks in place of doubles: New developments ‘troubling,’ mayor says. Think of this as a convention from the days when news was consumed mostly on paper and news outlets sought to save space with tight writing and punctuation.
Pick a style for titles
You’ve probably seen movie titles, book titles and the like in quotation marks sometimes and in italics other times. There’s no one right or wrong way to do this. It’s just different preferences of different publishing styles. You can use either method, but if you use quotation marks for titles know that these are plain-old, regular quotation marks, just as you’d use for quoted speech. “Star Wars.” Don’t use singles instead unless the title is within a quotation.
Don’t fall for “quotation marks lite”
Quotation marks, which are doubled, show direct speech. Therefore, a lot of people assume, single quotation marks must be a milder, noncommittal type of quotation mark perfect for putting in quotes things like sentence fragments and words being referred to as words, as in: Maria uses the term ‘synergy’ a lot. That’s logical. Unfortunately it’s just not true. Words being discussed take plain-old double quotation marks: Maria uses the term “synergy” a lot. The same is true for words or phrases used ironically or with doubt cast on them: He gets his information from “experts.” Even if that’s not a direct quotation, double quote marks are the way to go here, not singles.
Know where the other punctuation goes
Single quotation marks follow these rules, which are the same as those for regular quotation marks: A period or comma, in American English, always goes before the closing single quotation mark: Renee said, “The movie ‘Jaws,’ which I saw in the theater, still scares me today.” A colon or semicolon always follows a single quotation mark: Renee said, “The movie was ‘Jaws’; I saw it in the theater.” A question mark or exclamation point goes after the single quotation mark unless it's part of the quote: Renee said, “We enjoyed ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ almost as much.”
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"One," as in "One must work hard to get ahead," is called a generic pronoun and, though it's sounding more outdated every day, it's still useful in a lot of cases. Here's how it works.
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"Into" isn't necessarily interchangeable with "in to," and the same is true for "onto" and "on to." Here's the full story.
The post In To vs. Into first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you’re looking for a reason to avoid using “whom,” the best one I know is illustrated in this excerpt from an ESPN blog:
“The game will be determined by whomever can pass better.”
That was penned by a professional writer who recognized that the sentence structure called for an object. That’s why he used “whomever,” which is an object pronoun, instead of “whoever,” which is a subject pronoun. But it was the wrong call.
I see this error a lot. It’s one of those rare mistakes that may actually be more common among professional writers than among amateurs. I suppose that’s because professional writers feel more obligated to use “whom” and “whomever,” whereas amateurs don’t feel the need to sound so formal.
“Whom” and “whomever,” experts say, are for formal speech and writing. In informal speech and writing, you can just always use “who” and “whoever” and not worry whether they should have had Ms in them.
And professional writers seem to get the basic concept: who and whoever are subjects, whom and whomever are objects.
An object is either the object of a transitive verb, like “cake” in “We ate cake,” or the object of a preposition, like “Pete” in “The book was written by Pete.”
Our ESPN writer knew that “by” is a preposition. So whatever followed “The game will be determined by” was an object. But, in this case, the object is not a single pronoun like “whomever.” It’s a whole clause like, “whoever can pass better.”
Clauses need subjects, and subjects must be in subject form. Compare “he can pass better” to “him can pass better.” The first one, which uses a subject pronoun, is clearly right while the second, which uses an object pronoun, is clearly wrong.
But here's the clincher: A subject needs a clause even if that whole clause is itself functioning as an object. So the subject form, “whoever,” is needed to make the true object, the clause, make sense: The game will be determined by whoever can pass better.
When in doubt just remember that whenever a word seems to be filling the job of both an object and a subject, the subject form wins. Or try plugging in "he" and "him." If the subject pronoun -- "he can pass better" -- works and the object pronoun "him" -- "him can pass better -- doesn't, then you know you want the subject "whoever."
Sadly, a lot of people who know the basic difference between who and whom don’t know how to handle this specific dilemma. The “whoever” vs. “whomever” issue gives them away. That’s why, if you don’t know how to use all these pronouns in all these situations, you may be safer ignoring “whom” and “whomever” altogether.
The post 'Whomever' tricks even professional writers first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There's a popular belief that it's wrong to say "amounts over $50" or "children over 12." But there's no need to use "more than" or "less than" when "over" and "under" sound good to you."
The post Can 'Over' Mean 'More Than'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sometimes it seems like the English language is designed to make us feel bad about our grammar. Take, for example, terms like “farmers market,” “couples’ retreat” and “shopper’s paradise.” Is the first word in each a plural? A plural possessive? A singular possessive? Without knowing the answer to each, you can’t know where the apostrophe goes.
Editing styles and language experts agree that no one rule governs these terms. A plural like “farmers” modifying a noun like “market” may be functioning not as a possessive but as an adjective, meaning it requires no apostrophe. Think: shoe store. No possession is implied. In this interpretation, the idea isn’t so much that farmers own the market. The idea is that the market is about farmers. In fact, this is how most news outlets write it: farmers market, no apostrophe.
Or you could take the view that the market really belongs to the farmers, either in a literal sense or in a loose figurative sense. In that case, you could choose “farmers’ market,” plural possessive. Many top publishers do.
The singular possessive “farmer’s market” is less popular. I don’t know of editing styles or publishers that write it this way. But when you think about a farmer’s almanac or a shopper’s paradise, you could argue that “farmer’s market” is also a singular possessive.
“Shopper’s paradise” uses the idea of a single, fictional shopper who sort of represents every shopper. From that point of view, it makes sense to suggest this paradise belongs to that person. Hence the common practice of treating this as singular possessive. “The chocolate lover’s package” does the same thing. The package is for “the” chocolate lover, aka anyone who fits that bill.
“Couples’ retreat,” “couple’s massage” and “couples therapy” illustrate how meaning affects punctuation. The retreat is for multiple couples, it’s theirs, in a way. So the plural possessive is a popular choice.
In a couple’s massage, there are (I assume) just two people getting a treatment, and together they form a single couple. You could argue the massage is theirs, hence “couple’s massage,” or you could argue the massage is about them the same way the market is about farmers, which justifies “couples massage.” The plural possessive “couples’ massage” seems less practical, though I suppose you could think of it as a service offered to all couples.
“Couples therapy” comes with a handy helper: Merriam-Webster’s dictionary. According to their online edition, the term has become so standard that it deserves its own entry, which they write with no apostrophe. That doesn’t mean you can’t take a different interpretation — especially if your meaning is a little different: the couple’s therapy is going well. The plural possessive, couples’ therapy, doesn’t seem as popular, perhaps because it implies at least four people sitting in one therapist’s office.
No one should feel bad for not knowing how to write these terms. Besides, even if you don’t know, you probably get them right anyway.
The post Farmers market. Couples' retreat. Shopper's paradise. It's hard to know where the apostrophe goes. first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Dashes are very helpful when used correctly. Here's how.
The post Everything You Need to Know About Dashes first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It's not wrong to use "amongst" and "amidst" in place of "among" and "amid." But from a plain language point of view, it's probably a bad idea. Consider:
“He is amongst the best executives in our company’s history.”
“You are amongst friends.”
“We’ll keep working hard amidst all the chaos."
Me, I have a knee-jerk reaction to these words. That reaction is chop, chop, chop. It’s an editor thing. I just delete the “st.” Always. I don’t think about it.
Of course, that’s only possible when I’m editing. When I come across these words in the wild, I don’t have the same power. I can’t change text someone else published, and I can’t edit the voices coming out of my TV or live human beings. Yet the reaction is pretty ingrained, so I cringe a little and silently delete the “st” in my mind. “Amongst” and “amidst” just sound wrong to me, and for good reason.
The editing style I use most in my work, Associated Press style, says that “amid” should be used instead of “amidst” and “among” should be used instead of “amongst.” AP doesn’t give a reason. But their longtime preference for plain language as well as shorter spellings (space on the page was at a premium in AP’s formative days) probably explain it.
Rounding out the top two most influential guides in publishing, the Chicago Manual of Style feels the same way: In its entry covering “amid” and “among,” the guide is clear: “Avoid ‘amidst’ and ‘amongst,’ especially in American English.”
Does that mean “amongst” and “amidst” are wrong? No. They’re only wrong for writers and editors aiming to adhere to one of those two editing styles. Everyone else can use them if they choose, though maybe they should think twice about it.
Dictionaries list “amongst” as a variant form of “among,” noting that it’s less common in American English than British. “Amidst,” too, is considered a variant form, though Merriam-Webster’s doesn’t say this one is more popular in British English.
By “variant form,” the dictionary means these words are correct, but nonstandard. In other words, “among” and “amid” are more natural for speakers here in the U.S. When you’re trying to communicate, simple language is often better because it doesn’t distract from the message the way frilly words do.
“Amongst” strikes many people, including Bryan Garner, author of Garner’s Modern English Usage, as pretentious.
Merriam-Webster’s disagrees with Garner: “Our evidence doesn’t confirm that view.” They cite examples of nonpretentious “amongst” uses like this one from an old TV Guide: “Amongst the evidence were verbal slams from such network luminaries …” and this one from Cruising World: “Pelican is a wild town where one year before there had been a shootout of sorts amongst some fishermen.”
Those excerpts are held up as proof that “amongst” is not pretentious. But I’m not sure they prove Merriam’s point. They both sound kind of fussy to me.
“Amidst” doesn’t draw as much criticism, perhaps because it seems less deliberately fancy-pants than “amongst” does. In fact, I’d argue that “amidst” sometimes seems like the most natural choice. To me, “amidst all the chaos” sounds better than “amid all the chaos,” but you may disagree.
The worst thing about “amongst” and “amidst” isn’t the risk of sounding highbrow. It’s the risk of sounding lowbrow — like someone using big words to try to sound smart and, as a result, sounding not smart. Plain language conveying good information and ideas is always better than fancy, fussy words masking a lack of substance. So “amongst” and “amidst” can work against effective communication.
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Apostrophes are hard. But these common pitfalls make them even harder. Here are the trickiest situations for apostrophe use.
The post Apostrophe Traps first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Hyphens show when two words are working together to modify a third: a one-way street. But when the first word is an adverb ending in -ly, no hyphen is needed because the relationship between the first two words is already clear: a happily married couple.
The post Why You Should Never Hyphenate -ly Adverbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Each” is a weird word. Sometimes it’s definitely singular: “Each is able to decide for himself.” But other times, things aren’t so clear: “A number of families will participate and each have their own priorities.”
In the first example, “each” is paired with “is” — a singular verb suggesting that the pronoun itself is singular. But in the second example, we have the plural verb form “have” suggesting that this instance of “each” is plural.
So what’s the deal? Well, there’s no rule saying when you should treat “each” as singular or plural in every instance. But there are some patterns you can take your cue from.
When “each” is the whole subject, it’s usually singular, as in “Each is able to decide.” But when it’s followed by “of,” you have to go with your gut. That’s because the noun that follows “of” is always plural: “each of them,” “each of my cats,” “each of the senators,” and so on. That casts a strong flavor of the plural onto the whole the noun phrase. “Each of them are equipped to step in and help” sounds no worse than “Each of them is equipped to step in and help.”
So in these cases, you can usually conjugate your verb in whatever way sounds most natural to you.
But when in doubt, treat “each” as singular. That’s usually the safest bet. And when you consider that a lot of people out there are under the misperception that “each” is exclusively singular, it makes this choice all the safer.
The post 'Each' is usually singular, but not always first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I’m not a sports fan. I’ve been to exactly two baseball games in my life, neither by choice, and one was the Dodgers’ worst-ever loss. But years ago a friend got me hooked on the baseball term “swing and a miss.” It works beautifully in any situation in which someone tries to accomplish something, like hitting a baseball, and fails.
That’s the term that comes to mind when I hear people say, “I feel badly.” They’re trying to accomplish something, in this case perfect grammar, but they strike out. Grammar swing and a miss.
In this case, a home run would take the form “I feel bad.” That’s the more grammatical option. But as with so many things in English, trying too hard backfires.
We’re all taught that adverbs modify verbs, which is often true. And we’re all taught that adverbs are words that end in “ly,” which is also often true. But in fact, adverbs have a larger CV than we were taught. Besides describing actions, adverbs also describe adjectives. Think: a really beautiful sunset. Adverbs even answer questions like “when” and “where” in sentences like “I’ll see you outside tomorrow.” In this case, both “outside” and “tomorrow” are adverbs. (Look them up in the dictionary and you’ll see that they are both adverbs in certain uses.)
Still, the basic idea that “ly” adverbs modify actions is correct: He thought about it carefully. We slowly entered the building. I sing badly.
If that’s all you know about adverbs, it will serve you well in most situations. But not in the case of “I feel bad.” That’s because there’s a class of verbs that aren’t actions. Copular verbs, or more commonly, linking verbs, refer to states of being or the senses. The most common linking verb is “be.” And linking verbs are followed not by adverbs but by adjectives.
If that sounds advanced, it’s not. You already get this on an instinctive level. For example, have you ever said, “Carla is nicely” instead of “Carla is nice”? Have you ever said, “Tyler seems angrily” instead of “Tyler seems angry”? How about “This coffee tastes terribly” instead of “This coffee tastes terrible”?
No. Because you see that the last word in each of these sentences isn’t modifying the verb. It’s modifying the subject of the sentence: a noun or pronoun. In “Carla is nice,” you use the adjective “nice” to describe the noun “Carla.” That’s very different from saying something like “Carla fits into our group nicely.” In that case, you use an adverb to describe the action of fitting in.
It's not always so clear, though. The verb “feel” seems like it should be an action verb. In fact, it often is. “I feel the effects of caffeine very quickly.” But when you’re talking about empathy or pity, as in “I feel bad for him,” the verb “feel” functions as a linking verb. That’s why the adjective “bad” is the correct form here.
If it helps, consider “I feel sorrily for him.” The adverb just doesn’t work in place of “sorry.”
When we’re not policing our own speech, a lot of us say “I feel bad” without thinking about it. But when we do think about it because we really want to use proper grammar, we may lean back on those old adverb lessons and use “badly” instead.
The good news is that, if you say, “I feel badly,” you’re not wrong — technically. It’s an established form defended by many English language experts, and it’s allowed by dictionaries. But if you were swinging for the fences (did I use that right?) of good grammar, “I feel bad” is a homerun.
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Apostrophes are hard. But learning them this worth the effort. Here's how to avoid the most common apostrophe mistakes.
The post Apostrophe Abuse first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
So how’s your New Year’s resolution going so far? Hmm. I see. I was afraid of that.
Would you like me to get you off the hook? Because I can suggest a much easier resolution that, with a little work upfront, will require zero effort for the rest of the year. The rest of your life, even. Here it is: Learn when to say “and me” instead of “and I.”
Trust me, this will put your grammar far ahead of most people’s. And it will achieve your goal of using “and I” in the first place: to speak as correctly as possible.
To say “Thanks for visiting Maria and I” isn’t wrong, exactly. Most people do, and you can continue to do so if you like. But it’s not grammatical. It’s idiomatic, meaning it has become standard and therefore acceptable.
When people say “and I,” it’s usually because they’re trying to be grammatical, proper. People assume “I” is best because, as kids, we were swiftly corrected for saying something like “Maria and me are going to the movies.” It seemed that every time we chose “me,” an adult told us we should instead use “I.” They weren’t wrong. “Maria and I are going to the movies” is the grammatical alternative to “Maria and me are going to the movies.”
But we took it too far: We got the sense that “me” was always inferior, so we started using “I” in stuff like “Thanks for visiting Maria and I.” That’s not the proper English we’re shooting for.
“Me” and “I” have different functions in a sentence. “I” is a subject: I met Maria. “Me” is an object: Maria met me. Understanding this is crucial to choosing correctly between “I” and “me.”
Luckily, you already know how to get this right every time. You never say, “Me like pizza” or “Tell I.” Because you already understand subjects and objects, you say instead “I like pizza” and “Tell me.”
Your understanding of object pronouns goes even deeper: You also understand that prepositions — little words like “to,” “with,” “at,” “on” and “in” — also take object pronouns. Instead of “Listen to I” you say “Listen to me.” Instead of “Come with I,” you say “Come with me.”
This doesn’t stop with “I” and “me.” You understand how to use every other pronoun pair including “he” and “him,” “she” and “her” and “we” and “us.” That’s why you use “tell him” instead of “tell he” and “between us” instead of “between we.” Effortless grammatical perfection.
Yet, if you’re like most English speakers, all your deep knowledge of object pronouns goes out the window when you add another person to the sentence. People frequently say things like “You should listen to Sam and I” and “You should come to the movies with Alexis and I” and, the one that even careful speakers say, “Between you and I.”
If you’re aiming for proper speech, these fall short of your goal. But there’s a simple way to get these right in 2026 and beyond: Consider the sentence without the other person.
When you want to say, “You should listen to Sam and I,” consider “You should listen to I.” It sounds wrong because it is wrong. You know it’s “You should listen to me.” Sam doesn’t change that.
Instead of “This is about you and I,” try “This is about I.” You see instantly that you need “me” here. So say, “This is about you and me.”
This trick doesn’t work great for “between you and I,” because “between” requires a pair of things for its object. In this case, you can plug in “we” and “us.” Clearly, “between we” is ungrammatical, which is how you know an object pronoun, like “us” or “me,” is the way to go.
That’s it. Just try your sentence without the other person a couple of times. You’ll soon see when “and me” is better than “and I.”
The post A New Year's resolution reset: Learn when it's OK to use 'and me' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you're talking about being sneaky to deceive someone, "palm off" is the better term. "Pawn off" means to get rid of something but usually without deceiving someone to do it.
The post 'Palm Off' vs. 'Pawn Off' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Danglers are easy to spot but can be surprisingly tough to fix.
As a working mom, finding time to get enough sleep is difficult.
Technically, this is a dangler because the modifying phrase — in this case the first four words — isn’t right next to the noun it should be modifying. The whole dangler concept, in fact, is based on the idea that any phrase that functions like an adjective, modifying a noun, should be right next to that noun.
As a working mom, Jane finds it hard to get enough sleep.
Here, the modifying phrase “as a working mom” is right next to the noun it modifies, “Jane.” So this sentence does not contain a dangler. But in the first example, that same phrase is positioned next to the word “finding,” which is clearly not the noun that we’re describing as a working mom. That’s the difference.
This one was easy to fix because we made up a person and rearranged the main clause so that her name would be the first thing to come after the modifying phrase. But what if we don’t want to name a specific working mom?
As a working mom, a woman finds it hard to get enough sleep.
Awful, huh? So here’s another way to go.
A working mom finds it hard to get enough sleep.
Here we dispensed with the modifying phrase altogether and pilfered its noun to make it the subject of our single-clause sentence. That’s okay, I suppose. But this sentence now seems lacking.
One option, of course, is to just ignore the fact that our first sentence contained a dangler. After all, the whole point of all this grammar stuff is to ensure clarity. And that sentence was pretty clear from the get-go. Still, it lacks precision, which I value a lot. So I would definitely look for ways to improve the sentence before throwing my hands up.
When a word or phrase that’s dangling is a participle, the error is called a (wait for it) dangling participle. This can either mean progressive participle like "walking," "knowing," "realizing," or "yelling," or a past participle like "surprised," "shaken," "hired," or "thought." And it can mean either a lone participle like “Surprised, Roger jumped sky high,” or a longer participial phrase like, “Surprised by screams of his friends and family, Roger jumped sky high.”
But even noun phrases can dangle:
A man of great courage, the steps John took were impressive.
The steps aren’t a man. So this is a dangler, and it’s definitely one I would fix: John was a man of great courage, and the steps he took were impressive.
But, in my experience, sometimes it's best to let a dangler dangle.
The post Danglers aren't easy first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
People who think adverbs only modify actions argue that "hopefully" and "importantly" can't begin a sentence. But in fact, adverbs can also modify whole sentences, which is why these two sentence adverbs work just fine.
The post Can You Start a Sentence with 'Hopefully' or 'More Importantly'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here comes another year full of holidays — some of them easy to write, others not so much (as anyone who’s wondered where to put the apostrophe in Presidents Day can attest). So as 2025 winds down, here’s how to write all the holidays to come in 2026.
New Year’s, New Year, new year. A new year in the generic sense isn’t capitalized. So you’d say, “Looking forward to seeing you in the new year.” But holidays are almost always proper nouns, so “happy New Year” gets a capital n and y (and note the lowercase h). When you’re making resolutions, that’s usually treated as possessive: a New Year’s resolution.
New Year’s Day, New Year’s Eve. Treat these as distinct holiday names, with “Day” and “Eve” capitalized.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day. There’s no “Rev.” or “Dr.” in the holiday, which falls on the third Monday in January. And according to both the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style, you shouldn’t put commas around “Jr.”
Valentine’s Day. Put an apostrophe and an s after “Valentine” when you’re talking about the holiday, making it singular possessive. The word “valentine” is lowercase when you’re talking about your loved one or a card or gift for that person: He’s my valentine. I’m sending him a valentine. You can also call the holiday Saint Valentine’s Day.
Presidents Day. Every third Monday in February, people are baffled about how to punctuate Presidents. And for good reason: There are several correct ways to write this holiday name. AP style says no apostrophe: Presidents Day. Chicago style writes it as plural possessive, with the apostrophe after the s: Presidents’ Day. It’s also commonly called Washington’s Birthday. All of these are correct.
St. Patrick’s Day. There was just one St. Patrick, so this holiday, which falls on March 17, is singular possessive, meaning the apostrophe goes before the s.
April Fools’ Day. As you can surely attest, there’s more than one fool out there. This day is for all of them, so write it as plural possessive, with the apostrophe after the s: Fools’. If you’re using “fool” in a generic sense, for example if someone falls for a trick, you call them an April fool with a lowercase f.
Mother’s Day. In May, the logic of possessive and singular holidays breaks down completely. Even though the day is for all mothers, we write it as though it’s for just one: Mother. So the holiday is Mother’s Day.
Fourth of July, July Fourth, the Fourth. To follow the style of professional publishers, don’t use a numeral in this holiday name. Spell out Fourth when you write Fourth of July, July Fourth or the Fourth — all are correct. If you don’t care about editing style, there’s nothing wrong with writing July 4th or even 4th of July.
Veterans Day. If you’ve ever noticed that many news outlets use no apostrophe in “farmers market,” you have a basis for understanding why there’s no apostrophe in Veterans Day. The idea is that the words “farmers” and “Veterans” are working more like adjectives in these terms than like true possessives. So just “Veterans Day” is the way to go.
Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving is one of the easier holidays to write. But “Thanksgiving Day” isn’t as clear. For the record, the word “Day” gets capitalized when you’re making it part of a holiday nickname. So: Thanksgiving Day.
Hanukkah, Chanukah. Both these spellings are correct, but Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says Hanukkah is more common and AP style prefers the H spelling as well.
Christmas Day, Christmas Eve. Just as we saw with Thanksgiving, the “Day” in “Christmas Day” gets capitalized, and the same logic applies to “Christmas Eve.”
Xmas. Write Xmas with no hyphen. And don’t worry that this is in any way anti-religious. According to Garner’s Modern American Usage, “The X is not a Roman X but a Greek chi — the first letter in Christ’s name.” So this abbreviated holiday name in no way erases its namesake. If do you use it, note that you can use “a” or “an” in front of it, depending on how you believe Xmas is pronounced. If in your mind it sounds like eks-mas, you would write “an Xmas present.” But if you hear it as Christmas, you would write “a Xmas present.”
Spring, summer, fall, autumn, winter. Seasons are all lowercase, “I love the spring.”
The post How to write every holiday first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A little-known dynamic, the "predicate nominative," explains why "This is she" is the more grammatical form.
The post 'This Is She' or 'This Is Her'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If there’s one thing that can tell me, in a single glance, that a news article was not edited by an experienced pro, it’s the headline capitalization.
Here’s an example from a Yahoo Finance headline I saw a while back:
Stocks Pull Back: Why it Might Not Last
One look at that headline and I know that someone in the organization doesn’t know what they’re doing. The reason: the lowercase I in “it.”
A lot of editing styles capitalize the first letter of most words in a headline, but they make exceptions for some prepositions, articles, and conjunctions — especially short ones of three or fewer letters — unless they come at the beginning or end of the headline.
“Simpson Back in Jail”: Here, the word “in” is lowercase because it’s a short preposition. But if "in" were first or last word, the "i" would be capitalized: “In Jails, Mental Health Suffers” or in “Jones Decries the Mess He’s In.”
These capitalization rules aren’t a matter of right and wrong. This is a style thing. But when you’re making a clear effort to follow this style, you don’t want the world to see that you don’t know how.
In the case of our Yahoo headline, the editor was probably used to seeing “Simpson Back in Jail” and gave “it” the same treatment as “in.” That was a mistake.
"In" is a preposition. "It" is a pronoun.
I see the same mistake with “is.” Just because it’s a two-letter word starting with I doesn’t mean it should be treated like “in.” "Is" is a verb.
Some online publications just skirt the whole issue by capitalizing every single letter, including all the prepositions, articles and conjunctions: “Simpson In Jail And Out Of The Way.” At least in this style you don’t have to test your editors’ knowledge of prepositions, conjunctions and articles. But it sure looks ugly.
The best course is just to learn the basic parts of speech before you publish.
The post Poor headline capitalization: A major tell first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"While" can mean the same thing as "though" or "although." But that doesn't mean you should use them interchangeably. "While" can cause confusion when used carelessly.
The post 'While' vs. 'Though' and 'Although' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A reader named Ed wrote to me with this question:
"In the column that ran this past Sunday ... the following sentence/ phrase appears: "thanks to all the horrible people... who just won't stop using the word 'over' wrong. "
Isn't the last word of that sentence intended as an adverb and shouldn't it then be "wrongly" ?
Just a thought!
Unless Ed travels in some truly unusual circles, I'm guessing he never hears "wrongly" modifying verbs: You're doing it wrongly. I answered the test question wrongly. And so on.
"Wrong" is so standard in these situations it’s nearly universal. Yet while reading a grammar column, taking a moment to focus on all things grammar, we can start to second guess our understanding of our own mother tongue. And of course, when we get the answer to Ed's question, we see once again that, in language, first instincts are usually better than trying to apply the incomplete education on grammar most of us got in school.
Ed learned well that adverbs modify actions, but no one taught him that adverbs aren't just words ending in "ly." Nor did anyone teach him where to find answers to questions like these. All he had to do was open a dictionary and he could have seen that "wrong" isn't just an adjective. It's also an adverb.
Here's what I told Ed:
Actually, "wrong" is an adverb, as well as an adjective and a noun. So is "right." So it's 100% acceptable to say stuff like "You're doing it wrong" and "You're doing it right."
True, “ly" forms are often adverbs and if you drop the "ly" you often end up with an adjective, but that's not universal. Sometimes there's redundancy in the language, giving us "wrong" and "wrongly" both as adverbs. Of course, over time, the uses often sort of differentiate themselves. And nowadays, "wrongly" more commonly modifies adjectives and participles: wrongly accused, wrongly imprisoned. So what you're observing is one of the many interesting quirks of the language!
The post You're doing it wrongly? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Relative pronouns like who take the same verb form as the word they represent. So in "It is I who is," the relative pronoun who means I. And because I pairs with am, you would say, "It is I who am." Here's the full explanation.
The post It Is I Who Am? Or It Is I Who Is? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Not long ago, making people angry was a bad idea. Nowadays, rage is a hot commodity.
Time it right and you can build a whole media empire or political machine on some well-cultivated fury. At the very least, you can get a lot of clicks on TikTok or whatever gizmo you use to turn anger into dollars.
But let’s face it, people can only rage at a limited number of things every day. And as more and more enragers compete for a limited pool of enragees’ finite rage resources, the successful anger pusher needs an edge.
And that (I assume) is part of the story of the 2025 Oxford University Press word of the year: rage bait.
If you’re P.O.’d that the word of the year is in fact two words, by all means, send money. But there’s a good explanation. Lexicographers use the word “word” for any term that encompasses a single unit of meaning. So two-word words are words, which lets us have individual dictionary entries for phrasal verbs like “blow up,” nouns like “night owl” and other two-word combos.
“Rage bait” is defined, according to Oxford, as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account.”
To pick their annual winners, Oxford uses a combination of staff expertise and public input. Their goal is always to zero in on a word or term that best captures the current zeitgeist.
“The fact that the word ‘rage bait’ exists and has seen such a dramatic surge in usage means we’re increasingly aware of the manipulation tactics we can be drawn into online,” writes Casper Grathwol, Oxford’s president of Oxford Languages, on the publisher’s website. “Before, the internet was focused on grabbing our attention by sparking curiosity in exchange for clicks, but now we’ve seen a dramatic shift to it hijacking and influencing our emotions, and how we respond. It feels like the natural progression in an ongoing conversation about what it means to be human in a tech-driven world — and the extremes of online culture.”
I take heart in Grathwol’s words. Yes, it’s a bad thing that people out for money and power are dragging us around by the spleen, but at least we’re aware of it and have the vocabulary to talk about it.
For the win, “rage bait” beat out “aura farming,” which Oxford defines as “the cultivation of an impressive, attractive, or charismatic persona or public image by behaving or presenting oneself in a way intended subtly to convey confidence, coolness, or mystique.”
“Rage bait” also beat out “biohack,” a verb meaning “to attempt to improve or optimize one’s physical or mental performance, health, longevity, or wellbeing by altering one’s diet, exercise routine, or lifestyle, or by using other means such as drugs, supplements, or technological devices.”
As you might guess, some of Oxford’s picks stand the test of time, others don’t. For example, 2021’s word of the year was “vax,” which both captured 2021 and seems to be sticking around. But 2022’s winner was “goblin mode” — a slang term that Oxford says is mostly used in the expressions “in goblin mode” or “to go goblin mode” and which is defined as a type of behavior that is “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”
I don’t recall hearing that even once, and I doubt I ever will.
“Rage bait,” however, is big business. And if language can help us better identify it, explain it and ultimately avoid it, the whole world will be better off.
The post Oxford's Word of the Year: 'rage bait' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Must you say “I have gotten” or can you say “I have got”? Is it, "She hanged the picture on the wall" or "She hung the picture on the wall"? Why can you turn smart into smarter but you can’t turn intelligent into intelligenter? The answers are all the the dictionary.
The post There's More in the Dictionary Than Definitions first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A lot of the typos I see occur because a writer guessed wrongly that a term was two words instead of one: line up, pick up (as in truck), home owner, and on and on.
These types of mistakes aren’t egregious or shameful by any stretch. But they still require correction. They’re still, in some cases, mistakes. And the often harmless habit of writing a one-word term as two words can sometimes go really bad (titmouse, anyone?).
So here’s a tip: Whenever you’re not sure whether a noun is one word or two, and you’re not inclined (for whatever reason) to take the time to find out, just make it a habit of typing it as one word.
That will improve the odds that spell-check can help you. If you type skincare as one word, a good spellchecker might flag it (though mine, for some reason, does not). But spell checker would never flag the word skin or the word care. Spellchecker would never flag the word short or the word cut, so choose the one-word shortcut and if it doesn't get flagged as an error, you know it's correct. A compound made of two words squished together is less likely to pass muster with spell-check than the two halves we already know are valid words.
It could tell you that your word needs to be split up, but it will never tell you that two words like over and priced need to be squished together.
Of course, this is just for rushed writing that doesn’t need to be perfect. If you need to meet a higher quality standard, first check the one-word form in the dictionary, where you’ll see that a pickup is a noun meaning a truck or a retrieval of a package or a person. Then also check the root word, in this case pick, where you could see that it’s often paired with up to create a slightly different meaning.
The post A spelling shortcut first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
How to avoid the most common mistakes on holiday greetings.
The post Happy Holidays from the 'Thoma's'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you’ve ever known someone a little too eager to take offense at the term Xmas, here’s a little gift for you:
Xmas, as a shortened way of writing Christmas, irks some people. Language sticklers have looked down on it as slovenly. And, because slovenliness is in the eye of the beholder, there’s no arguing with them. But the other anti-Xmas camp is easier to deal with. Some pious people consider Xmas to be borderline sacrilegious — taking the “Christ” out of Christmas, some call it.
But the real outrage here is a blatant disregard for the virtue of doing one’s homework. The X in Xmas isn’t, as some might assume, a crossing off of the holiday’s namesake. Instead, the X is actually a direct reference to Christ.
According to Garner’s Modern American Usage, X represents the Greek letter chi – the first letter in Christ. Garner’s cites poet and language commentator John Ciardi as pointing out that” X has ancient antecedents as the symbol of Christ and the cross.” How pervasive was this symbolism? “So much so that illiterate Jews atEllis Island refused to sign with an X.”
In other words, Xmas is as much a reference to Jesus as Christmas itself. So there’s no need for anyone to get in a tizzy about it.
On the other hand, trying to figure out how to write it correctly can be upsetting. Though a lot of people aren’t sure whether to put a hyphen in it, major style guides agree you should not hyphenate it. It’s just Xmas. But whether you should put “a” or “an” in front of it isn’t as simple.
According to “Garner’s,” it depends on your “mind’s ear.” If, to you, Xmas would be pronounced “eks-mas,” then it would be preceded by “an.” But if you see Xmas and hear in your mind “Christmas,” then Garner’s says it makes sense to use “a.”
Bottom line: You can use it however you like without fear.
Merry Xmas!
The post Don't sweat 'Xmas' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Affect, Effect. Forgo, Forego. There, Their, They’re. Here at the most frequently confused words and how to get them right every time.
The post Top Words to Keep Straight first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s something I see a lot in my copy editing work: He’ll interview author Rob Peters and an accountant Jane Farrell.
Or sometimes it will look like this: He’ll interview author, Rob Peters, and an accountant, Jane Farrell.
But almost never will it look like this: He’ll interview author Rob Peters and an accountant, Jane Farrell.
As you may have guessed, that’s unfortunate because the last one is actually correct.
Knowing when to use commas in these situations lies in understanding appositives. And the easiest way to think of an appositive is as a renaming of something just said:
… my husband, Ted …
… the teacher, a great person ...
... your car, a 2021 Honda …
An appositive is a noun phrase that stands in apposition to another, where “apposition” means “a grammatical construction in which two usually adjacent nouns having the same referent stand in the same syntactical relation to the rest of a sentence.”
Simply put, if you’re just throwing in a name or a noun that repeats another noun, that's an appositive. An aside. An extra parenthetical bit thrown in. And once we understand that, the Chicago Manual of Style’s advice is clear: “A word, abbreviation, phrase, or clause that is in apposition to a noun is set off by commas if it is nonrestrictive — that is, omittable, containing supplementary rather than essential information. If it is restrictive — essential to the noun it belongs to — no comma should appear.”
The committee chair, Gloria Ruffolo, called for a resolution.
Stanley Groat, president of the corporation, spoke first.
My older sister, Betty, taught me the alphabet.
but
My sister Enid lets me hold her doll. (I have two sisters.)
See how in the first sister example the lack of commas tells us that the speaker only has one older sister? And see how in the second sister example the lack of commas tells us that Enid is just one of two or more sisters?
Now think about “the baker Rob Peters” vs. “the baker, Rob Peters. “In the first, you’re using the name to make clear which baker you’re talking about. In the second, you’re implying that the reader already knows that you’re talking about one specific baker and that, by the way, his name is Rob Peters.
Ditto that for:
“I read the book, ‘Blue Moon” vs. “I read the book “Blue Moon.’”
In the first one, it’s clear you’ve already established with the reader that you’re talking about a single, specific book, even if you haven’t named it yet: “I went to the store. I thumbed through a book I couldn’t put down. I bought it, along with a music CD. When I read the book, “Blue Moon,” it changed my life.”
But in the second one, you’re probably referencing the book for the first time.
Again, it all boils down to whether the second noun phrase is a mere repeat of the first or whether they’re working together in a way that makes them inseparable.
The post Appositives: How to choose between 'the author, John Doe' and 'the author John Doe' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
These two words are often interchangeable and your instinct is usually your best guide.
The post 'If' and 'Whether' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I came across “lain” the other day in a book I’m reading. Here’s the sentence from the 1968 dystopian novel “The Wall” by Marlen Haushofer: “Bella had lain down and gone to sleep.”
It struck me as odd. Not because it was wrong. On the contrary, the translator who worked from the original German got it exactly right. The reason it struck me as odd was, well, how often do you see “lain” these days? If my experience is any indication, “lain” is fading away along with “swum” and “drunk” (the verb participle, not the adjective — that form of “drunk” remains in high demand).
I figured that “lain” had everything to do with the book’s publication date. Surely, back in the middle of the last century — the heyday of grammar prescriptivism — people were still keen on past participles like “lain.” To confirm my suspicion, I checked Google’s Ngram Viewer, which shows the frequency with which words show up in print over the years. To my great surprise, “lain” is about twice as popular now as it was in the late ’60s — at least in published writing.
This is more than just a mildly interesting factoid. It’s a clue about how to use the language well today. Had Ngram Viewer shown that “lain” was on the decline, there would be little need to worry about it. Language changes, and when people stop using, for example, “forsooth,” this adverb meaning “in truth” does not belong at the top of your to-learn list. But Ngram Viewer shows “lain” is still relevant, which means it’s worth learning.
“Lain” is the past participle of “lie” in the meaning of “to recline” (not to speak untruth). A past participle is different from a simple past tense. I find it easiest to think of the past participle as the one that goes with some form of “have,” as in, “She has lain under the veranda for hours” and “She had lain there all day yesterday, too.”
The technical terms for these verb tenses can add to the confusion. “She has lain” is an example of the present perfect tense — even though it happened in the past. But “has” is in the present, hence the name present perfect. On the other hand, “she had lain” is in the past perfect tense, indicated by the past-tense “had.” In either case, the word “perfect” means the action is completed.
There’s also a future perfect tense, “She will have lain,” which means the action will be completed at a point in the future.
All these use the past participle form of the verb. For many verbs, the past participle and the simple past tense are identical: Yesterday he walked, in the past he has walked. But irregular verbs like “lie” go their own way. For “lie,” the past participle is “lain” and the simple past tense is “lay.” So yesterday he lay, in the past he has lain.
This of course makes it easy to confuse the past tense of “lie” with the verb “lay,” which is another word entirely. Unlike “lie,” which is an intransitive verb, “lay” is transitive, meaning you do it to an object, like a book: Lay the book on the table.
“Lay” has its own past forms. Yesterday he laid the book on the table and in the past he has laid the book on the table.” Notice that for “lay,” the past tense and past participle are identical: laid.
If you forget all this, you can always find it in a dictionary. Just look up the main verb, like “lie,” and next to it you’ll see the past tense and, if the past participle is different, that immediately follows: lie, lay, lain. If you want to do like they did in the ’60s, it’s that easy.
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Concertgoer, beachgoer and churchgoer are all one word. So what about event goer, park goer and synagogue goer? A dictionary will tell you if the term you want is one word, but when it's not listed, you're on your own. Here's the full story.
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If you use the word "enormity" to refer to size, that's OK. However, its main meaning isn't about size at all but instead about being wicked, vicious or improper.
The post The 'Enormity' of the Storm? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A student posting in the grammar forum on Reddit recently made me sad: “I’m a college student majoring in a scientific field and am interested in conducting my own research. One thing that’s stopping me is my lack of vocabulary and not being great with grammar. Grammar has always been a problem and I don’t know where to even start. I also want to improve my vocabulary so my papers can sound more professional. I can comprehend scientific journal articles, make lit reviews and understand the statistics. I just don’t feel confident in my writing. I’m looking for an app or website that’s almost like Duolingo so I can enjoy learning between classes and work. Any help would be appreciated!”
Notice that this student used not one, not two, but eight perfectly grammatical sentences to say that their grammar is bad — so bad that it’s standing in the way of pursuing dreams in a scientific field. It’s as if this poor student thinks there’s some secret body of knowledge required to write well and that this knowledge is hard to access.
Grammar has this effect on a lot of people. Decades of misinformation about what it means to speak and write “properly” have terrified the bejesus out of generations of students. But the truth is, if you’re fluent in English, you don’t need to know terms like dangling participle and predicate nominative. Here are four reasons you’re already great at grammar.
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You understand subject-verb agreement. If the Reddit poster had written “I be a college student” or “I are a college student” or “I is a college student,” your grammar alarm would have gone off. That’s because, instinctively, you know that verbs agree with their subjects. Singular first-person “I” goes with “am,” whereas second-person “you” goes with “are,” and so on. More impressive: You have no problem with how the poster wrote “one thing that’s stopping me is,” even though not one but two things were listed afterward. That may be illogical, but it’s perfectly grammatical, which is why you would have balked at “one thing that’s stopping me are.”
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You know that “ing” verbs can be nouns, too. You might even know these are called gerunds. For example, you understood “I can enjoy learning” as easily as you understand “I enjoy books.” A thing you enjoy is a noun, and that can be a physical thing like books or a gerund like learning. The fact that gerunds look identical to verbs in their progressive participle form, “I am learning,” didn’t trip you up even for a second.
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You’re a master of coordinate verb phrases. The poster’s first sentence has just one subject, “I,” but it uses “am” twice (the first time in its contracted form ’m). I am a student and am interested. Because you know that verbs and even whole predicates can share a single subject when they’re coordinated with “and,” you had no confusion about who was interested.
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You get that adverbs can move around sometimes. When you read “I don’t know where to even start,” you 100% got the poster’s meaning. And if they had written, “I don’t even know where to start,” you would have been just as clear. But at the same time, you know that “even I don’t know where to start” would have completely changed the meaning of the sentence and that “I even don’t know” would have been nonsensical. That’s because you know that adverbs like “even” can move around. When they do, sometimes the meaning changes drastically, and sometimes it changes not at all. And, amazingly, you can understand their meaning or lack thereof at any location in the sentence.
The post Here's why you should never feel insecure in your grammar knowledge first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You should never double-space between sentences. You can choose whether or not to put spaces around dashes. And ellipses should always be preceded by a space. Here's more about when to space around punctuation.
The post Spacing Around Punctuation first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a word that came up in an article I was editing the other day: fuschia. The article was describing the color of something, and I blasted right through the sentence without a second thought. When I got to the end of the article, I did what I always do: I read it again. (Copy editors should always read everything at least twice. Do this enough and you’ll see why. It’s pretty much impossible to catch every error and every questionable issue on the first pass.)
Reading through the article a second time, I noticed a few little things that needed questioning. But I didn’t hesitate at “fuschia.”
Finally, just before I was about to send the story back to the editor, I ran spell-check.
Say what you will about spell-check. I know it’s downright stupid at times. Its ignorance of how prefixes and suffixes work is especially annoying: Spell-check doesn’t get that a prefix or suffix can create words that aren’t in the dictionary but are nonetheless legitimate. So it tells you that perfectly fine words are wrong.
But, weaknesses aside, spell-check has one strength: it can scrutinize every letter of every word much more easily than a human can. And guess what it stopped on: fuschia. So I fixed it and took another quick look at the rest of the document. Then, out of reflex, I hit spell-check again. It stopped on just one word: fuchia, which is how I had “corrected” the spelling of fuschia.
I got it wrong when I wasn't trying, then I got it wrong again when I was.
Turns out, it’s spelled fuchsia, which I will ever after remember as “fuk-see-ya.”
The post Color me fuchsia first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
What makes a sentence like the following so awful: "The planning of the redecorating of the house was a decision made by Betty." Answer: nominalizations — nouns rooted in another part of speech, usually a verb or adjective. "Planning," "redecorating" and "decision," for example, are more dynamic in their verb forms: "Betty planned to redecorate the house." Here's the full explanation.
The post Nominalizations first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A big part of any editor’s job is tightening sentences and paragraphs. After a while, cutting out needless words becomes a compulsion, which can make it difficult for editors like me to function day to day in our increasingly verbose world.
Have you looked up a recipe online lately? They’re about 8,000 words long and start with either a poorly told story about someone’s Nana in the old country or a long list of things a stranger’s kids or spouse likes to eat.
Online reviews are often wordy to the point of being unreadable: “My friend and I were looking for a place to eat and we had heard about Mel’s Diner and had driven by it many times, so we decided to try it. We had heard good things. So we made a reservation.”
I usually stop reading around this point. Obviously, the reviewer wanted a place to eat. Obviously, she decided to try it. Obviously, they made a reservation. Obviously, a user on an online restaurant review site had probably heard about the restaurant and wouldn’t be trying it if all the things she heard were bad. There’s just no way I can focus on the message when, in my mind, I’m drawing a red line through every word.
But editors aren’t the only people affected by flabby prose. Unnecessary words blunt the impact of the writer’s message and waste the reader’s time. And because these days everyone’s a writer — either via email, social media, blogs, ecommerce sites or some other outlet — keeping prose tight can give you an edge in getting your message across.
Here are a few tips for writing more efficiently.
Don’t say things the reader already knows
My made-up diner review above shows how longer passages can be packed with unnecessary information. But this is a problem at the sentence level, too.
“XYZ Company is a company that makes widgets.” The heart of this sentence is: the company is a company. You’ll have a much greater impact on your reader if you state only the facts that aren’t self-evident: XYZ Company makes widgets.
Here’s another wordiness problem I see a lot: “The company has been in business for 60 years, having been founded in 1965.” That’s like saying six of the donuts had been eaten and six were left of the dozen. If your reader wants to know how long it’s been since 1965, they can do the math themselves.
Don’t reference what you already said
Here’s a passage I saw in a finance article recently: “As I said above, Joby is a pre-revenue company. That said, the company is not just twiddling its thumbs, waiting for FAA approval.” Note the triple whammy: “As I said above,” followed by a repeat of what was said above, followed by “that said.”
Terms like “aforementioned,” “as previously stated” and “as noted above” are almost never worth your reader’s time.
Don’t rate what you’re about to say
“Finally, it's worth pointing out that Joby had about $991 million in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet at the end of June.” As a recovering abuser of the phrase “it’s important to note that,” I understand the impulse to write these needless words. But they should almost always be cut out.
Scrutinize every adverb and adjective
A lot of writers use adverbs unthinkingly, as if they were going for a rhythm without regard for meaning. A real example I saw recently: “experts were decidedly uncertain.” I can’t think of a single adverb that could improve the word “uncertain,” and I can’t think of a worse one than “decidedly.” Adjectives are less fraught, but they’re often redundant, as in “armed gunman.” Every opportunity to delete a word like “armed” is an opportunity to make your writing more palatable.
The post How to write more efficiently first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You can usually choose whether you want to punctuate bulleted items listed vertically. But a good guide: If each bulleted item is a complete sentence, consider ending each with a period. If each bulleted item is less than a sentence, often no punctuation is best. Here's the full story.
The post How to Punctuate Bulleted Lists first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Remember three-dimensional colleagues? People you used to work with who were more than just a bunch of letters followed by an @ sign and a “.com”? They had faces and voices and a Scotch tape dispenser on their desk that they hadn’t used since the early ’90s?
They were great, but you had to get dressed in the morning and drive someplace to see them, which wasn’t great.
Still, those people were always there for me when I wanted to walk from desk to desk asking them to say aloud something I’d written on a piece of paper. For example, there was the time years ago when I approached multiple co-workers to ask them to read aloud the words “The 1,100-square-foot property is for sale.”
They looked at me like I was playing a trick on them. But I wasn’t. I just wanted to hear how, without thinking about it, they would pronounce “1,100.” In their minds, did that number sound like “eleven hundred” or “one thousand one hundred”? And though pronunciation usually has little to do with editing, in one instance it does: the choice between “a” and “an.”
We all learned in school that the indefinite article “a” goes before consonants: a cat, a person, a dozen donuts. The indefinite article “an” goes before vowels: an octopus, an individual, an angel food cake. But if you were listening closely, you remember that the teacher didn’t say exactly that. It’s not about the letter that follows, it’s about the sound.
Some words that start with a vowel are spoken as if they start with a consonant. For example, “universe” starts with a U, but it’s pronounced as if it starts with a Y: yoo-ni-verse.
Some words that start with a consonant are spoken as if they start with a vowel. The most famous example is “historic.” Do you say it was “an historic event” or “a historic event”? People are bitterly divided on this question. In fact, either is correct. In American publishing, style guides say to pronounce the H and use the indefinite article “a.” It was a historic event.
But there are other, more problematic terms no one’s sure how to handle.
Initials account for a lot of these. “I read a Federal Bureau of Investigation report” clearly takes “a” before “Federal” because F creates a consonant sound. But when you say the letter itself, you start with a vowel sound: eff. “I read an FBI report.” Speaking aloud, everyone gets this right. But when it’s in print, writers and readers may not know what rule applies: Do you treat F as a consonant: “a FBI report”? Or do you write it the way people speak it: “an FBI” report?
In this case, there’s a clear answer: Choose your indefinite article based on sound, not spelling, even when you’re writing. So “an FBI report” is correct.
To get these right, though, you have to know how the terms are pronounced. That’s not always easy.
The weirdest example I know is the abbreviation for the American Automobile Association. The word “American” starts with a vowel sound: an American Automobile Association perk. That doesn’t change when you use just the first letter of American, A, which is also pronounced as a vowel sound. So all the rules say it should be “an AAA perk.”
But most of my co-workers who read this aloud off a sheet of paper didn’t pronounce the club ay-ay-ay. They pronounced it triple-a. And because “triple” starts with a consonant sound, it takes “a” as its article: “a triple-a perk.”
In odd cases like this, it makes sense to go to the source. So I checked the AAA website, where I saw, in their own words, “Become a AAA Approved Auto Repair Facility.” They pronounce it “triple.” So did most of my former co-workers. So that’s how I treat it now in print. And as for that “1,100” survey, I don’t remember what the consensus was. Choose whichever pronunciation seems more natural to you.
The post A AAA-rated hotel or an AAA-rated hotel? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Semicolons that enable unnecessarily long or complicated sentences should be avoided. But when it comes to organizing items in a series, the semicolon can be a lifesaver.
The post Semicolons in a Series first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sometimes I think that the only difference between me and all the people who feel utterly overwhelmed by grammar is my inclination to open a dictionary. This idea hit home recently after a friend emailed me with a question about plurals.
This friend is not just a professional writer but also a longtime copy editor. In fact, she’s the person I ask to cover for me on some of my freelance jobs when I go on vacation. She knows her way around the language. But she felt she needed my help recently. She was proofreading a manuscript of a novel for a friend and needed to know how to form the plural of “ho,” as in the slang term for “whore.”
“Any thoughts on this?” she asked.
I didn’t want to think. I wanted to know. So I went to Merriam-Webster’s website, m-w.com. (I chose Merriam-Webster because I knew she was editing a book and books are usually edited according to the guidelines in the Chicago Manual of Style, which uses MW as its go-to dictionary.)
I’ll confess, I was a little surprised to see what happened when I typed in “ho.” I got this.
ho – plural hos or hoes – slang: whore
There it was.
Dictionaries always list their preferred forms first. So from this we know that Merriam-Webster considers hos the standard plural. But personally, if I had the leeway, I’d go with hoes. Its similarity to the garden tool makes it easier to recognize the sound, unlike hos, which looks more like it would rhyme with Ross.
I told my friend so. She agreed. And I got to be the answer lady, just because I knew where to look for an answer.
The post Mysterious plurals first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Of all the old-fuddy-duddy books in my language library, one of the fuddy-duddiest is Theodore M. Bernstein’s “The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage.” I don’t recommend it. There’s some good information in there, there's also a lot of opinion presented as fact. And because you can’t tell where research-based advice ends and the writer’s biases begin, this book can leave unwary readers misinformed.
However, there’s one little nugget of wisdom in this book that I find myself citing over and over. No other source I know of expresses it as well. In fact, most don’t address the topic at all. It has to do with prepositions.
Is it:
I have an affinity with him or I have an affinity for him?
I am uninterested in that subject or I am uninterested by that subject?
She differs with her husband on that point or She differs from her husband on that point?
Are you enamored of a certain person or enamored by him?
Are you embarrassed by something or can you be embarrassed of something?
These are the types of questions that leave English speakers baffled. It seems like there’s nowhere to turn because, in a lot of cases, there isn’t. Sometimes the dictionary will drop a hint. But when it doesn’t, you’re left high and dry. There is no Big Book of Which Preposition to Use With Which Adjective, Noun, or Verb. As a comprehensive listing, the information just isn't available.
Bernstein is one of few who dare to offer a blanket solution. And it’s a good one. Here’s what Bernstein says about all these preposition conundrums and more:
“These are questions that cannot be answered with rules. The proper preposition is a matter of idiom; and idioms, if they do not come ‘naturally,’ must be either learned or looked up. ... If a desired idiom cannot be found here or in an unabridged dictionary (and dictionaries do not in all instances provide this kind of information), the only thing to do is to consult three knowing friends and get a consensus.”
In other words, whenever you're wondering about a matter like "I'm angry at him" vs. "I'm angry with him," there is no better authority than the ear of a native English speaker, except of course that of four native English speakers.
The post 'The Careful Writer' and prepositions first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One. Anyone. Neither. Little. Someone. Some of the most useful pronouns don't refer to anyone specific at all. These are the indefinite pronouns.
The post Indefinite Pronouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A Variety headline posted on social media drew some laughs recently. “Trammell Tillman on ‘Severance’ Delays, Coming Out as Gay and Tom Cruise.”
“He’s gay AND Tom Cruise?” one observer mused. “He really can do it all.”
It’s the kind of phrasing Oxford comma fans love to seize on because it affirms their belief that their preferred punctuation is superior. You see, if there had been one more comma — an Oxford comma — no one would have read it the funny way. See for yourself.
“Trammell Tillman on ‘Severance’ Delays, Coming Out as Gay, and Tom Cruise.”
That comma before “and,” called an Oxford comma or serial comma, makes it impossible that the name Tom Cruise was an object of the phrase “coming out as.” There’s literally no way the writer could have meant that Tillman was coming out as Tom Cruise.
That’s a great argument for the Oxford comma. But there’s a flaw in this point of view that overeager Oxford comma fans might miss: The headline was 100% unambiguous without the extra comma. There was only one possible meaning, only one role the name Tom Cruise could play here — it’s an object of the preposition “on,” not an object of “coming out as.” And the reason we know this has to do with the lack of the word “and” after the word “delays.”
“And” has a special job signaling the last item in a list. We don’t say, “I ate beans, rice.” We say, “I ate beans and rice.” We don’t say “I ate beans, rice, vegetables.” We say, “I ate beans, rice and vegetables.” No matter how many food items you add to my meal, the last one will be teed up with the word “and.”
The Oxford comma is the one that goes before the “and” preceding the last item in a list of three or more things: beans, rice, and vegetables. But this comma is not required. Lots of editing styles, notably the Associated Press, don’t use it, writing instead “beans, rice and vegetables.”
With that in mind, let’s look at the Variety headline: “Trammell Tillman on …” What follows could be one thing, two things or 100 things. But if it’s more than one, we know that the last one will be preceded by “and.”
There’s just one “and” in the headline — the one before Tom Cruise’s name. The “and” tells us that Tom Cruise is the final item in a list of things the interview is “on.” The interview is Tillman on X, Y and Tom Cruise. So Cruise’s name can’t be a thing Tillman “came out as.”
Now imagine that the comma after “delays” were replaced by an “and.” That would signal that the interview is “on” just two things: show delays and coming out. In that case, there would be no other role for Tom Cruise in that sentence than to be a thing that Tillman came out as.
No Oxford comma is needed to ensure this headline has just one possible meaning. But would an added comma be better anyway?
As an editor who works in Associated Press style, I avoid Oxford commas. But I’m also keenly aware of AP’s rule that says anytime an Oxford comma would aid comprehension — or even just prevent a momentary misreading — use one.
This comes up a lot in lists in which one of the list items contains its own “and.” For example, if you’re listing sandwiches and the last one is “ham and cheese,” I’d write it like this: “Their sandwich selection includes tuna, turkey, and ham and cheese.” That way, no one thinks for a moment that you serve a cheeseless ham sandwich and a hamless cheese sandwich.
Oxford comma fans who say their preferred punctuation is necessary to make meaning unambiguous are wrong. But those who say that this comma sure can help at times are right.
The post When Oxford comma fans jump the gun first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Before you say you're adverse to an idea, take care: You probably mean averse.
The post Adverse and Averse first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Proofreading is very different from reading. At least, for me it is. When I’m proofreading, I’m looking for commas and skipped words and extra words and sentences without subjects and faulty parallels and a million little things like that.
In that mode, I can read a whole article twice and learn nothing from it. A piece on a restaurant, for example, could contain lots of information on the food it serves, the chef’s background, its history, and on and on. But if you quizzed me on any of it I’d flunk. Reading for information and reading for errors are two very different mental processes.
Interestingly, the other mode doesn’t quite work the same. When I’m reading for content – articles, books, etc. -- certain typos and editing matters jump out at me. I suppose it’s just because I’ve invested so much energy into whatever mental faculty scans for typos that it’s hard to turn off.
And that’s unfortunate because the minute a misplaced comma or other typo catches my eye, it flips a switch in my mind, turning off the brain engine that reads for substance and powering up the part that scrutinizes form.
Then it’s hard to get back into whatever I was reading.
The most common errors that do this to me have to do with commas. They’re illustrated in this sentence:
It was March 14, 2009 when Widgets, Inc. moved its headquarters from Flint, Michigan to Detroit.
I guess if we’re being technical, the comma choices in that sentence aren’t really errors. But from an editing standpoint they are. And when I see them in published material, I think: This piece was not edited by professionals well versed in style.
It’s an instant prejudice that will color my perception of the source forever.
Here’s where the commas in that sample sentence fell short. In professional editing, years, “Inc.,” and states after cities are considered parenthetical information. They’re set-asides, if you will.
Compare:
My wife, Mary, works in entertainment
with
My wife, Mary works in entertainment.
The name Mary is just an aside — a “by the way, the person I just referred to as my wife happens to be named Mary.”
A similar principle applies to years, Inc., and states. They’re often included parenthetically. But that’s not as intuitively clear. They’re actually a little different. Mary, in the example above, is something called an appositive, whereas years, Inc., etc. are not. So, unlike with the Mary business, the comma rules for Inc. and states you actually have to know. Lately it seems that fewer and fewer of the people producing written content do.
Here are the rules of most professional editing:
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Years after a specific date are set off with commas: “March 14, 2008, was a good day.” But a month and year without the date does not take commas: “March 2008 was a good month.” The same is true of seasons. No comma: Spring 2008 was a good time for me.
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Inc., LLC, and items like that don't need commas. Widgets Inc. had a great quarter. That’s purely a style matter — and one that doesn’t come up much in journalism because Inc. is usually omitted altogether. But if a comma comes before Inc., one should always come after.
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States after cities get the same treatment. Any time there’s a comma before “Michigan” one should come after, too.
The post Commas after states, years, and Inc. first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people say "the reason is because" should be "the reason is that." Their logic: "reason" already covers the cause meant by "because." But while it may be a little circular, it's not necessarily wrong.
The post The Reason Is Because? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a tragic-yet-terrifying story for you: Once upon a time, a wicked old witch disguised as a benevolent seer told an aspiring wordsmith that it was wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. And this sentence was the result:
“That's not all for which kiwi is good.”
Full disclosure: I don’t know for sure it was a witch instead of, say, a warlock or a demon or an English teacher from the 1950s. And we can’t know whether this sentence, which appeared on a health and nutrition website, was the mangled offspring of the writer or an editor. All I know is that these are some ridiculous acrobatics to go through to avoid writing the simple: “That’s not all kiwi is good for.”
For decades, people have been taught that it’s wrong to end a sentence with a preposition like “for,” “at,” with,” or “from.” This mangled sentence demonstrates all too clearly how bad this advice is.
And it illustrates another bad call as well: dogged allegiance to rules, real or fictional. Any writer or editor who valued clarity and readability would have ended the sentence with “for,” even if she thought it was against the rules.
Happily, there is no rule against ending a sentence with a preposition. Even if there were, violations wouldn’t carry a prison term. And sentences like the one above would offer quintessential examples of the old saying that some rules were meant to be broken.
The post Don't fear the sentence-ending preposition first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Nouns and verbs are just the beginning. Here's a look at all the parts of speech.
The post The Eight(ish) Parts of Speech first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Never say "That didn't phase me." In those contexts, the verb you want is "faze." Here are some commonly confused words to be aware of.
The post Phase vs. Faze, Principal vs. Principle, Site vs. Cite and Sight first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The newspaper column that I write always ends with an e-mail address where readers can contact me. And they do, often to cheer on my fight against bad grammar and to ask me to tell people to stop engaging in some linguistic habit that drives them nuts.
That would be lovely if 1. I had ever given the tiniest indication that I was in fact “fighting” against bad grammar, and 2. I had any desire to tell people how to use the language.
I don’t do either in my column. Never have. I just talk about questions that come up and the answers I find.
Usually those answers are not what grammar-cop types want to hear — research almost always proves them wrong in matters like whether you can use “hopefully” to mean “I hope that” or “healthy” to mean “healthful” (answer to both: of course you can).
Lucky for them, the things I actually say needn’t stand in the way of their hearing whatever they want to hear.
For example, a while back I wrote a column about the word “literally.” In it, I explained that some dictionaries allow the word to be used as an intensifier — that is, figuratively. According to those sources, it’s fine to say, “I literally flew out of the room.” And I said so in the column.
What happened next shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Not one but two readers wrote to congratulate me on my column railing against people's excessive and wrong use of “literally.”
“Thank you SO much for addressing the overuse of “literally”! That’s been bugging me for some time now. At work, I’m surrounded by young women who use that word constantly."
She wasn't done.
She asked me to consider writing a column telling people it’s wrong to say, “filing bankruptcy” instead of “filing for bankruptcy” and “graduating college” instead of “graduating from college.” You won’t be surprised to hear there’s nothing wrong with those expressions.
I wrote back that neither of her peeves was an actual error, but I suspect that when she got the email she interpreted it to mean the opposite.
The post She literally couldn't hear me first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Are commas too scarce these days?
That’s the gripe of a reader who wrote to me a while back. Here’s what he said: “I find that in today's writing, (even in professionally edited books), there seems to be a lack of what I call 'comma sense.' I find it more difficult to read something when commas have been omitted; or perhaps the author or editor doesn't see the need for them.”
I agree with him that commas are in somewhat short supply these days. But it doesn't seem to me like that's a problem.
Some commas are optional, like the one after a short introductory phrase. For example, “On a recent afternoon I went to the park.” You could put a comma after “afternoon” or not. It’s up to you.
Because rules allow people to make many of their own comma calls, the comma’s popularity runs in trends. Right now, sparse comma use is the reigning aesthetic.
Personally, I like fewer commas. To my eye, unnecessary commas do more harm than good: They break up the flow of the sentence. They slow down the reader. They take a unit that could have been a snapshot of a single idea and break it into chunks the reader has to assemble himself into a single message. So in the publications I edit, I lean toward fewer rather than more commas.
But really, as long as clarity or correctness isn't on the line, it's a matter of taste ... and fashion.
The post Have commas gone out of style? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you say something "peaked your interested," you probably mean "piqued."
The post Peak vs. Pique first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Tall has taller and tallest, but statuesque doesn't have statuesquer or statuesquest. Here's a closer look at comparatives and superlatives.
The post Comparatives and Superlatives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It’s been a long time since I learned the difference between “compose” and “comprise.” So long, in fact, that recently I’ve altogether forgotten how I used to do it. In spite of what I once learned, I keep writing stuff like, “These words do not comprise a complete sentence.”
According to style guides, that’s a mistake. Though dictionaries will cut you more slack. Here’s what style guides recommend.
“‘Compose’ means to create or put together,” the AP Stylebook says. “‘Comprise’ means to contain, to include all or embrace.”
You could say the whole comprises the parts, but the parts compose the whole. So you’d say a pie comprises many ingredients, or many ingredients compose a pie.
I know that second example sounds weird. That’s because we usually use “compose” in the passive: A pie is composed of many ingredients. But that’s just an inverted way of saying the same thing.
According to style guides, comprise “is best used only in the active voice.” This means it’s frowned upon to use the word “of” after any form of “comprise.” That’s an easy guideline. Nine times out of ten, when a writer has “comprised of,” she meant “composed of” anyway.
But it’s also important to remember that, according to the style guides, one thing comprises many and not the other way around.
Dictionary definitions are more flexible.
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: “comprise. 1. to be made up of (something): to include or consist of (something). 2. to make up or form (something).”
Webster’s New World College Dictionary: “comprise. 1. to include; contain; 2. to consist of; be composed of: a nation comprising thirteen states 3. to make up; form; constitute: in this sense still regarded by a few as a loose usage: a nation comprised of thirteen states.”
And here’s what Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage recommends: “Our advice to you is to realize that the disputed sense is established and standard, but nevertheless liable to criticism. If such criticism concerns you, you can probably avoid ‘comprise’ by using ‘compose,’ ‘constitute,’ or ‘make up.’”
The post Compose and comprise first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you come across a sentence like “Knowing the realities of the cosmic structure of the universe can at times be elusive," pare it down to the main clause: "Knowing can be elusive" is a whole lot of nothing. Once you see that, you can find better ways to get your meaning across.
The post Weak Sentence? Look at the Structure first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I was like, “No way.”
The word “like” is legend among grammar grumblers. There are several uses of "like" that they take issue with. But the one they hate most is when it's a synonym for “said.”
“I was like, ‘totally.’”
“She was like, ‘Right?’”
And so on.
This use of “like” has been annoying parents for so long now that the annoyers are becoming parents themselves. And by the time the perpetrators of X, Y or Z language atrocity enter adulthood, their language quirks usually become mainstream, accepted, correct.
No, that’s not a bad thing. That’s how pretty much every word became a word and how every correct usage today became correct usage. Everything was wrong once. So I was wondering if “like” had yet gained any respectability as a formal substitute for “said.”
I’m not finding any evidence that it has. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary does not mention the usage. And Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, which is normally the first to defend such contested constructions, doesn’t mention it either.
So technically “I was like, ‘No way” isn’t sanctioned in formal speech yet.
Still, I kind of like it. It has a connotation that “said” does not. It suggests a reaction that may or may not have been overtly spoken. So it affords the user a freedom that “said” does not.
“I was like, ‘No way’” can mean that those were the words you spoke or that those were the words that ran silently through your head. But “I said, ‘No way’” leaves no such wiggle room. So this usage of “to be like,” which I bet will be sanctioned someday, can be a lot more fun.
The post I was like, 'No way!' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Private schools are notoriously known for their small class sizes.
It's been years since I saw this sentence in an article I was editing. But it stands as one of my favorite cautionary examples about adverbs.
The adverb "notoriously" shouldn't be in that sentence. It's redundant with the word "known" — kind of like saying "famously famous." Except it's worse because "notoriously" has a negative connotation — it means something is bad — though everyone agrees smaller class sizes are good. So instead of underscoring the writer's point, the "notoriously" undermines it.
How did this adverb end up here? Did the writer really think that "known" failed to tell the full story? Probably not. More likely, the writer was aiming for a certain oomph and was more focused on things like rhythm and drama than on the substance of her words.
That's fine in a first draft. My own writing tends to produce an alarming number of adverbs like "very" and "really" and "actually." But when I reread what I've written, I try taking them out. Here's what I've learned in the process: Some adverbs help your sentence, others hurt it. Often, the difference is as simple as this: The adverbs that add information help, the ones that add only emphasis hurt.
Mary quickly left the room.
Here the adverb "quickly" tells us more about what's going on than we could glean from just Mary left the room. There's real information in that adverb.
Joe quickly ran away.
In this sentence, "quickly" isn't pulling its weight. The verb "ran" already conveys quickness. So here the adverb adds nothing.
Unnecessary adverbs can be a cue to the reader that the writer isn't a pro. Compare, "The senator was totally, absolutely, unbelievably contrite" with "The senator was contrite." See how the stripped-down facts have a certain power but the adverbs come off almost like pleading — a weak attempt to convince the reader of something, as if the facts alone weren't enough. Pros don't do that. Which is why the adverbless alternative sounds more professional. Which is why the only adverbs that appear in your writing are ones that survived the survival test.
The post Notoriously known? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can bad news bring a city "literally to its knees"? Technically, yes. But careful writers avoid "literally" as an intensifier.
The post Literally first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You wouldn't put a comma in the phrase "from soup to nuts," so the same logic applies in longer "from X to Y" constructions. Yet so many writers put them in anyway. Here's when they're actually necessary.
The post Commas in "From X to Y" Constructions first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A recent headline in the New York Times caught my attention: “City Beekeepers: The Dos and Don’ts of Maintaining an Urban Hive.” The idea of keeping beehives in Manhattan is interesting, of course, but if you’re a word nerd like me, you’re probably also intrigued by “dos and don’ts.”
On the one hand, it looks funny. “Dos” looks like it should be pronounced as if it rhymes with “boss,” especially because an early PC operating system called DOS did rhyme with “boss.” But if you put an apostrophe in “do’s,” wouldn’t you have to do the same for “don’t’s,” giving it one apostrophe for the contraction then another to make it plural?
Weird as “dos and don’ts” looks, at least it’s logical in a system that says don’t use apostrophes to form plurals.
Yet if that headline had appeared in any of thousands of other newspapers in the country, it would have been written differently: do’s and don’ts. That’s right, lots of news outlets would use an apostrophe to make a plural out of “do” but they would not use an apostrophe to make “don’t” into a plural.
Why? Because the Associated Press Stylebook, which most newspapers follow, says to use “do’s and don’ts.”
Punctuation rules aren’t made to be broken. But they’re so flawed that sometimes you should break them anyway. That’s most true when it comes to apostrophes to form plurals. The basic rule is: don’t. One cat plus another cat isn’t two cat’s. It’s two cats. No apostrophe.
But it’s not always so easy. Say, for example, you want to talk about a student’s grades. Until recently, a lot of newspapers would have said, “Johnny gets mostly Bs and Cs, along with a few A’s.” The first two letters followed the no-apostrophe rule. But if you follow that rule for the letter A, you spell a word: “as.” So some editing styles made an exception for letters like “A” and “I.”
The biggest among them, AP, recently abandoned that system. Now, AP says, use apostrophes to form plurals of every letter: “Johnny gets mostly B’s and C’s, along with a few A’s.” It doesn’t align with apostrophe rules, but at least it’s less distracting.
The change puts AP’s rule for capital letters in line with their rule for lowercase letters, which has always been to use an apostrophe when forming a plural: “There are two p’s in Mississippi.” That apostrophe has always been the only way to make clear you’re talking about the letter P and not the combo PS.
Other times, instinct isn’t the best guide for knowing when an apostrophe can form a plural. Often, plurals that “look wrong” are right. “We saw the emus at the zoo” could leave you wondering what an emus, presumably pronounced ee-muss, is. If you read “there are two Enzos in my class,” it might take you a moment to work out that it’s two people named Enzo. Ditto that for Aris and Lulus and Elis. My guess is that around 90% of people would write those plurals as emu’s, Enzo’s, Ari’s, Lulu’s and Eli’s.” But that would be a mistake. Just because a possessive S suggests a weird pronunciation doesn’t mean you can add an apostrophe.
Instinct also leads people to put apostrophes in plural numbers: “The band was popular in the 1990’s.” That, too, is wrong. It’s 1990s. Perhaps people who do that are thinking of the apostrophe that represents dropped numerals in “the ’90s.” But that’s a correct use of an apostrophe, unlike one before a plural S.
If you’re making a word or number plural and you’re tempted to add an apostrophe, add that to your list of don’ts, unless there’s a special rule that says it belongs on your list of do’s.
The post Dos and don'ts? Or do's and don't's? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s one of the best tips I can give for creating clean, well-polished writing: Take whatever you’ve written, set it aside, and reread it later — preferably the next day.
This puts some distance between you and the material, which can make a huge difference in how many errors you catch. I had to learn this the hard way.
My deadline for my newspaper column is 10 a.m. on Friday. For years I would start writing it at about 8 a.m. on Friday then give it a careful proofread before sending it in. Then, in the following days, I would blame the editors for the myriad typos. Sure, I typed ’em, but someone should’ve caught ’em, right?
It was a moot point because I already knew no one would. The paper where the column ran was understaffed and underfunded, and if I thought editors were going to magically improve their typo-catching stats, I was out of my mind.
So after the millionth time I caught superfluous words in my published grammar column (unnecessary little words like “of as,” “the in,” and “at from” are my most common typos – the detritus of rewritten sentences), I realized that spotting the typos after they came out in print was easier than it had been to catch them before. The reason: time. The few days between when I wrote the column and when I saw it in print gave me the fresh eyes I needed to see it clearly. And I didn't like what I was seeing.
So I started writing my column on Thursday night, then rereading it Friday morning before sending it. This new procedure didn’t cure my sloppiness. In that arena, I’m hopeless. But it helped me see much of my sloppiness before the rest of the world could. And two or three published typos a year is a lot better than two or three a month.
The post Proofreading? Sleep on it first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Despite all the creativity and variety you see in writing, there are really just five basic structures for single-clause sentences.
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Subject plus verb: Jason laughed.
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Subject plus transitive verb plus direct object: Horses eat oats.
3: Subject plus transitive verb plus indirect object plus direct object: Sarah sent Joe a letter.
4: Subject plus copular verb plus complement of the copular verb: Harry is mean.
5: Subject plus transitive verb plus direct object plus object complement: The CEO made Ron treasurer.
Here's a closer look at how these five arrangements create infinite opportunities for expression.
The post The Five Basic Sentence Structures first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Semicolon use is down, and its slide is making headlines. In the U.S., these punctuation marks are appearing in published books about half as often as they did 25 years ago. The same trend can be seen in the U.K., where only 11% of students surveyed reported that they regularly use semicolons.
Some people say this decline is a tragedy. But before you take their word for it, consider who’s not saying this: readers.
You can listen to a thousand laments about the death of the semicolon and never hear a single complaint from the reader’s point of view. No one says they would have enjoyed a piece of writing more if it contained more semicolons. No one says they struggled to understand short sentences because they weren’t mashed together into longer, more complicated sentences. No one searches an e-book sample to make sure it has enough semicolons before they buy it.
Semicolon love is purely a supply-side phenomenon. Here’s one example of an impassioned pro-semicolon argument: “I’d be reading an article about a flood in Mexico, which would lead me to thinking about a wedding I once went to in Cancun, which would lead me to thinking about marriage, which would lead to gay marriage, which would lead to the presidential election, which would lead to swing states, which would lead to a fascinatingly terrible country song called ‘Swing’ — and I’d be three songs into a Trace Adkins YouTube marathon before I’d glance back down at the newspaper on the table. It’s in honoring this movement of mind, this tendency of thoughts to proliferate like yeast, that I find semicolons so useful.”
Honoring the movement of mind. Whose mind? Not the reader’s.
I don’t know about you, but when I read a story, an article or an essay, I’m not in it to honor the author. The very idea runs counter to the writer’s job, which is to transform information and ideas into something valuable to the reader. To honor the reader’s needs over one’s own.
Most of the semicolons I see in my editing work amount to simple showing off. The writers, it seems, are so proud they know how to use semicolons they forget it’s not about them. One writer I’ve been editing for years puts exactly one semicolon in almost every feature article she writes. What are the odds that somewhere between 50 and 100 articles she’s submitted all needed exactly one semicolon? Far lower than the odds that she just wanted to use one.
Semicolons between independent clauses are unnecessary about 99% of the time. Yes, they show that the clauses are closely related. But would that be any less clear if each clause was its own sentence?
Semicolons are silliest in paragraphs containing just two clauses. Those clauses’ relationship to each other is already crystal clear. What is gained by making those two sentences into one?
Besides connecting independent clauses, semicolons have another job: organizing lists too unwieldy for commas to manage. Usually, this means lists of things that contain their own commas: “They traveled to Dubuque, Iowa; Butte, Montana; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
In these cases, semicolons are more than justified. They’re essential. But they’re also dangerous. They make it easy to cram too many bits of information into a single sentence instead of doling out the facts in more easily digestible short sentences. “They traveled to Dubuque, Iowa, where they visited a museum; Butte, Montana, which is stunningly beautiful; and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they had fun shopping for one-of-a-kind works by local artisans.” The semicolon lets you do that, but that doesn’t mean it’s your friend.
Anytime you’re tempted to lean on semicolons to make sense of your sentence, try breaking it up into shorter sentences instead. It’s the right thing to do for your reader.
The post Love semicolons? Find some love in your heart for your reader first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Put spaces around ellipses ... like this. When an ellipsis comes after a complete sentence, and that sentence with a period. ... Then insert the three-dot ellipsis. When an ellipses does not come after a complete sentence ... do not insert a period before it. Here's the full when, why and how of using ellipses.
The post How to Use Ellipses ... first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Once, after I mentioned in a column that there’s no rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, a reader e-mailed the following:
"Regarding ending sentences with prepositions … We should avoid the practice because ending a sentence on a preposition almost always creates a passive sentence."
Huh?
I wrote back, trying to get to the bottom of what he was talking about — and trying to explain passives. He must have seen that his grasp of passives wasn't what he thought it was, because he backed off on that argument. But he stood firm against sentence-ending prepositions.
"Sentences that end on prepositions are longer, less comprehensible and less exciting than necessary. For example: That is the table the book is on. The book is on the table."
Sigh. I shouldn’t be shocked to see such a twisted grasp of the issue. And I shouldn't have been shocked that it came from someone who identified himself as a professional writer who taught English. But I was.
Yes, “That is the table the book is on” is a clunkier sentence than “The book is on the table.” But the clunkiness is not caused by a sentence-ending preposition. It’s caused by a desire to say something quite different from the other sentence. In the longer sentence, the point is that THAT is the table. The whole first clause is dedicated to clarifying which table we’re talking about. “The book is on the table” says something else.
So I e-mailed him the following examples:
Who are you blowing kisses to? / To whom are you blowing kisses?
A claw hammer, not an ax, was the tool he murdered her with. / A claw hammer, not an ax, was the tool with which he murdered her.
What are you talking about? / About what are you talking?
In none of these does a sentence-ending preposition cause a passive. (A passive, as I tried to explain to him, occurs when the object of a transitive verb, like “dinner” in “Joe cooked dinner,” is made the grammatical subject of the sentence, as in “Dinner was cooked by Joe.")
Nor does a sentence-ending preposition in these examples create sentences that are “longer, less comprehensible and less exciting than necessary.”
He wrote back that the claw hammer example (which, by the way, I borrowed from Strunk & White) would be better as just “He murdered her with a claw hammer, not an ax.” I agreed. But that wasn't the point. The point was that some sentences work best with a preposition at the end. And there's no reason to object when they do.
The post No, sentence-ending prepositions don't create passive voice first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Irregular plurals like "men" and "women" don't use an S to form their plural, but they use an S with an apostrophe to form the possessive. That's why it's easy to confuse "mens," which is wrong, with "men's," which is right (assuming you want the possessive).
The post Mens, Womens and Childrens? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A lot of people think that, in formal English, "less" is for mass nouns, like "music," and "fewer" is for count nouns, like songs. But it's more accurate to say "less" is for singular nouns and "fewer" for plural. So, when you want to be proper, you say the express lane is for 10 items or fewer because "items" is plural, but if you take one item out of your cart you have one less item, not one fewer item.
The post 'Less' and 'Fewer' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Most people regularly write stuff like “We went to James’s house” without stopping to think whether it should be “James’ house.”
In many areas of life, such cavalier carelessness is a bad idea. But in this case, not thinking is actually better than thinking. That’s because possessives, and especially possessives of singular words that end in S, can drive you nuts if you think about them. Most people are sure that there can be only one right way to make James possessive. But in fact the rules are a mess, the language referees disagree, and on any given day you might see James’ in a newspaper and James’s in a book.
Here, according to some of the best-known language guides, are examples of correctly formed possessives of singular proper names ending in S.
Chicago Manual of Style
James's words
James's seat
Associated Press Stylebook
James' words
James' seat
BUT
The boss's words
The boss's seat
Strunk & White's The Elements of Style*
James's words
James's seat
BUT
Jesus' words
Jesus' seat
The Elements of Style is not an official style guide, nor do experts consider it a real language authority. But millions of people who own the book don’t know that. So it adds to the conflicting advice floating around out there.
What should you do? Pick a style — either the “book style” of writing James’s or the “newspaper” style of writing James’ and just use that form consistently. If you really need your writing to be bullet proof, you could consult a copy of AP or Chicago. But otherwise, just pick James’s or James’ and use it consistently.
The post Possessives of names ending in S first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a little reminder about “that” and “which”: Editing styles have some strict rules on their usage, but they’re not universal grammar rules, just a style thing.
Here’s the rule, according to the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style: “which” can’t be used for restrictive clauses. Only “that” can introduce restrictive clauses.
Restrictive clauses narrow down the things they refer to. Compare:
The hats that have feathers sell the best
with
The hats, which have feathers, sell the best.
In the first example, the clause beginning with “that” actually narrows down which hats we’re talking about. Only the ones that have feathers are being discussed. In the second example, all the hats are being referred to. The “which” clause lets us know that they all have feathers.
So a restrictive clause restricts — narrows down or specifies — its subject. A nonrestrictive clause does not: It can be lifted right out of the sentence without losing specificity of your subject.
And AP and Chicago agree that you can’t use “which” for a restrictive clause.
“The hats which have feathers sell the best.” That, according to the style guides, is wrong because the clause is supposed to be restrictive. How do we know that the writer meant this clause to be restrictive? The lack of commas. Commas set off nonrestrictive information. To the lack of commas around the clause makes it restrictive.
There’s some logic at the heart of the style rule: Most American English speakers usually use “which” only for nonrestrictive clauses, leaving the other job to “that.” You can also see that keeping these two separate can clear up the potential ambiguity of sentences like “The hats which have feathers will sell best.” (That is, if you doubt the writer’s punctuation skills, you couldn’t be sure whether she meant only the hats that have feathers sell best or whether she meant all the hats sell better than other merchandise and oh, by the way, they all have feathers.)
But unless you’re editing in one of those two styles, you don’t have to worry about this. In my experience, most people manage “that” and “which” clauses well, leaving no question as to what they meant.
The post 'That' and 'which' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
People who hate "firstly" and "secondly" have a hard time explaining why they should be replaced with "first" and "second." That's because there's no grammatical reason for shunning these two adverbs.
The post Firstly and Secondly first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Semicolon use is down, and its slide is making headlines. In the U.S., these punctuation marks are appearing in published books about half as often as they did 25 years ago. The same trend can be seen in the U.K., where only 11% of students surveyed reported that they regularly use semicolons.
Some people say this decline is a tragedy. But before you take their word for it, consider who’s not saying this: readers.
You can listen to a thousand laments about the death of the semicolon and never hear a single complaint from the reader’s point of view. No one says they would have enjoyed a piece of writing more if it contained more semicolons. No one says they struggled to understand short sentences because they weren’t mashed together into longer, more complicated sentences. No one searches an e-book sample to make sure it has enough semicolons before they buy it.
Semicolon love is purely a supply-side phenomenon. Here’s one example of an impassioned pro-semicolon argument: “I’d be reading an article about a flood in Mexico, which would lead me to thinking about a wedding I once went to in Cancun, which would lead me to thinking about marriage, which would lead to gay marriage, which would lead to the presidential election, which would lead to swing states, which would lead to a fascinatingly terrible country song called ‘Swing’ — and I’d be three songs into a Trace Adkins YouTube marathon before I’d glance back down at the newspaper on the table. It’s in honoring this movement of mind, this tendency of thoughts to proliferate like yeast, that I find semicolons so useful.”
Honoring the movement of mind. Whose mind? Not the reader’s.
I don’t know about you, but when I read a story, an article or an essay, I’m not in it to honor the author. The very idea runs counter to the writer’s job, which is to transform information and ideas into something valuable to the reader. To honor the reader’s needs over one’s own.
Most of the semicolons I see in my editing work amount to simple showing off. The writers, it seems, are so proud they know how to use semicolons they forget it’s not about them. One writer I’ve been editing for years puts exactly one semicolon in almost every feature article she writes. What are the odds that somewhere between 50 and 100 articles she’s submitted all needed exactly one semicolon? Far lower than the odds that she just wanted to use one.
Semicolons between independent clauses are unnecessary about 99% of the time. Yes, they show that the clauses are closely related. But would that be any less clear if each clause was its own sentence?
Semicolons are silliest in paragraphs containing just two clauses. Those clauses’ relationship to each other is already crystal clear. What is gained by making those two sentences into one?
Besides connecting independent clauses, semicolons have another job: organizing lists too unwieldy for commas to manage. Usually, this means lists of things that contain their own commas: “They traveled to Dubuque, Iowa; Butte, Montana; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
In these cases, semicolons are more than justified. They’re essential. But they’re also dangerous. They make it easy to cram too many bits of information into a single sentence instead of doling out the facts in more easily digestible short sentences. “They traveled to Dubuque, Iowa, where they visited a museum; Butte, Montana, which is stunningly beautiful; and Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they had fun shopping for one-of-a-kind works by local artisans.” The semicolon lets you do that, but that doesn’t mean it’s your friend.
Anytime you’re tempted to lean on semicolons to make sense of your sentence, try breaking it up into shorter sentences instead. It’s the right thing to do for your reader.
The post Not grieving the demise of the semicolon first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Every" has the power to render plural subjects singular, kinda. Compare "The member and guest enjoy the facilities," in which the verb "enjoy" suggests a plural subject, with "Every member and guest enjoys the facilities," in which the verb "enjoy" suggests a singular subject. Conclusion: "Every" has extraordinary powers.
The post The Peculiar Power of 'Every' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
At a time when people refuse to believe doctors, journalists and anyone who says we went to the moon, everyone accepts the AI industry’s claims about AI. It’s genius. It’s going to revolutionize life as we know it. It’s going to render all us workers obsolete so we’ll be unemployed and homeless but at least we’ll be wowed by TikToks of Jennifer Lawrence talking through Steve Buscemi’s face.
First on the chopping block, they say: editors and writers. Like me.
To check the ETA of my bleak future, I asked ChatGPT to write a grammar book in the style of June Casagrande.
The software cheerily obliged, promising to “channel my inner June Casagrande and create a grammar book that’s fun, fierce, and friendly — just like ‘Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies.’” Minus the cash advance for me, of course. Minus even the cover price of two books I wrote that another AI program literally stole, according to an Atlantic magazine database.
The ChatGPT book begins: “Let’s face it: grammar has trust issues. Not because it’s sneaky or complicated — though we’ll admit, it has its moods — but because you were probably introduced to it by someone who thought diagramming sentences was a fun Friday activity. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.”
Smooth, well-structured, accessible. At first, the writing seems impressive. But wait, “trust issues”? ChatGPT meant that people don’t trust grammar, which itself is a little off. But to “have trust issues” means to be incapable of trusting others. So the first sentence doesn’t make sense.
The word “complicated” is also odd. Being complicated doesn’t undermine trust, exactly. “Spoiler alert” means something you have yet to learn, not something you learned decades ago. Then there’s “we’ll admit.” Who’s “we”? This isn’t an article in a sassy magazine in which the writer is speaking on behalf of the editorial staff. This is a book by just one author — an author who has written five books and over 1,000 columns without once writing in the plural first person. (Nice job channeling me, ChatGPT.)
“We” appears a lot in the first few pages, like after saying grammar has a bad reputation, adding: “We’re going to clear that up.” Then, while talking about the voice in your head that makes you fear grammar, adding: “To that voice we say: shut up.”
Check every book on your shelf and you probably won’t find a single one written in the plural first person — and definitely not if the book has just one author.
Then, this “intelligence” gets even less intelligent by switching to the singular first person a few pages later: “I’m going to give you the tools you need.”
ChatGPT’s manuscript contained lots of illogical statements, like the example sentence “My cat screams at 3 a.m.,” the assertion that verbs are “the Beyonce of grammar” (with no explanation why) and, my favorite, this bit about comma splices: “Grammar says, ‘not today, Satan.’”
ChatGPT got facts wrong, too. It said the “are” in “We are never getting back together” is a linking verb. It’s not. It’s an auxiliary verb.
I could go on. But in the middle of writing this column, and I swear this is true, I was given a freelance assignment to revise a short video script written by AI and to “make it sound more natural.”
The script wasn’t just unnatural sounding. It was illogical, misguided and utterly clueless about what to focus on. It boasted at length about an AI writing program that could take “P.R. pitches” and instantly transform them into newspaper articles.
That might sound great to P.R. firms making the pitches, but this script was promoting a technology to benefit newspapers and their readers — oblivious to the fact that journalism doesn’t mean printing whatever P.R. firms want.
I rewrote the whole script, emphasizing the important work reporters do and how the new AI tools could support their journalism. The editor who assigned me the project wrote back, “Your version is SO GOOD” (emphasis hers).
I’m still reeling from the irony. A human writer did an objectively better job than AI at writing advertising copy to promote … an AI writing program.
So the next time you hear tech billionaires boasting about AI products destined to change life as you know it, remember their own words: Not today, Satan.
The post ChatGPT can't do me first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you want to use the original expression, think of a homing pigeon: you home in on something. But that doesn't mean "hone in" is wrong, exactly.
The post 'Home In On' or 'Hone In On' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"I was so aggravated by the neighbor's loud music." A lot of people believe that "aggravate" means only to make worse and that, if you're talking about being annoyed, you must use "irritate." That's not true, but if you want to play it safe you can stick to those meanings.
The post Aggravate and Irritate first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The dictionary is gaslighting me. I know I sound crazy, but that’s just proof of gaslighting, right?
Let me explain.
For years I’ve been telling people that they never have to agonize over whether to use “swam” or “swum,” “laid” or “lain,” “drank” or “drunk,” or “dreamed” or “dreamt” because the answers are in the dictionary. But only if you know how to find them.
Most dictionaries contain instructions on how to use the dictionary. Of course, no one ever reads this section because they think they already know how to use a dictionary: Look up the word you want. Ignore those weird little schwas and other stuff after the word. Read its definition. Then continue to wonder what mysterious corner of the universe contains the answers to the “laid” vs. “lain” mystery.
Not so fast, I say.
Turn to the front of a physical dictionary or look under the Help section of an online dictionary, and you’ll find information about “inflected forms.” That term means the different forms of a word for different situations, like past tense. “Thought,” for example, is an inflected form of “think.”
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary tells you inflected forms “are covered explicitly or by implication at the main entry for the base form. These are the plurals of nouns, the principal parts of verbs (the past tense, the past participle when it differs from the past tense, and the present participle), and the comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs. In general, it may be said that when these inflected forms are created in a manner considered regular in English (as by adding -s or -es to nouns, -ed and -ing to verbs, and -er and -est to adjectives and adverbs) and when it seems that there is nothing about the formation likely to give the dictionary user doubts, the inflected form is not shown in order to save space.”
Catch that? For regular verbs, past forms are not shown. So an irregular verb like “swim” will have after it “swam,” indicating the simple past tense, then “swum,” the past participle. But a regular verb like “walk,” which everyone knows takes -ed for both its past tense forms, doesn’t mention it. The dictionary tells you this “by implication” — if nothing’s there, you know to use -ed.
Over the years, I’ve noticed this multiple times. When I look up regular verbs like “walk,” there are no past tense forms listed. At least, there weren’t. But suddenly, in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, under “walk” it says “walked.” After “talk” it says “talked.” After “call” it says “called.” After “realize” it says “realized.” Those weren’t there before.
That’s all the evidence I need to prove that Merriam’s is trying to drive me crazy by making me think I’m crazy. But I am not a crackpot.
Confronted with this puzzling information, I did what any former reporter who lacked the chops to cut it as a long-term reporter would do: I contacted the source through social media asking what’s up with that? I got no answer and, true to my didn’t-cut-it-as-a-long-term-reporter skills, I gave up.
But Merriam made one fatal error. They left in that stuff in the Help section about inflected forms of regular verbs being covered “by implication” — evidence of a hasty cover-up of their gaslighting campaign. Busted.
What does all this mean for you? Two things.
First, you can easily find out that the simple past tense of “swim” is “swam,” and the past participle (the one that goes after a form of “have”) is “swum.” “Laid” is the past tense and past participle of the transitive verb “lay,” while “lain” is the past participle of the intransitive verb “lie.” It’s correct to say “yesterday he drank” but “in the past he has drunk.” Also, “dreamed” is correct but “dreamt” is also an option.
And second, your humble grammar columnist is not crazy (in any way relevant to this column).
The post Swam/swum, lay/lain? The answers are in the dictionary first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Personal pronouns — I, you, he, we, they, etc. — are just one type of pronoun. Possessive pronouns like "my," reflexive pronouns like "myself," relative pronouns like "which" and indefinite pronouns like "anyone" are just a few examples of the different types of pronouns. Here's the full rundown.
The post The Many Kinds of Pronouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Figures of speech, like words, evolve.
Take “vicious cycle,” for example. For a solid century, there was no “vicious cycle” — at least not in published writing. Pretty much everyone who could get near a printing press agreed the expression was “vicious circle.”
The idea behind the expression, of course, is that of being stuck in a loop, a bad one. Merriam-Webster defines “vicious circle” as “a chain of events in which the response to one difficulty creates a new problem that aggravates the original difficulty.” As the 20th century dawned, “vicious circle” continued to dominate, but suddenly it had some competition. “Vicious cycle” was emerging as a contender. “Vicious circle” held onto its lead until just about a decade ago, when “vicious cycle” nosed ahead. At the same time, the original and originally correct expression “vicious circle” started to dive. I’m not optimistic about its future.
“Top up” is another term that caught my eye lately, and not in a good way. I first started seeing it in travel articles pondering whether it’s worthwhile to buy airline miles to “top up” your existing balance enough to book a flight. My whole life, the expression I heard was “top off.” According to Merriam-Webster, “top off” is a phrasal verb that has two definitions: The first is “to end (something) usually in an exciting way.” So an athlete may top off their career with a final victory, or a nice dinner can be topped off with dessert and coffee. The second definition is similar to the first: “to fill (something) completely with a liquid.” Be it a mug of coffee or a tank of gas, when it’s not quite full and you fill it all the way, you’re topping it off.
“Top up,” meanwhile, was a perfectly fine way to say “top off” if you’re British. But it wasn’t for us, I thought. We were top-off people.
Turns out that’s not quite right. “Top up” has been in print as long as “top off,” and though the American version has always been more popular in American publishing, “top up” has never been far behind.
I was wrong about that, but I was even more wrong about “You’ve got another think coming.” I couldn’t understand how anyone could make the embarrassing mistake of using “think” in this expression. Obviously, the correct version was “You’ve got another thing coming.”
I never considered the context. The expression follows a stated or implied statement of “If you think X …” so “another” makes sense because you’ve already had one think. Of course, a think is a thing. So it’s not wrong to say you’ve got another thing coming. And that’s lucky for modern English speakers, because Ngram Viewer shows that “another think coming” started to decline in popularity about 10 years ago while “another thing coming” is becoming more popular than ever — just when I was getting used to “think.”
For me, there are two takeaways from these trends. One, the language will keep changing. And two, change will continue to annoy me.
The post Figures of speech first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There’s a new show on Netflix that piqued my interest. Here’s how “Mid90s” is described on the streaming service: “A lonely boy escapes his troubled home life by latching on to a group of older, skater kids.”
I’m intrigued.
How did the older kids get so skate? And is one of them skater than the others — you know, the skatest of the bunch?
English is weird. Punctuation is weird. And if you’re not careful with both, you can write something weird when you don’t mean to.
Let’s start with punctuation, in this case, the comma that singlehandedly messed up an otherwise fine show description.
A lot of people know that commas can go between adjectives in front of a noun: a nice, generous, thoughtful person. And, whether they think about it or not, they know that sometimes commas should not go between adjectives in front of a noun: a bright orange dress shirt. But few people know why, and even the experts struggle to explain it succinctly.
Here’s the Chicago Manual of Style: “As a general rule, when a noun is preceded by two or more adjectives that could, without affecting the meaning, be joined by ‘and,’ the adjectives are separated by commas. Such adjectives, which are called coordinate adjectives, can also usually be reversed in order and still make sense. If, on the other hand, the adjectives are not coordinate — that is, if one or more of the adjectives are essential to (i.e., form a unit with) the noun being modified — no commas are used.”
The Associated Press Stylebook casts it as how the adjectives “rank.”
“Use commas to separate a series of adjectives equal in rank. If the commas could be replaced by the word ‘and’ without changing the sense, the adjectives are equal: a thoughtful, precise manner; a dark, dangerous street. Use no comma when the last adjective before a noun outranks its predecessors because it is an integral element of a noun phrase, which is the equivalent of a single noun: a cheap fur coat.”
So while it’s unfortunate that there’s no clearer way of explaining this comma rule, at least you have two handy tests to choose from: try putting the word “and” between the adjectives, or try changing their order. If the sentence still makes sense, you need commas.
“Older and skater kids” is nonsense. So is “skater, older kids.”
When you write it, as the Netflix people did, “older, skater,” it implies that “skater” is an adjective on par with “older” — that their rank is the same, that they’re coordinate.
They’re not. “Skater” doesn’t just describe the kids, it defines them. And this isn’t just because “skater” is a noun. The same is true for older Hawaiian shirt and delicious tossed salad.
The other odd thing about English that Netflix’s copy reveals has to do with the “er” ending on “skater.” As a suffix, “er” has two meanings.
It can mean more, greater, better, etc., forming a comparative adjective. You’re smart, she’s smarter. You’re late, he’s later. You’re tall, they’re taller.
In this sense, “er” is what’s called an adjective suffix because it attaches to an adjective like tall, or it’s an adverb suffix because it attaches to an adverb like fast.
But “er” can also be a noun suffix, as it is in skater. The noun suffix form has nine possible definitions. It can be someone who does a thing: a skater, a seat filler, a jogger. It can mean to have something, for example a double-decker has double decks. It can also mean a native or resident of, like a New Yorker or a New Englander.
To avoid mistakes like Netflix’s, you don’t need to think about “er” suffixes. It’s the comma that’ll get you. Try moving your adjectives around or putting “and” between them. If you end up with nonsense like “skater older kids,” you know there’s no comma in “older skater kids.”
The post Older, skater kids first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Everyday" is an adjective that usually comes before a noun: everyday values. "Every day" is a noun phrase: every day is a new beginning.
The post Every Day vs. Everyday first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A lot of language experts will tell you to avoid the word “re,” as in, “I’d like to speak to you re scheduling.” It’s pretentious, they say, to use this Latin derivative instead of good old plain English — it’s “tasteless as a gold toothpick,” according to Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide “The Careful Writer.” All of us outside the legal profession should “leave this one to the lawyers,” he wrote.
Way ahead of you, Bernstein and friends. I’ve been avoiding “re” my whole life. But unfortunately, I can’t claim that my motive has been to eschew pretentiousness, humbly sidestepping every opportunity to show off my deep knowledge of this preposition and its Latin origins.
No, I avoid it because I’ve never understood “re” well enough to even feign pretentiousness. I avoid “re” not because I’m down to earth but because I’m downright intimidated.
Is it “re:” with a colon? Is the R capitalized? Can you use it in the body of a letter or email, or only in the header or subject line? If it’s an abbreviation of “regarding,” does it need a period at the end, or does a colon preclude the need for a period? And why do you sometimes see “in” before “re”? Wouldn’t that be redundant?
The answers to all these questions are surprising — at least to me. For starters “re” is not an abbreviation for “regarding.” It’s a preposition — a real word like “at,” “of” or “with.” It’s defined not as “regarding” but as “with regard to” or “in the matter of,” which makes it a subtle shade different from “regarding” in some uses.
“Re” doesn’t even share the same roots as “regarding.” It’s from a Latin noun, “res,” which meant “thing” or “matter.” That’s a clue why “in” is sometimes used before “re.” It’s like saying “in the matter of.” But the way Latin grammar worked, the “in” may be implied, anyway. So it’s hard to know whether “in re” or just “re” better captures “res” in what’s called the Latin “ablative” case. At least that’s the assessment of someone who gave up after half a day trying to understand Latin noun cases. (Ahem.)
What I do know after half a day buried in books is that, in English, the “in” is optional. One of the definitions for the preposition “re” is “in re” — that is, they mean the same thing. So you can choose.
Here’s more of what I learned about “re” in my recent column.
The post What's up with 're'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When people say that they couldn't care less, they mean that they care so little it would be impossible to care any less than they do. Logically, then, "could care less" would mean the opposite. However, it's been gaining acceptability for decades.
The post I Could Care Less? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Subject-verb agreement is usually pretty easy. But even the most grammar-savvy people can get confounded by sentences like these:
A team of rivals was/were meeting the statehouse.
A bunch of whiners is/are affecting morale.
A flock of birds fly/flies by every day.
Everyone knows that a team was meeting but rivals were meeting. Everyone knows that a bunch is affecting but whiners are affecting. And everyone knows that a flock flies but birds fly.
But when noun phrase contains a singular noun and a plural noun, things can get pretty confusing. How do you know which noun should govern the verb?
Actually, the answer is easier than most would guess. You just take your pick. It’s up to you.
When your subject is a noun phrase with more than one noun, like “a team of rivals,” either one can "do" something. That is, either noun can get a verb. So choosing the verb depends only on which one of the nouns most seems to you like the one performing the action of the verb.
If you think the focus is more on the individual rivals than the whole team, you can write “A team of rivals were.” If you think it's more about the team, you can write “A team of rivals was.”
There really is no right or wrong way. And your own ear is by far your best guide.
However, I have a way of looking at these structures that may help.
Every noun phrase — a team of rivals, a bunch of whiners, a flock of birds — has a head noun. Now, recall that a prepositional phrase is a preposition like “of” plus its object, which is always a noun or pronoun. The "of rivals" and "of whiners" are prepositional phrases within the larger noun phrase.
The job of a prepositional phrases is to modify. They act sort of like adjectives or adverbs, depending on where they’re placed and what they point to. In a team of rivals, a bunch of whiners, and ˆ, the “of” phrases are all modifying nouns (team, bunch, and ˆ). So they’re really functioning like adjectives of those nouns. That’s how we know that team, bunch, and flock are the head nouns in their respective noun phrases.
Now, there’s no rule that says that the head noun gets the verb. There’s no reason nouns in the prepositional phrases can’t be doing some action. But I give head nouns a little more authority. As a default, I figure the head noun should get first stab at governing the verb. Only if it sounds funny do I make the verb agree with the object of the preposition.
So how would I write our three example sentences? Let’s see …
a team of rivals were (I feel that the rivals here are more important than the team.)
a bunch of whiners are (Ditto. Whiners seem to rule this noun phrase.)
a flock of birds flies (Here, I think the emphasis is on the whole flock.)
But if you disagree, your opinion is as valid as mine.
The post A flock of birds fly or a flock of birds flies? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Could've is pronounced just like could of. But don't confuse them. You always want the contraction of could and have. Never use of.
The post Could've vs. Could of first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Brad crashed his car into the donut shop and totally destroyed it.
Did Brad destroy the donut shop or his car? The pronoun "it" could refer to either. Here's how to avoid the problem of unclear antecedents.
The post Unclear Antecedents first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I got an e-mail from a reader named Mike who had a question about the sentence “Soon I will go to the office,” which I had used as an example in a piece I wrote. Mike wanted to know “Shouldn't there be a comma after soon?”
Sure. Or not. Whatever.
A comma after a short introductory word, phrase, or clause, I told him, is optional. So in "Soon I will go to the office," no comma is needed.
“On Tuesday I will go to the office.” “On Tuesday, I will go to the office.”
You could go either way on these. It depends solely on which way you, the writer, feel best conveys the way you want it to come across.
But the longer the introductory matter, the greater the likelihood a comma will help.
“On the third Tuesday of the month, I go to the office.”
Technically you could skip the comma in the sentence. But I wouldn’t.
“On the third Tuesday of every month that ends in the letter Y, I go to the office.”
In this one, by the time you get to the main clause (“I go”), you’re in so deep that it’s hard to remember a main clause is even coming. So in that case, I’m guess that about 99% of editors would agree a comma is needed.
It’s just one of many areas of the language in which good judgment reigns supreme.
The post Comma after a short introductory phrase first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Hoi polloi" doesn't mean "hoity-toity." And it has a long, contentious history involving whether you can use "the" in front of it. Short answer: yes, you can.
The post Hoi Polloi first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You probably don’t read a lot of books written in the 1820s. But if you did, you’d see the word “belie” a lot more. According to Google Ngram Viewer, in the early 1800s, “belie” appeared in books about four times as often as it does now.
Maybe that’s why I find the word a little intimidating. I never use it, partly because its definition is confusing, but mostly because its past tense is terrifying.
Today I belie, yesterday I belay? Belaid? Belied? And what about in its -ing form? Beling? Belieing? I never know. That’s ironic when you consider how well-versed I am in the past forms of “lie” and “lay.” Today I lie, yesterday I lay, in the past I have lain. Today I lay the book on the table, yesterday I laid the book on the table, in the past I have laid the book on the table. I’ve written about “lie” and “lay” so many times I no longer have to look them up.
But for “belie” … well, better to just avoid the word altogether than to botch its past tense. At least, that’s how I’ve been operating. That changes today, starting with some good news for anyone who’s ever struggled to figure out the past form of a verb: Definite answers — not just opinions that amateurs post on the internet — are always handy.
Open any major dictionary, digital or physical, turn to any irregular verb, and the first thing you see after the entry word will tell you how to conjugate it in every form. For example, in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, after the entry for “begin,” you see in bold “began, begun, beginning.”
Dictionaries list the simple past tense, “began,” first, followed by the past participle, “begun.” The easiest way to understand past participles is to think of them as the forms that go with “have”: I have begun. For a lot of verbs, there’s no difference between the past participle and the regular past tense, which is why you say, “I laid the book on the table” and also “I have laid the book on the table.” In those cases, the dictionary lists only the one past form, “laid,” indicating that it serves as both.
For past forms of “belie,” Merriam-Webster’s lists only “belied.” So that’s the past tense, “Her gentleness belied her strength,” and the past participle, “Her gentleness has belied her strength.” Not as difficult as I feared. The progressive participle, “belying,” seems pretty easy now that I realize the obvious: that “belie” is more closely related to the “lie” that means to deceive than to the “lie” that means to recline. And we all know how to conjugate that type of lying: Today I lie, yesterday I lied, in the past I have lied, I am lying. “Belie” mirrors that.
The definition of “belie,” though, is another matter. It’s confusing.
The main definition is to give a false impression of something, as in Merriam’s example “Her gentleness belies her strength.” But the secondary definition is “to show something to be false or wrong,” as in, “The evidence belies their claims of innocence.”
In other words, it can mean to conceal a truth or to reveal a truth.
Some experts disavow this second definition. “The word does not mean ‘to disclose or reveal,’ as is sometimes thought,” writes Garner’s Modern American Usage. “That is, some writers wrongly think of it in a sense almost antithetical to sense 1.”
It’s always unfortunate when a word has a secondary definition that contradicts its main definition. (Read the full dictionary entry for the word “literally” and you’ll see what I mean.) So even though “belie” is easy to put in the past tense, I’ll continue not using it in any tense.
The post What's the past tense of 'belie'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Which part of speech is the word “running”?
- It’s a verb
- It’s a noun, that is, a gerund
- It’s an adjective
- All of the above
Once you know how -ing words work, you know it's all the above. Here's the full story..
The post Verb vs. Gerund vs. Modifier first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Most of the time, hyphens connect two words that work together to describe a noun, as in “heat-seeking missile.” The hyphen makes clear it’s not a heat missile. It’s not a seeking missile. Neither of those words can describe missile on its own. They have to work together, to connect, to tell you about the missile.
These are called compound modifiers: words that team up to work like a modifier, usually an adjective, to describe another word. These modifiers are central to hyphenation rules, which say, basically: Hyphenate a compound modifier when doing so can prevent ambiguity. That is, don’t let your reader confuse “buffalo-riding birds” with “buffalo riding birds.”
Compound modifiers can be adverbs, too. Often, these compound adverbs come after the verb: She works part-time. And because adverbs can modify adjectives, as in “fabulously wealthy,” compound adverbs do the same: “jaw-droppingly wealthy.”
Nouns like “mock-up,” and verbs like “mass-produce” can also be hyphenated. But a lot of those are in the dictionary, meaning you don’t have to figure out on your own how to write them. Then there are prefixes and suffixes, whose hyphenation rules are a mess, widely disagreed upon and inconsistent, requiring a hyphen in “re-create” but none in “reenact.”
“Use of the hyphen is far from standardized,” the Associated Press Stylebook writes. “It can be a matter of taste, judgment and style sense. Think of hyphens as an aid to readers’ comprehension. If a hyphen makes the meaning clearer, use it. If it just adds clutter and distraction to the sentence, don’t use it.”
AP’s explanations, exceptions, special circumstances and examples go on for about 900 words, making hyphens one of the longest entries in the style guide. I had referred back to these 900ish words countless times in the years leading up to that fateful day I learned about that dry old meat. Yet I was stopped in my tracks. Was it 30-day-dry-aged beef or 30-day dry-aged beef? That is, were all those words working as a single adjective to modify “beef”?
“At times, a writer must decide whether words preceding a noun form a single adjective that should be hyphenated as one modifier or whether some terms within are functioning independently,” I wrote in my 2010 book “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” “For example, in choosing between ‘a discriminating-but-value-conscious shopper’ and ‘a discriminating but value-conscious shopper,’ the writer can decide based on whichever best captures the intended meaning.” Then I shared the results of a survey I gave to some professional copy editors, who all agreed that value-conscious should be hyphenated but the rest should not. Yet when I asked them about “30-day-dry-aged,” they disagreed. Two thirds said to hyphenate the whole shebang as a single compound. The remainder said it’s “30-day dry-aged.”
There’s no wrong answer, but I’m with the majority on this one. It’s not 30-day beef that is dry-aged. All four words in that compound build on each other to create a single meaning.
Most often, these “compounds of uncertain scope” appear in phrases like “extreme-heat-related illness.” This came up recently in my copy editing work with just one hyphen. I chose logic over looks. It’s not an extreme illness that’s heat-related. It’s the heat, not the illness, that’s extreme.
Hyphens have fallen somewhat out of fashion, so longer compounds are getting rarer. But I’ll keep hyphenating 30-day-dry-aged beef and extreme-heat-related illness as long as the rules allow.
The post Confusing hyphenation situations first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In the Netflix series “Umbrella Academy,” Aidan Gallagher plays Number Five, a 58-year-old assassin and theoretical physicist trapped in a 13-year-old’s body.
A naturally brainy teen and gifted actor, Gallagher has no trouble convincing me Five is a late-middle-aged genius unlocking the mysteries of space-time to stop a world-ending apocalypse. In his performance, I believe every word — well, every word but one: nuclear. Five pronounces it “nucular.”
I know a lot of people share my feelings on this: There’s no vowel between the C and the L — no U to make the second syllable sound like “cue.” The spelling makes clear that the second syllable should be “clee.”
Regular readers of this blog know that language is seldom that simple. Just because one pronunciation is right doesn’t mean another is wrong.
“Though disapproved of by many, pronunciations ending in (cue-lar) have been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, U.S. cabinet members, and at least two U.S. presidents and one vice president,” Merriam-Webster’s dictionary notes. “While most common in the U.S., these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers.”
If you’re like me, you might find this rationale frustrating. That is, when you say, “It’s annoying that so many people pronounce it that way,’” the experts reply, “Many people pronounce it that way.” To which you reply, “I know. I just said that. That’s the problem.”
For this reason, linguists can seem at times like they’re gaslighting. But in fact, they’re just leaving out one crucial bit of information: In language, “many people do it” is the law of the land. Every word, every pronunciation and every rule of grammar was born of how people use the language. If enough of us started using “shoobeedoobee” to mean “rest assured that we’ll handle your funeral arrangements with the utmost dignity,” eventually it would mean exactly that.
Besides, for a recent column, I was happy to discover that my two-syllable pronunciation of “caramel” is fine and possibly superior. So I’d be hypocritical to insist on a phonetic pronunciation of “nuclear.”
If there’s a silver lining, for me, it’s that 20-odd years into writing about grammar, I learned a new term to describe this type of sound switch around: metathesis.
In linguistics, “metathesis” means “the process whereby a sound hops out of its proper place, so to speak, and pops up elsewhere in the word, or switches places with another sound in the word,” according to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.
Wikipedia gives examples that may strike a nerve. My favorite, straight from the sea: anenome in place of anemone. This one drives me nuts — not because people who use it wrong annoy me, but because years ago I declared myself incapable of ever using it right. Can’t spell it. Can’t pronounce it. I’ll sign any petition that banishes it from the English language.
Then there’s “cavalry” for “calvary.” This one’s more serious. If you get “anemone” wrong, the worst that can happen is people will think you’re doing a musical number from Sesame Street. But if you get cavalry wrong, you change your meaning. Merriam-Webster’s definition of calvary is “an open-air representation of the crucifixion of Jesus” or “an experience of usually intense mental suffering.” A cavalry is a component of an army, especially one on horseback.
“Jewlery” in place of “jewelry” is another common metathesis. I doubt I’ve ever pronounced this word the way it's spelled and don't plan to start anytime soon. "Asteriks” for “asterisk,” “aks” for “ask,” and “iorn” for “iron” are just a few more examples of common metatheses, and they all come with varying degrees of controversy. You can pick your likes and dislikes. Me, I’m soft on almost all these, except the incorrect pronunciation of “nuclear” and any pronunciation, right or wrong, of “anemone.”
The post That awful pronunciation of 'nuclear' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It's usually pretty easy to make your verbs agree with your subjects. But some sentences throw you a curve ball.
The post Subject-verb Agreement first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I don’t recommend using “data” as a singular, as in, “The data on this matter is shocking.”
“Data” is an English word that, like many words, is formed from the Latin. When we adopted it, we sort of pushed aside its Latin singular form, “datum.”
But sometimes it just seems kind of odd to treat it as a plural. “I’ve seen the data and it’s shocking” sounds less weird than “I have seen the data and they're shocking.”
If you find yourself in a situation where you’d really rather treat "data" as a singular, you can. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says it’s “singular or plural in construction.”
The dictionary adds: "Data leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions: as a plural noun (like earnings), taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (as these, many, a few) but not cardinal numbers, and serving as a referent for plural pronouns (as they, them); and as an abstract mass noun (like information), taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (as this, much, little), and being referred to by a singular pronoun (it). Both constructions are standard. The plural construction is more common in print, evidently because the house style of several publishers mandates it.”
So, like so many other issues in language, it comes down to whether you’re worried what other people think of your English skills. If you’re not too worried about stickler readers judging you, then you’re free to follow Merriam-Webster’s advice.
The post 'Data is' or 'data are'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people insist that the word "decimate" can't be used to mean "wipe out" or "destroy" because it's rooted in a Roman word that meant to kill one in 10 soldiers. But the definition of "decimate" is no longer that specific.
The post Decimate first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Perhaps you remember this 2003 commercial: Shaquille O'Neal corrects actor Percy Daggs III when Daggs pronounces the ingredient in a new variety of Nestle Crunch as “carmel.”
“It’s caramel,” Shaq says, hitting all three syllables. “Car-a-mel. Can’t you spell?”
I’d been pronouncing it “carmel” all my life. It’s how the people around me pronounced it. It’s all I knew. But then, I grew up in the region of Florida that spawned the first Hooters restaurant, so I didn’t have much faith in the judgment or taste of the people around me. Instead, I put my faith in Shaq. I started pronouncing it “car-a-mel.”
After all, Shaq made a good point with “Can’t you spell?” Three vowels, separated by consonants, sure look like three syllables to me.
As a self-styled “language expert,” I knew I should do a little research. And I did — 22 years later. Here’s what I just learned: the pronunciation “carmel,” with two syllables, is every bit as acceptable as the three-syllable pronunciation. In fact, the two-syllable option comes first in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, which may indicate it’s more standard.
Score one for the town that gave the world chicken wings with a side of hair mousse.
Reasonable minds may disagree. Garner’s Modern American Usage, for example, is on Team Shaq, deeming the three-syllable pronunciation superior.
Jewelry is another word that’s spelled like it has three syllables but is often pronounced with just two: jool-ry. In my world, the two-syllable pronunciation is standard. I almost never hear “joo-ul-ry.”
Merriam’s dictionary seems to prefer three syllables, though it allows two, as well. The difference is subtle, almost undetectable. “Joo-ul-ry” so buries the “ul” that it sounds nearly identical to “jool-ry,” even on the audio clip on Merriam’s website.
The pronunciation you definitely want to avoid is “joo-luh-ry,” with “luh” in the middle instead of “ul.” Merriam’s dictionary calls this pronunciation nonstandard, which is dictionary-speak for “ill-advised.”
“Realtor” is another oddly pronounced word. Instead of dropping a syllable, people add one: “reel-uh-tur.” It’s a little bizarre, but if you pay attention to how your mouth moves to say “Realtor,” it’s easy to hear why the first and second syllables could benefit from a little more separation. Regardless, the three-syllable pronunciation of “Realtor” is widely considered to be wrong. The experts in my language library say it’s always just “reel-tur.”
Perhaps the most hotly debated word of this type is “homogeneous.” Some argue, passionately, that it should be pronounced “ho-mo-GEE-nee-us,” while others insist it’s “ho-MOJ-en-us.” Actually, these are two different words.
“The more common term is homogeneous,” writes Garner’s, “which means ‘of uniform characteristics.’” It’s pronounced as five syllables, with the stress on “gee.” The word “homogenous,” has just one “e” and is pronounced with the stress on the second syllable: “ho-MOJ-en-us.” It’s a term from biology that means tissues or organs are genetically related.
Many people pronounce “homogeneous” as if they’re using the other word, “homogenous.” But if you want to say that things are similar or of uniform composition, that’s not a good idea.
“Writers are best advised to use ‘homogeneous,’ and to pronounce all five syllables,” Garner’s writes.
The post How many syllables in 'caramel'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If someone sneaks into your house and steals something while no one's home, can you say someone robbed you? Technically, yes, if you're writing outside the legal profession and don't mind loose usage. But if you like words to be as precise as possible, use "burglarize." Here's why.
The post Rob vs. Burglarize first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A lot of language experts will tell you to avoid the word “re,” as in, “I’d like to speak to you re scheduling.” It’s pretentious, they say, to use this Latin derivative instead of good old plain English — it’s “tasteless as a gold toothpick,” according to Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide “The Careful Writer.” All of us outside the legal profession should “leave this one to the lawyers,” he wrote.
Way ahead of you, Bernstein and friends. I’ve been avoiding “re” my whole life. But unfortunately, I can’t claim that my motive has been to eschew pretentiousness, humbly sidestepping every opportunity to show off my deep knowledge of this preposition and its Latin origins.
No, I avoid it because I’ve never understood “re” well enough to even feign pretentiousness. I avoid “re” not because I’m down to earth but because I’m downright intimidated.
Is it “re:” with a colon? Is the R capitalized? Can you use it in the body of a letter or email, or only in the header or subject line? If it’s an abbreviation of “regarding,” does it need a period at the end, or does a colon preclude the need for a period? And why do you sometimes see “in” before “re”? Wouldn’t that be redundant?
The answers to all these questions are surprising — at least to me. For starters “re” is not an abbreviation for “regarding.” It’s a preposition — a real word like “at,” “of” or “with.” It’s defined not as “regarding” but as “with regard to” or “in the matter of,” which makes it a subtle shade different from “regarding” in some uses.
“Re” doesn’t even share the same roots as “regarding.” It’s from a Latin noun, “res,” which meant “thing” or “matter.” That’s a clue why “in” is sometimes used before “re.” It’s like saying “in the matter of.” But the way Latin grammar worked, the “in” may be implied, anyway. So it’s hard to know whether “in re” or just “re” better captures “res” in what’s called the Latin “ablative” case. At least that’s the assessment of someone who gave up after half a day trying to understand Latin noun cases. (Ahem.)
What I do know after half a day buried in books is that, in English, the “in” is optional. One of the definitions for the preposition “re” is “in re” — that is, they mean the same thing. So you can choose.
Another thing I learned is that “re” should not be capitalized unless it begins a sentence. It’s a regular word, so it works like one. Just as you don’t write “Put the book On the table,” you don’t write “See me tomorrow Re scheduling.” In fact, you’d be using the wrong word. Beginning with a capital, Re is the abbreviation for rhenium, a heavy metal.
Because “re” is a regular word, it doesn’t automatically get a colon, nor does a longer phrase like “Re scheduling: See me tomorrow.” Yes, a colon can be used this way, but not because “re” requires it, only because in many instances the colon helps the whole sentence.
Using “re” was hard enough before email came along. Now “Re:” gets automatically added to subject lines when we reply to another message. And whoever came up with that system didn’t bother to tell us whether “Re:” was short for “regarding” or it meant a “reply” to the original email.
I say don’t worry about appearing pretentious if you use “re,” but you might consider whether it’s distracting. We’re so unused to seeing it used correctly in the middle of a sentence, lowercase with no colon, that it will surely look weird to your reader.
The post Regarding "re" first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If "one" is singular, then the plural "these ones" must be nonsense, right? That's what some people think, but actually, "these ones" is fine. Here's why.
The post These Ones? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Next time you hear someone ranting about how the language is going to hell in a handbasket or complaining about people misusing this or that word, ask him to define the word "girl."
In my experience, "girl" is the best example of why the language Chicken Littles don't have a leg to stand on.
You see, we actually use the word "girl" wrong, according to an older standard, that is. In the 1300s, "girl" meant a child of either sex. Yet today it means specifically a female child.
Think for a moment what it was like getting from that linguistic Point A to our Point B. There must have been a lot of confusion along the way, right? No doubt it gave language doomsayers plenty of fodder. Could you blame any witness to this transition for thinking it was a problem Could you blame him for decrying the ignorance that fueled this change or the chaos that would ensue?
With 700 years' perspective, we know that such doomsayers would have been wrong. The word "girl" as we use it today is perfectly peachy. People aren't confused by it. No one sounds ignorant for using it. Communication hasn't broken down.
In other words, what was once a wrong usage of "girl" is now right. And clearly that's not a bad thing.
When sticklers fuss over "misuse" of words like "literally" and "healthy" and "aggravate," it's because they just don't understand how words change. They don't understand that this evolution is not a bad thing. It just appears bad to anyone who lacks historical perspective.
And nothing proves this as well as a brief history of the word "girl."
The post A girl wasn't always a girl first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you share something between three friends? Or Is "between" only for groups of two, with "among" the required term for three or more? Some people will tell you it's the latter. But it's not quite that simple. Here's what you need to know.
The post 'Among' vs. 'Between' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Have you ever thought about the word “deceptively”? I hadn’t, until I came across the following in Word Court, Barbara Wallraff’s compilation from her former Atlantic Monthly column.
Here’s what a reader asked her: “A friend and I cannot agree on the meaning of phrases combining ‘depectively’ and a modifier — for example, ‘deceptively easy.’ I contest that something that is deceptively easy is, in fact, easy and is deceptive because it appears difficult. My friend argues that a deceptively easy task is one that appears easy but is difficult. Please help.”
Good one, huh? I always sort of took the former view: that "deceptively" before an adjective means that it has the qualities of that adjective, just it’s hard to see it at first. So someone who talks in a lot of big words but express a simple message is expressing a deceptively simple idea.
Unfortunately, Wallraff reported, it’s not that simple.
“The sad truth is that at this moment in history ‘deceptively easy’ means nothing in particular,” she wrote, citing the American Heritage Dictionary.
Here’s what that dictionary has to say.
“When deceptively is used to modify an adjective, the meaning is often unclear. Does the sentence ‘The pool is deceptively shallow’ mean that the pool is shallower or deeper than it appears?”
Unlike many other dictionaries, American Heritage likes to cite a Usage Panel — a group of esteemed wordy types from all across the word-pushing world — for matters like these. Here’s what American Heritage reported: “When the Usage Panel was asked to decide, 50 percent thought the pool shallower than it appears, 32 percent thought it deeper than it appears, and 18 percent said it was impossible to judge. “
As a result, American Heritage gives this advice, which is basically the same as Wallraff’s: When the context does not make the meaning of ‘deceptively clear, the sentence should be rewritten, as in; The pool is shallower than it looks’ or ‘The pool is shallow, despite its appearance.’”
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Some nouns, including "majority," can be singular or plural depending on meaning and context.
The post 'Majority Is' or 'Majority Are'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sometimes it seems like “whom” should die. It causes so many people so much distress. Not many people know how to use it. And a lot of people who think they know how to use it don’t.
For example, I see "whom" used a lot in ways such as this: “John is a man whom I know will always help us when we need him.” People who know that “whom” is an object figure that, in a sentence like this, it’s functioning as an object of the verb “know.” But it’s not. The object of the verb “know” in this sentence is not a single word but a whole clause “who will always help us.” Clauses need subjects. The verb “help” in this clause needs a subject. So correct here would be the subject pronoun “who”: “John is a man who I know will always help us.”
Sometimes it seems “whom” is just mean. And because it’s fading from all from the most formal uses, it’s tempting to look forward to the day we can bid it good riddance.
But here’s why “whom” is not going to die: in one specific construction, people clearly prefer it.
“I’m spending the day with my sister, with who I share many interests.”
That’s totally unnatural, right? Even in the most casual usage, someone who finds herself hemmed in to a sentence like this is going to say “with whom I share” and not “with who.”
In fact, anytime the pronoun comes immediately after a preposition, people seem to prefer “whom”
with whom
to whom
from whom
True, this situation doesn’t come up much. Casual speech usually sidesteps these constructions, for example by putting the pronoun at the beginning and the preposition at the end (“Who are you going to the movies with” instead of “With whom are you going to the movies”). But in those less-common situations, I don’t see “whom” disappearing anytime soon.
The post This 'whom' is a keeper first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Technically, you can get away with saying, "Bob is taller than me." But stick with "than I" if you want to play it safe.
The post 'Than I' vs 'Than Me' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You never "reign in" something to control it, though you may "reign supreme" once you've reined it in.
The post Reign vs. Rein first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
With all the working from home, cultural divisiveness, addiction to screens and the rise of AI “companions,” humans are becoming ever more isolated. That’s a bad thing. But there’s an upside. As we go through life desperately alone and starved for human contact, at least we’re less likely to make shared possessive errors like this one from a travel post on Reddit: “I bought my boyfriend and I’s tickets at the same time.”
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen “I’s,” but it’s still a shocker. Who thinks it would be a good idea to say, “That’s I’s car” or “I should get started filing I’s taxes” or “Do these pants make I’s backside look big”? No one.
We all know “I” isn’t used as a possessive. It’s a subject: I have a car. I filed my taxes. I am wearing unflattering pants.
So how do these errors happen? How can we get so confused about a pronoun we all know so well? Human contact. The other person. In the case of that Reddit poster, her boyfriend was the culprit. Had the poor woman flown to Hawaii alone, sure, she would have missed out on a marriage proposal, but at least she would have had the sense to say, “I bought my ticket.”
This error is related to the much more common “with John and I” mistake that, frankly, almost everyone makes. “With” is a preposition, prepositions take objects and “me,” not “I,” is the object form that belongs here: “with John and me.” But “I’s” takes this to a whole new level.
It’s a safe bet that people who misuse “I” labor under the false belief that “me” is incorrect or at least improper when paired with another person. A kid who says, “Billy and me are going to the park” gets corrected pretty swiftly: “It’s ‘Billy and I,’ not ‘me,’” adults tell them. The kid walks away with the lesson that, if he wants to get to the park with the least hassle possible, he should just always use “I.”
On top of all that, we’re not taught how to handle shared possessives. Is it “My boyfriend’s and my” or “my boyfriend and my”? I’ve studied this stuff for years and even I am not comfortable with this.
I know the rules for shared possessives: “Ed’s and Louise’s cars” is correct if they own the cars individually. If they own the cars jointly, it’s “Ed and Louise’s cars.” That’s because the rule says that if possession is shared, Ed and Louise share an apostrophe and s, too. But when people possess things separately, each gets their own apostrophe and s.
That’s an easy rule when you’re working with nouns like Ed, but when you’re working with pronouns like “my,” things get weird. “Ed’s and my cars” is easy enough if Ed and I own our cars separately, but if we share cars, a strict reading of the rules requires us to say, “Ed and my cars.” The absence of an apostrophe and s after Ed’s name strikes me as unnatural. And I don’t hear other people saying “Ed and my …” No matter who owns what, they say “Ed’s and my.”
Other pronouns pose the same difficulty: If you want to talk about the jointly owned “Ed and Louise’s cars” but you’re using a pronoun for Louisa, you’d get “Ed and her car,” which is unclear and sounds wrong.
In these cases, I openly defy the rule about sharing possession. I say “Ed’s and her cars” no matter whether they own the cars together or separately. As long as I’m not using “I’s,” it’s unlikely anyone will even know if I’m wrong.
The post 'My boyfriend and I's'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a word that caught my eye while I was editing an article a while back: predominately.
The context was something like “Brazil is a predominately Portuguese-speaking country.” I didn’t notice the spelling of predominately until my second read. And spell-checker didn’t notice either.
I quietly congratulated myself for catching the error, changed it to predominantly and continued reading the piece. But a few minutes later, I got the urge to check a dictionary. To my surprise, it was in both Webster’s New World College Dictionary (the dictionary required by the style guide I was using that day) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (which is the one I use when I’m editing in Chicago style). Both list predominately as a variant of predominantly.
I understand that the dictionaries’ job is to document usage, but I don’t think I’d ever seen predominately before. Unless this spelling had been slipping unnoticed under my nose for years, I had only ever seen predominantly.
Not that it mattered. In editing, we always use to the dictionary’s preferred forms and never the variants. So predominantly was the right choice for the article.
But the whole thing was pretty surprising — not just that a spelling I’d never noticed before warranted listing in the dictionary, but because it’s a strange one.
Adverbs often derive from adjectives: smart/smartly, nice/nicely, true/truly. So the adverb predominantly makes sense as a form of the adjective predominant. But predominate is a verb, and verbs don’t usually spin off adverb forms: walk/walkly, know/knowly, keep/keeply, dominate/dominately.
Chalk this one up as another example of our ever-surprising language.
The post 'Predominantly' or 'predominately'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Is it wrong to say, "I'm anxious for to go on vacation" when you're really looking forward to it? Not exactly. "Anxious" can, technically, mean "eager." But if you want to pick the most precise word available, use "anxious" only for things you dread.
The post Anxious vs. Eager first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The subjunctive mood changes a normal verb like "I was" to "I were" when the statement is a wish, supposition, statement of necessity or other contrary-to-fact situation. Usually, though, it's optional.
The post 'I Wish I Was' or 'I Wish I Were'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Years ago, someone told me you can’t use the word “quote” to mean “quotation.” As in, you can’t say, “There aren’t enough quotes in this article.” You have to say, “There aren’t enough quotations in this article.”
I think it came with a little lecture on nouns vs. verbs — that is, that “quote” is a verb, you quote someone, and “quotation” is a noun, you use his quotation. But I’m not sure. It was a long time ago.
When you get a piece of advice like this, the logical thing to do is check it. The answer’s as close as the nearest dictionary. So of course, I didn’t. I just spent the next who-knows-how-many years deleting “quote” and replacing it with “quotation” anytime I was worried who might see it.
There’s an old saying about laziness — something about how it ends up causing you more work. I’m sure I could find it if I tried.
But instead, I’ll spend my one precious bit of energy today looking up “quote.”
Surprise, surprise. In Merriam-Webster’s, Webster’s New World, and American Heritage dictionaries, after its main entry as a verb, it says that “quote” can also be a noun — a synonym of “quotation.”
So all these years I could have been saying, “Let’s add another quote” or “I don’t like this quote” instead of worrying that I’d get rapped on the knuckles for not using “quotation” instead.
What’s that famous quote? “Better late than never”?
The post Can 'quote' mean 'quotation'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Both doctors and nurses agree" isn't wrong, but because it could momentarily cause your reader to think you're talking about just two doctors, it's probably better to leave it out.
The post 'Both' Can Do More Harm Than Good first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Are you a dashaholic? It’s a thing, apparently. I’m more of a colon abuser myself: as if everything I write is so important it requires the colon’s drumroll effect. I’ve known more than a few comma junkies, too.
No matter your punctuation poison, there’s an easy antidote. The period. Let’s look at the role of each of these marks and how not to abuse them.
Dashes are widely misunderstood. A lot of people call hyphens dashes. Heck, even I call hyphens dashes when I’m reading my insurance policy number over the phone: “Two, nine, three, dash, one, one, eight.” But in text, dashes are something quite different. Unlike hyphens that connect a word with another word, prefix or suffix, as in “best-dressed,” dashes work at the sentence level — like this.
Dashes have two main jobs. A dash can signify an abrupt change in sentence structure — a shift like this that doesn’t fit with the grammar of the first part of the sentence. Or a dash can work like parentheses — setting off lists, parenthetical information, etc. — when you feel parentheses won’t cut it. Rules for dashes do not say you can use them to join complete clauses — this clause is an example. This is one of the most common abuses of the dash I see — people use them to string together two things that could stand alone as sentences. I suppose a loose interpretation of that “abrupt change in sentence structure” rule makes this OK. But when I’m editing, I make each clause into its own sentence, separating them with a period.
By the way, we’re talking about em dashes, not en dashes, which are shorter, less widely used and have more in common with a hyphen than with a dash. En dashes are often seen in compounds like “post-World War II,” connecting longer names and proper names with prefixes and other words. Dating back to days when newswires couldn’t transmit certain marks, news media have traditionally avoided the en dash and today just use a hyphen instead.
Colons are similar to dashes, just with a little more oomph: They set off an idea from a main sentence, but they suggest a greater emphasis. This can be a single word, as in this Associated Press Stylebook example: “He had only one hobby: eating.” Or one or more complete sentences can follow the colon. If the words that follow the colon don’t make up a complete sentence, don’t capitalize the first letter. But if one or more sentences is introduced by a colon, capitalize the first letter. Never double-space after a colon.
Colons can also introduce examples and lists, as in this sentence from the Chicago Manual of Style. “The watch came with a choice of three bands: stainless steel, plastic or leather.” But never use a colon after the word “including” to set up a list. “The watch came with a choice of four bands including stainless steel, plastic and leather.””
Colons that scream “listen to what I’m about to say” too loudly should probably be replaced by a period. I’ll try to take my own advice on this.
Commas have a lot of jobs, but they can’t connect two independent clauses without an “and,” “or” or “but.” This sentence is an example of a comma splice, you shouldn’t use commas this way.
Technically, a semicolon can link independent clauses. But they shouldn’t because — well, yuck. Semicolons to link clauses make sentences longer and less readable with nothing to gain except a chance for the writer to show off her knowledge of semicolons. Rude.
Dashes, colons and commas have a proper role to play between clauses. But if you’re using them to cram multiple ideas into a single sentence, ask yourself whether a period would make the passage more palatable to your reader.
The post Dashes, colons and commas should often be replaced by a period first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you're talking about doing without something, you can do without the letter "e." "Forgo" means to give up or do without. "Forego" is rare, meaning "to go before," and is usually seen only in the expression "a foregone conclusion."
The post 'Forgo' and 'Forego' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
OK, fellow wordy types: See if you can spot the grammar mistake I fixed when editing the following sentence.
“Our team wrote, published and promoted a series of 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly.”
Don’t see a problem? Don’t feel bad. This was a tough one. In this sentence, the verb “honors” should be “honor.”
If you have an advanced understanding of the word “each,” this edit may seem wrong to you. But hear me out, because this isn’t your typical “each.”
Grammar buffs know that “each” is usually singular, which means it gets a singular verb. “Each has its issues.” “Each knows the way.” “Each is better than the last.”
We can also see the singular nature of “each” in sentences like “to each his own.” If “each” were plural, we’d get “to each their own,” which is clearly wrong.
When “each” refers to a unit that contains multiple individuals — for example, a family — it may be more natural to treat “each” as plural: “A number of families will participate and each have their own priorities.” This is called “notional agreement” and it’s a legitimate reason to give “each” a plural verb, according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. Otherwise, if “each” could only be singular, we’d have to write: “A number of families will participate and each has its own priorities.” That could work, too. But you can see how the rule loosens up in these situations.
But that doesn’t explain why I changed “each honors” to “each honor” in our original sentence. To understand why the plural verb “honor” is correct, we have to dive deeper into the word “each.”
Those of us who were taught that “each” is singular didn’t get the full story. That rule deals with only one form of “each” — the pronoun form. But “each” isn’t exclusively a pronoun. It can also be an adjective or an adverb. In those cases, “each” is not the subject of the verb. Instead there’s some other noun or pronoun in the sentence that governs the number of the verb.
Here's an example from Merriam’s: “They each have too many possible meanings.” There’s no disputing the correctness of that verb conjugation. The alternative, “They each has,” is clearly ridiculous. The subject of the verb is “they,” which is plural, and not “each.”
Another example from Merriam’s: “If we and our Atlantic community partners each take our respective share.” The subject here is the plural “we and our partners.” So “its share” or “my share” wouldn’t work. We need the plural “our share.”
Merriam’s says these are examples of “each” as an adjective. That’s not how I see it. To me, these sentences show “each” in its adverb form, describing not the noun or pronoun but the action. In “We and our partners each take,” I see “each” as modifying the verb “take,” which would make it an adverb.
Back to our original sentence: “We wrote, published and promoted a series of 12 human interest stories that each honors a California veteran who has served our country proudly.”
If “each” had been the subject of the verb — “each honors a veteran” — then the singular verb “honors” would be correct. But that’s not how the sentence is structured. Instead, the true subject of the verb is “stories,” plural. The “each” isn’t a pronoun, so it’s not the subject of the verb. We’re not saying “each honors.” We’re saying “stories honor,” which is why I made the edit.
The post Don't assume 'each' is the subject of the verb. Sometimes it's an adjective. first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you need to hyphenate prefixes and suffixes perfectly, you have to consult a style guide. There are simply too many special circumstances and exceptions to commit them all to memory. For example, in AP style you hyphenate co-worker but not coworking. But if you just want to hyphenate prefixes and suffixes well, not perfectly, here's a guideline: Omit the hyphen unless it seems too weird that way. So ungentle is fine with no hyphen, but unAmerican looks weird, so hyphenate it: un-American. Here's more detail.
The post When to Hyphenate Prefixes and Suffixes first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here are two weird words: wrong and right. And when I say they’re weird, I mean their adverb forms.
Do it right. Don’t do it wrong.
In both those sentences, right and wrong are functioning adverbially. They’re modifying the verb do. But neither ends with ly.
That’s not weird in and of itself. There are lots of “flat adverbs” in English. For example, if you look up quick and slow in the dictionary, you’ll see they can be used as adverbs in place of quickly and slowly.
Think quick.
Drive slow.
But right and wrong are different because they’re actually more standard as adverbs than their ly counterparts: rightly and wrongly.
Do it rightly and Don't do it wrongly both sound weird compared to Do it right and Don't do it wrong.
Of course, glaringly obvious reality doesn't stop everyone. Some are too eager to leap to assumptions you're wrong, like the guy who e-scolded me years ago when I wrote the sentence: Be careful not to use it wrong.
Here was his reply:
Dear June,
It seems that you do not agree that only adverbs can modify verbs. ... One cannot use anything "wrong," only "wrongly." "Incorrectly" would be a more appropriate adverb to use. ... In your incorrect use of "wrong" there is no doubt that you are wrong. I therefor challenge you to admit your mistake in a follow-up article for all to read. I am not holding my breath."
More amazing: He was one of two people who wrote to spank me for that "error."
I did, in fact, print their remarks in a subsequent column (without too much snickering at the misspelled "therefor"), with the note:
Please open your dictionaries to the word "wrong." Please see that, following the first cluster of definitions under "adj.," adjective, comes the abbreviation "adv." Adverb. "Wrong" is an adverb. And you are both wrong.
The post Rightly right, wrongly wrong first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you know about the en dash? – It’s not the em dash, —, which most people just call a dash, and it’s one of the lesser-known punctuation marks. There’s a good reason for that: in a whole bunch of editing styles, the en dash doesn’t exist. Here's everything you need to know.
The post The En Dash first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A while back, a reader of my column wrote to ask about "won" vs. "beat." He wanted to know whether “John won his opponent" can be used to mean "John beat his opponent."
He added:
Also, isn't "won" also referencing ownership? Jon won the trophy. I hope you have the time to respond as I have a bet with my wife on the correct use.
After a few minutes of staring at my computer screen like a dog stares at a TV test pattern, here's what I replied:
Hi, Robert.
Are you saying you've heard folks say "John won his opponent" to mean he defeated his opponent? That's a new one on me.
As a transitive verb, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary definitions of win include to get, to gain, to attain, and to be successful in. In none of those usages does it seem that a person could logically follow (unless, of course, the person is the prize: Achilles won Briseis). The only times a human seems an appropriate object of that transitive verb is in definitions like to win someone over and to gain someone's support or sympathy — neither of which equates to defeat.
So, unless I'm missing something, the Ravens didn't win the Patriots.
As for Robert's other question: Does "win" mean "ownership"? Not necessarily. Some definitions include enough elbow room for that, others don't seem to. You don't really own an argument you won, do you?
Anyway, I wrote to Robert, "I hope that helps (and I hope your wife doesn't hate me now!)."
The post Reader mail: Can 'won' mean 'beat'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There are a lot of things I change in the course of my editing work that, in the real world, don't matter at all.
that and which
toward and towards
among and amongst
amid and amidst
underway and under way
cellphone and cell phone
healthcare and health care
child care and childcare
For about 99% of the population, these choices matter not at all. That is, you can say your character ran toward the explosion or he ran towards it. They mean the same thing. And almost no one will notice your choice anyway.
But editors will. And if you put the sentence "Joe ran towards the explosion" under the nose of an editor or copy editor, chances are it'll get changed to "toward."
The reason? Well, a lot of editing choices are about consistency, some are about efficiency, some are about voice and some, like that and which, are about nothing at all.
Style guides say that you can't use which for what are called restrictive clauses: That is the car which I'll be driving. But that's just a style rule, not a grammar rule. And most people wouldn't put which in that sentence anyway. Either that or nothing at all would be better.
For cases like health care and healthcare in which you have to choose between a one-word and a two-word form, it often doesn't matter. Dictionaries disagree on which is correct, and some allow both. So you can either check your preferred dictionary or just not worry about it.
As for amongst and amidst, however, I'd actually recommend cashing those in for their shorter cousins, among and amid, in most cases. The longer forms are so unpopular in professional publishing that they carry a subtle air of amateurishness in a lot of cases. Or maybe that's just my warped view. Bottom line: Unless you're the editor, you probably don't have to worry about any of these.
The post Things editors worry about that no one else does (or should) first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Is it correct to say drive slow in place of drive slowly? Short answer: yes. Here's the long answer.
The post 'Drive Slow' and Other Flat Adverbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Who are you going with" uses "who" as an object (the object of the preposition "with"), even though "whom" is technically the object form. But if you don't like the formality of "Whom are you going with," there's nothing wrong with using "who" instead.
The post 'Who' vs. 'Whom' at the Beginning of a Sentence first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Even if you know a lot about grammar, there’s always more to learn. And what better time than the start of a new year? Here are some language resolutions to consider for 2025.
- Challenge a long-standing language belief by checking a dictionary.
Unless you have a Ph.D. in linguistics, chances are you’ve fallen victim to some misperceptions. Think “since” can’t mean “because”? Think “between” is never for groups of three or more? Think a university can’t “graduate” a student? A quick check of a dictionary will dispel all these beliefs.
- Learn one new grammar term.
Up your grammar game with a bit of advanced jargon. I suggest “modal auxiliary verb.” You use them every day, anyway, so why not? The most common modal auxiliary verbs are “must,” “can,” “should,” “would,” “may” and “might.” They’re similar to the two regular auxiliary verbs — “be” and “have” — in that they team up with other verbs (think: “I have walked” and “I am walking”). But modal auxiliaries express possibility (may, might), necessity (must), permission (may), ability (can), etc. Congratulations. You just learned a new grammar term. Did you already know about modals? Try looking up predicate nominatives, copular verbs or subordinating conjunctions.
- Learn to conjugate one verb in a new language.
I’ve talked to a lot of people over the years who’ve tried and failed to pick up a foreign language. When I ask how they studied, the answer is often some app or language software marketed to adults with the promise of “easy, practical” learning. That is, handy phrases that go in one ear and out the other. In my humble opinion, there’s a better way: grammar. At least in the Latin-based languages I’ve studied, if you can’t say “I am,” “you are,” “he/she/it is,” “we are” and “they are,” you don’t have a foundation to build on. Start with just one verb and you’ll be well on your way to forming your first sentences.
- Learn an irregular past form.
Not sure if it’s right to say, “I have swam” or “I have swum”? Do “drank” and “drunk” or “hanged” and “hung” or “woke,” “awoke” and “awakened” trip you up? Resolve to learn just one. Check the main form of the word — “swim,” “drink,” “hang,” “wake” — in a dictionary, then look at the bolded forms that immediately follow. Under “drink,” for example, you’ll see “drank,” which you know is the simple past tense because those are always listed first, after which you’ll see the past participles indicated with “drunk or drank,” meaning both are acceptable with the auxiliary “have”: I have drank and I have drunk. If that’s not advanced enough for you, memorize the past forms of both “lie” and “lay.” For the most proper use of “lie,” the simple past is “lay” (yesterday I lay), and the past participle is “lain” (in the past I have lain). For “lay,” both past forms are the same (yesterday I laid, in the past I have laid).
- Use “me” in a compound object.
You’d never say, “Thanks for visiting I” or “Send the memo to I,” so why do you say, “Thanks for visiting Beth and I” and “Send the memo to Tom and I”? Somewhere along the line, too many of us got it into our heads that “me” is wrong anytime another person is involved. But that’s not true. The object of a verb (like “visit”) or a preposition (like “to”) doesn’t change form just because it’s more than one person: Try dropping the other person from your sentence to see whether “I” or “me” works alone. Then add the other person back in. Between you and me (not I), it’s not exactly wrong to use “I” in an object position. But it’s a shame if you do so because you were trying (and failing) to use proper English.
The post 5 language resolutions for the new year first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you want to write about a "sneak peek," be very careful not to let "sneak peak" sneak onto the page.
The post When 'Sneak Peak' Sneaks In first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s another thing I can’t help but wince at, even though I know grammar wincing is pointless:
There’s a lot of people outside.
I don’t know how I got so invested in the idea that that should be There are a lot of people outside. But I, unwisely, let it rub me the wrong way every time I hear “there’s” before a plural.
Here’s the idea:
There’s is a contraction of “there is.” Is is singular. It goes with a singular subject, the dog is, versus are which is for a plural subject, the dogs are.
Sentences like There is a dog outside or There are dogs outside are special. Notice that the grammatical subject of both is there. So theoretically the verb shouldn’t change. But in fact, though in There is a dog outside, there is functioning as a pronoun, the real intended subject of the verb isn’t there. It’s dog. This sentence really means “A dog is outside.”
Grammarians label this “the existential there.” The word there is the grammatical subject and dog is something called a notional subject. It’s sort of the intended subject even though it’s been upstaged from the subject position by the pronoun there.
In these sentences, the verb is supposed to agree with the notional subject. So There are dogs and There is a dog are both correct because the verbs match the notional subject.
But over the years, there’s has become a handy shorthand for not just there is but also there are, especially when the next word to follow is some modifier like a lot, which has a singular flavor.
That's why There’s a lot of dogs outside sounds much better than There’s dogs outside.
Either way, though, you can get away it: “Like other grammatical subjects, [there] often determines the number concord, taking a singular verb even though the notional subject is plural” says the Oxford English Grammar. “This usage is common in informal speech.”
In other words, I should loosen up a bit on this one.
The post 'There's' before a plural first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Earlier this year, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary posted on Instagram, “It is permissible in English for a preposition to be what you end a sentence with” (see what they did there?). The result: uproar, like this reply from a user going by the name of AJWarren74: “Absolutely do NOT end a sentence with a preposition!! It’s like fingernails on a blackboard!! UGH.”
Aah, that takes me back. Seems like just yesterday people were telling me I was wrong about sentence-ending prepositions. Of course, correcting the publishers of one of the country’s leading dictionaries — professional lexicographers with decades of study and hard-earned expertise under their belts — is another matter entirely. It’s like telling your doctor that your liver is in your ear.
I learned two things from Merriam’s post and the ensuing uproar: 1. The myth about sentence-ending prepositions is alive and festering, and 2. Merriam’s could use some backup.
So what’s this grammar myth all about? The idea is that prepositions like “with,” “about,” “to,” “at,” “in” and “on” take objects — nouns or pronouns that complete the thought. You spoke with Linda. You think about pizza. You walked to the store. You yelled at him. You’re grounded in reality. Your keys are on the table.
If you move any of those objects to an earlier position in the sentence and just leave the preposition parked at the end, the result could be a bad sentence. Linda is the person you spoke with. Pizza is what you think about. The store is where you walked to. He is who you yelled at. Reality is what you’re grounded in. The table is the thing your keys are on.
If you tell someone that a preposition at the end makes for a bad sentence, you’ll be right in a lot of cases, as the examples above prove. But not always. And if you tell people that this is a grammar rule they must follow, you’re not just giving them bad information — you’re telling them not to trust the instincts that lead English speakers to use prepositions well every day.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. You don’t even have to take the word of Merriam’s lexicographers. Every major grammar authority agrees, including the conservative ones.
“Not only is the preposition acceptable at the end, sometimes it is more effective in that spot than anywhere else,” advises Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style.” Strunk and White argue persuasively that “A claw hammer, not an ax, was the tool he murdered her with” is superior to “A claw hammer, not an ax, was the tool with which he murdered her.” It sounds more natural and, as the authors argue, it’s more effective “because it sounds more violent.”
Or consider the words of one of the most conservative language authorities I know, Fowler’s Modern English Usage: “In most circumstances, especially in formal writing, it is desirable to avoid placing a preposition at the end of a clause or sentence,” the guide writes. “But there are many circumstances in which a preposition may or even must be placed late … and others where the degree of formality required governs the placing.”
Finally, consider this snarky example long misattributed to Winston Churchill (which researchers have since learned probably wasn’t Churchill at all but some unknown writer) about a sentence clumsily rewritten to move a preposition from the end: “This is the type of English up with which I will not put!”
The post The never-ending myth about sentence-ending prepositions first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Most nouns form their plural by adding s or, in some cases, es. But lots of words, especially words adapted from foreign languages, don't follow that pattern. Some of them give you a choice. For example, indexes and indices are both correct in English. But how do you know where to find answers? Here's what you need to know..
The post Indexes or Indices? Plurals of Irregular Nouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Compare these two sentences: Joe saw the CEO. Joe is the CEO.
In the first one, you have the verb “saw” with its direct object, the CEO. But second one doesn’t work the same way. In the second one, the verb “is” is not really an action but a reference back on the subject. The CEO referred to in the second half of the sentence is one and the same with Joe.
Verbs that are all about being are in a category all their own. They’re called copular verbs or linking verbs. And the word that follows is called the complement. Here's the full story.
The post Copular Verbs and Their Complements first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Every time I see the preposition “towards” in an article I’m editing, I delete the s. I’ve been doing this as long as I can recall, decades, and it’s been going on so long I don’t even remember why. I just know that, for whatever reason, “towards” simply won’t do.
This habit stands out among my other brain-on-autopilot edits because I never recheck this one. I never do a quick search of my AP Stylebook or my dictionary. I just delete the s.
I think about it so little that, in the 20-odd years I’ve been writing about grammar, it’s never crossed my mind to make “toward” and its cousins including “backward,” “forward” and “afterward” subjects of a column.
It’s time. And I’m pleased to report that the Associated Press Stylebook — that is, the rulebook I follow for most of my editing work — backs me up. It says, quite simply, in its entry for “toward”: “Not towards.”
That’s the whole entry. Whew. My laziness hasn’t come back to haunt me the way it did when I kept spelling out “percent” years after AP style switched to using “%.”
Of course, that rule really only applies in edited text. So what about everyday writing? Is “towards” allowed there? In my reading of Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, the answer is yes.
Merriam’s dictionary doesn’t have an entry for “towards,” but it lists it under its entry for “toward” as a “variant.” This tells us two things: 1. It’s OK to use “towards,” and 2. Merriam’s dictionary prefers “toward."
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, which is a usage guide and not a dictionary, goes deeper: “Many commentators have observed that ‘toward’ is the more common choice in American English, while the preference in British English is ‘towards.’ Our evidence confirms that such is indeed the case. Both words are commonly used in the U.S., but ‘toward’ is undoubtedly prevalent.”
The word dates back in Old English to sometime before the year 899, when it was written “toweardes.” According to Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, “toweardes” came from combining “to” with “weard,” which was a noun meaning direction, plus “es,” which indicated possession. Sometime before the year 1300, Old English seemed to drop the s, using just “toweard.” And within a century or two, “toward” and “towards” had appeared.
Back in the 1800s, “towards” was dominant in all the printed sources reflected in Google’s Ngram Viewer, which includes lots of American publications. But shortly after the turn of the 20th century, “toward” overtook “towards,” and has dominated ever since, despite a slight reversal of that trend that started just about seven years ago.
As American English speakers became less inclined to add the s, British speakers kept it. Today, both spellings are correct in the U.S., though “toward” is the best choice if you want to emulate professionally edited writing.
As for “afterward” and “afterwards,” it’s the same story: American publishing usually drops the s, while British sources may keep it, according to Merriam’s usage guide. Merriam’s dictionary, meanwhile, doesn’t have an entry for “afterwards” and instead reroutes those searches to its entry for “afterward,” where it says the s-spelling is a variant.
“Backward” seems least controversial. Merriam’s usage guide doesn’t consider the issue worth mentioning at all, while the dictionary lists the s-spelling only as a variant of the more standard “backward.”
Here’s where things get weird: “forwards,” which I don’t recall ever hearing outside the expression “backwards and forwards,” does have its own entry in Merriam’s dictionary, suggesting it has more legitimacy than all those other s-forms we talked about above. But because its definition refers readers to the entry for “forward,” without the s, it’s clear that, just like “toward,” “afterward” and “backward,” “forward” is more proper without the s.
The post Towards, backwards, forwards? Why that s may not be a good idea first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It's holiday greeting card season. And you know what that means: Humiliating grammar and punctuation errors. So here's how to avoid common mistakes.
Happy holidays from the Smiths!
Merry Christmas from the Rossis!
Happy New Year from the Thibodeauxes!
Happy Hannukah from the Williamses!
Happy holidays from the Gomezes!
We’re looking forward to visiting the Nashes.
Notice how there's no apostrophe in any of those plurals? One Smith, two Smiths. It doesn't matter if the last name ends with S, Z, X, Ch or Sh. No apostrophe is used to form the plural of a name.
Only if you were showing possession would an apostrophe apply. We're going to the Smiths' house (plural possessive). We're going to Mr. Smith's house (singular possessive). We're going to the Gomezes' house (plural possessive). We're going to Mr. Gomez's house (singular possessive).
If the opening line of your card has both a name and a greeting, separate those elements with a comma and end the sentence with a period, exclamation point, or colon.
Hi, Joe. Happy holidays, Beth! Hey, Mom.
This is preferable to the more common
Hey Joe,
with comma at the end because it conforms with publishing style rules that say to set off a “direct address” like a name with a comma.
However, if you’re opening with just a name and some other word modifying it, like Dear Joe, My beloved Beth, or Dearest Mom, don’t put a comma in those. Also, a greeting like this you can end with a comma or a colon, but note that a period or exclamation point wouldn’t make as much sense because — unlike Hey, Joe — Dear Joe is not a complete sentence.
Dear Joe,
Dear Joe:
Christmas and New Year’s are proper nouns and are thus both capitalized. Happy and merry are not (though of course you'd capitalize them at the beginning of a sentence). Nor is holiday. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day are also proper names that should be capitalized. But dictionaries disagree on the singular new year. Webster’s New World College Dictionary lowercases new year. But Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary says to capitalize New Year. Except in the most generic of contexts, I like the capitalized New Year better.
So you could write:
Wishing you and merry Christmas and a happy New Year! or … and a happy new year!
Both are fine.
The spelling of Hanukkah can be tricky because this word is transliterated from a different alphabet, and people can disagree on which English letter best represents any particular foreign sound. But Hanukkah is the preferred spelling of Webster’s New World and Merriam-Webster’s and, yes, it's capitalized.
Greeting cards have a way of inviting in some of the most incriminating spelling and grammar errors (maybe we’re so worried about coming up with something to say to Grandma that we forget to police ourselves), so watch out for these common typos.
Never use of in place of have or its abbreviated form 've in the terms could’ve, would’ve, should’ve, might've, or their spelled-out forms could have, would have, should have, and might have.
Remember the difference between let’s and lets: Let’s get together in the New Year means let us get together. Whereas the one without the apostrophe is the verb to let conjugated in the third-person singular: Uncle Lou really lets his hair down during the holidays.
Remember to watch their, they’re, and there, as well as who’s and whose.
Their shows possession – We will go to their house for Christmas dinner. They’re means they are. And there is a place.
Whose shows possession – Whose turn is it to cook? Who’s is always a contraction of who is or who has: Who’s going to cook this year?
When in doubt, find out. Ask a friend, check a dictionary, or run a quick Google search.
And happy holidays!
The post How to avoid embarrassing errors on holiday greetings first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
English has two kinds of objects: direct and indirect. In "I sent Joe a letter," Joe is the indirect object because the letter is receiving the action of the verb — it's the thing being sent — and Joe is the person it's being sent to. Here's a closer look at indirect objects.
The post Indirect Objects first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Adjectives are controversial. Rightly so. About four times out of five, you can improve a sentence by cutting one out:
Joe is dating a beautiful supermodel.
Joe is dating a supermodel.
Clearly, the noun “supermodel” does not need to be propped up by an adjective. It’s powerful enough on its own.
Adjectives exist for a reason. You can’t just take the adjective out of the sentence: “She is beautiful," without its adjective, loses its meaning. But before a noun, an adjective can come off like a weak attempt to convince your reader of something he should be able to see for himself.
So adjectives have enough problems of their own. Yet marketers, it seems, are determined to bludgeon them into complete meaninglessness. They do this by using adjectives as mere noise. In marketers’ hands, adjectives are born to be ignored.
Take, for example, this Kashi brand cereal flavor: Island Vanilla.
Really, Kashi? Is that supposed to mean anything other than “vanilla plus some extra syllables to make it sound like something more than plain-old vanilla”?
Here’s another Kashi flavor I like: Harvest Wheat. Again, what does that adjective tell me about what I can expect when I open the box? Nothing. “Harvest wheat” is just wheat.
Kashi isn’t alone in this practice, not by a long shot.
Ragu has a flavor called Garden Vegetable, as opposed to what? Factory Vegetable?
Luden’s makes Wild Cherry cough drops, which we can only presume are superior to those awful farmed cherries.
And Kettle Chips come in this flavor: Backyard Barbeque. (You can almost taste the chain-link fence and kiddie pool.)
And what might a blind taste test tell us about the difference between chocolate and Dutch chocolate, between vanilla and French vanilla? About ranch and cool ranch?
Examples of this kind of hot-air blowing are too numerous to count. And while it’s standard marketing procedure, I think we should all be wee bit insulted by it. When marketers slap meaningless words onto product names in this fashion, it’s worse than telling people “Don’t think.” It’s telling people: “We know you don’t think and we’re so confident about it that we’re going to rub your noses in it.”
Okay, maybe that’s a little hypersensitive. But it’s still an insult to consumers and an act of violence against simple, clear nouns.
The post Adjectives as noise first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
English has two kinds of objects: direct and indirect. In "I sent Joe a letter," the letter is the direct object — the thing receiving the action — unlike Joe, which is an indirect object in this example. This week's podcast looks at direct objects.
The post Direct Objects first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
She graduated from Harvard in 2005.
She graduated Harvard in 2005.
Harvard graduated her in 2005.
Which of these is right? To understand the answer, you need two tools at the ready: 1. an understanding of transitive vs. intransitive verbs, and 2. a dictionary.
Here's how to find answers for yourself about verbs like "graduate." But for those who'd prefer a quick answer, here it is: the dictionary allows all three.
The post Graduate College or Graduate From College? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you wrack your brain or rack it?
Are you racked with guilt or wracked?
Are these questions nerve-wracking or nerve-racking?
Faced with these questions, I forget what I once learned. Rather than get it wrong or (heaven forbid) take the time to look it up, I just avoid these phrases altogether.
Turns out, that’s not a bad strategy. Though their origins point to different meanings, “wrack” and “rack” are often interchangeable today. But folks who choose their words carefully might want to keep the original meanings in mind.
“Rack” originates from a noun referring to a Medieval torture device, with the verb evolving to mean torture, strain or wreck. “Wrack” was born as a nautical term meaning, essentially, “wreck.”
“This etymology explains why the word is ‘nerve-racking’ rather than ‘nerve-wracking,’” insists Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide “The Careful Writer.” “Something that is nerve-racking does not wreck the nerves, it merely strains or tortures them.”
“Wrack,” by this reasoning, isn’t very useful — limited mainly to talk of ships and things that can be similarly wrecked: like a “storm-wracked vessel” or, from that, “wrack and ruin.”
Beware any usage guide that, like Bernstein, speaks in absolutes. Sometimes, their prohibitions are correct. But more often, the writer is a little drunk with power, demanding that good advice be treated as a hard rule.
In the real world, “rack” and “wrack” aren’t so simple. For more than a century, leading language experts have been doling out contradictory advice. Some, like Bernstein, say to keep these words separate and true to their origins.
Others say “wrack” is dead and to just use “rack” no matter your meaning. Though “wrack” is most certainly not dead (in fact, it has gotten a little more popular in the last 30 to 40 years), it wouldn’t be so bad to follow this advice. After all, how often do you talk about ships destroyed by storms?
Still other authorities, notably the official style guide of the New York Times, say to avoid both words and instead just find a more modern synonym. So what'a a conscientious writer to do? Some thoughts in my recent column.
The post 'Wrack' and 'rack' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One dictionary definition of "apropos" is "fitting to the occasion," which means roughly the same thing that "appropriate" means.
The post Can 'Apropos' Mean 'Appropriate'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In French, to show that someone possesses something, you use their word for “of,” which is “de”: La plume de ma tante. Spanish works the same way: La venganza de Moctezuma. Italian, too: Buca di Beppo. I don’t know as much about German, but the internet tells me that in many cases you form the possessive by just adding an S at the end of the noun: Angelas Mercedes.
And then there’s English.
A simple “of”? Sure, we can use it in rare constructions: A friend of Bill. But usually we don’t.
A simple S? No can do. That’s our system for forming plurals. Marias means more than one Maria. Not that Maria owns something.
An apostrophe plus S? Sure, sometimes, but only when you’re talking about a singular: the cat’s tail. When your noun is plural, you usually add an apostrophe with no S: the cats’ tails. But that’s only when the plural is made plural with an S. When it’s plural and doesn’t end with S, you add S plus an apostrophe just as you would for a singular: children’s books.
From the outside looking in, this can seem like an odd system. Illogical. Some might even say idiotic.
That’s exactly what they’re saying in Germany, where the “idiot’s apostrophe,” as some call it, just got official approval.
Amid a long-term trend of businesses using these English possessive apostrophes on signs — like Rosi’s Bar instead of the correct Rosis Bar — the Council for German Orthography, which regulates how the German language is taught in schools and used in government, gave its blessing to the Deppenapostroph, or “idiot’s apostrophe.” It’s now in the council’s official style guide, meaning it’s no longer wrong in German.
Some German speakers are pretty unhappy about it, saying that their language is caving in to the influence of English. One German who was quoted in the media said this apostrophe “made his hair stand on end.” But some German language experts are more forgiving, pointing out that German already allowed these apostrophes to prevent confusion, for example to keep straight possessive “Andrea’s” and the common men’s name “Andreas.”
I, too, have some thoughts. You can read about them here in my recent column.
The post The 'idiot's apostrophe' makes headlines in Germany first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some editing styles say "loan" is a noun and that, if you want a verb, you must use "lend." Good news: These words aren't that restrictive.
The post 'Loan' vs. 'Lend' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If your gut tells you "historic" means something with lasting significance, like a historic event, and that "historical" means something to do with history, like a historical record, listen to your gut. That's a good way to look at the difference between these two words.
The post Historic vs. Historical first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
People with grammar questions often feel stupid for not already knowing the answer, but the people who answer them are often the ones who should have stayed mum.
Google searches for “dumb grammar question” and “stupid grammar question” prove the point. Here’s one of the first hits, a 2017 post in a writers’ community message board. “DUMB grammar question!” someone named Sherry began. “After being a writer for almost 40 years, I am aware this is a really silly question. I should know better. BUT … which is correct? ‘My family HAS seen me through’ … or ‘My family HAVE seen me through.’”
Raise your hand if you were taught in school that certain collective nouns can take either a singular or plural verb, depending on your meaning. Yeah, me neither. But that’s the case here. “Family” is usually singular, taking a singular verb like “has.” But sometimes it’s meant as a collective of individuals acting independently of each other: “Half my family are voting for candidate 1 and the other half are voting for candidate 2.” Another example: My family comes to the reunion every year, but my family come from all over the U.S.
In Sherry’s question, though, the singular interpretation, while not mandatory, is better: My family has seen me through. But that’s not the answer she got.
One person said Sherry’s real problem was passive voice and that she should make it active voice by changing “My family has seen me through” to “My family saw me through.”
Um, no. Both those sentences are in active voice. They’re just different verb tenses. “Has seen” is called the present perfect tense. “Saw” is the simple past tense.
Passive would be “I have been seen through by my family,” with the object of the action made into the subject of the sentence. But in both “My family saw” and “My family has seen,” the doer of the action, the family, is the subject.
Other posters who tried to answer Sherry’s question didn’t do much better. Read about their misguided guidance in my recent column.
The post There are no stupid grammar questions first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I never used to believe in ghosts. The idea of hauntings sounded ridiculous to me. Then I started writing about grammar. Now I know better.
For more than a decade now, I’ve been hearing bone-chilling tales of undead teachers haunting former students from the great beyond with bad information: You can’t end a sentence with a preposition. You can't use healthy to mean healthful. You can't start a sentence with but.
The stubborn persistence of these bad teachings never ceases to amaze me. But from time to time these chilling tales go beyond the pale, wowing me with just how bad bad information can be.
Case in point, an e-mail I got recently:
Dear June. Today, in your column from the Pasadena Sun section of the L.A. Times, you used "the writer got bogged down." I will never forget several teachers, including one particularly memorable Mrs. Hamilton, telling me that using "got" in any sentence anytime was simply being lazy, that it was bad English, uncouth, uneducated, etc. You get the point.
Yup, there was once a teacher who took it upon herself to single-handedly condemn a well established and highly useful word. I particularly like that “uneducated” part -- and the irony of how it came from someone who needed only to open a dictionary to see that she was misinforming her own students. Of course, I didn’t say so to the poor guy in so many words. Instead, here’s what I wrote:
The most common objection to got is that have and got are redundant in phrases like "I have got quite a few friends." Yes, it's inefficient, but it's accepted as an idiom. Every major language authority I know of agrees it's a valid option.
We editors usually trim the gots out. Especially in news writing, which prizes efficiency, "He has got $20'" is a poor alternative to "He has $20." But that's an aesthetic. Not a grammar rule.
From what you're saying, your teacher was condemning the word got in all its uses. And, yes, that's extreme to the point of being illogical. Got is the past tense of get, which can be both a regular verb and an auxiliary verb: "They got married."
It sounds as though Mrs. Hamilton would have everyone say, "They were married." But if so, that's just a personal preference she was trying to pass off as a rule. There isn't a dictionary under the sun that would back her up.
"I hear a lot of stories about teachers who used to lay down laws that weren't laws. (It's wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. It's wrong to split an infinitive. It's wrong to begin a sentence with and.) These kinds of unfounded prohibitions were very fashionable in educational circles for a while. But they never were rules. It's unfortunate kids got so much bad information.
Hope that helps! - June
The post The teacher who condemned 'got' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I know you were there. I know that you were there. Both of these are correct and mean the same thing. When you leave "that" out, it's called the zero relative pronoun.
The post Sometimes 'That' Is Optional first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people will tell you these two phrases can never be used interchangeably. That's not quite the case.
The post 'Different From' vs. 'Different Than' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you know about quasi possessives? You probably should. Unlike so many other things in language you can figure out on your own, quasi possessives are one of those things you just have to know. And since you’re visiting a grammar site, chances are you’re one of the people who’d like to know it. So here goes.
You know how people talk about a hard day’s work or two weeks’ pay or getting your dollar’s worth? Well, those are all considered quasi possessives. They get treated as possessives even though they don’t convey the same degree of “ownership,” if you will, as do regular possessives.
AP discusses these in its on using apostrophes and says that phrases as a day’s pay, two weeks’ vacation, three days’ work and your money’s worth all get the possessive treatment.
The Chicago Manual of Style calls this the “possessive with genitive,” which I don’t love because “genitive” roughly translates to “possessive,” making the whole term seem a bit nonsensical. However, this use of the word “genitive” is a nod to the fact that there are two ways to form possessives in English. Either with an apostrophe plus S (or, in the case most plurals, just an apostrophe): Joe’s house, the Smiths’ daughter. The other way, and this is more consistent with English’s Latin roots, is to use of: the house of Joe, the daughter of the Smiths.
As Chicago describes it, forms like a week's pay are a carry-over from the latter: “Possessive with genitive. Analogous to possessives, and formed like them, are certain expressions based on the old genitive case. The genitive here implies ‘of’: in three days’ time, an hour’s delay, six months’ leave.”
If it helps to think of these as “three days of time” or “an hour of delay,” do. But I find it easier just to remember that these expressions are possessive-like. Or, as both guides recommend, you can also tweak the sentence so you have a hyphenated compound like “a six-month leave” or “a two-week vacation.”
The post Quasi possessives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Legal writing is famously inscrutable and inaccessible — especially fond of long parenthetical ideas shoved in the middle of sentences. And according to a recent study, their reader-unfriendly prose is contagious.
“Legal documents are largely incomprehensible to lawyers and laypeople alike,” write the authors of a study published this summer. In other words, nobody — not even lawyers themselves — can easily slog through their stuff. Yet they keep cranking out sentences like this gem I found online: “I am herewith returning the stipulation to dismiss in the above entitled matter; the same being duly executed by me.”
In my books and columns, I sometimes take badly written passages and show how they could have been better. No can do this time. You can’t streamline a passage if you don’t know what it says. Bravo, returner of the stipulation to dismiss. Bravo.
If non-lawyers can’t decipher stuff like this and even lawyers themselves find it hard to understand, why do they write like this?
To find out, researchers asked 200 study participants to write laws prohibiting crimes like drunk driving and burglary. Then they asked them to write stories about those crimes.
The laws they wrote contained unnecessarily long, labyrinthine sentences with lots of parenthetical explanations crammed in. The stories, however, were written simply, without the parenthetical information stuffing. The kicker: None of the participants were lawyers. They were laypeople who somehow got it in their heads that bloated, fussy sentences make you sound more authoritative.
Researchers explain this with the “magic spell hypothesis” legal writing, which you can read about in my recent column.
The post Why is legal writing so convoluted? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question," as in, "These fingerprints beg the question: Was there more than one burglar"? Technically, yes. But some people will look down on you for it.
The post Beg the Question first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Chaise longues — those reclining full-length chairs that beckon you to the beach — are making me nostalgic. Not for days when I had more free time and closer proximity to the ocean, but for days when all the editing rules I learned were still relevant. Editing rules like: It’s chaise longue, not chaise lounge.
The nostalgia hit me recently when I read this sentence about digital nomads in the New York Times Magazine: “Then, from a chaise longue on the beach, they can register a business with the tap of a button.”
Outside the New York Times, “longue” sightings are rare these days. More and more, I see “chaise lounge” instead. That’s not necessarily a problem. But when you’re a longtime copy editor who once believed that editing rules were universal and people who knew them were uniquely valuable, it’s hard to let go.
Apparently, some editing bigwig at the New York Times feels the same way. “Chaise longue” appears in their pages about three or four times a month. The only recent instances of “chaise lounge” appear in the proper name of some product that spells it that way.
This can get a little awkward, like in the Times’ 2019 article “Shopping for a Chaise Longue” that lists five chaise longues named “chaise lounge,” sometimes with both spellings appearing in the same sentence. It’s the kind of tug-of-war between old and new that we editors see a lot. “Healthy” and “healthful” are another example. Read about both in my recent column.
The post Chaise longue and chaise lounge first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A lot of people will tell you that you can have an impact on something — that is, use impact as a noun — but that you can't impact something because it's not a verb. Don't listen to them. It's both.
The post Can 'Impact' Be a Verb? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“I’ll hire whomever does best in the interview.”
“I’ll hire whoever does best in the interview.”
People who aren’t trying to use good grammar, often choose “whoever” in a sentence like this. People who are being careful often choose “whomever.” Ironically, the folks who weren’t trying get this right more often than people who are trying. The correct choice here is “whoever.”
Grammar buffs get this wrong because they have only half the picture. They know that “whom” and “whomever” are object pronouns, but they don’t understand that whole clauses can be objects, too.
Object pronouns are words we use every day and include “me,” “him,” “us” and “them.” They’re often objects of verbs, as in “show me,” “invite him,” “tell us” and “ignore them.” Or they’re objects of prepositions like “at,” “to” and “with”: “yell at me,” “send to him,” “relate to us,” “go with them.”
They’re the mirror image of subject pronouns “I,” “he,” “we,” “they,” etc., which we use as subjects: “I yell,” “he sends” and so on.
“Whom” is an object pronoun, “You sent it to whom?” and “who” is a subject pronoun, “Who sent this?” Similarly, “whomever” is an object pronoun and “whoever” is a subject pronoun. But because these two often sit between clauses, there’s a twist that some people don’t realize.
Compare: “Police will arrest whoever breaks the law” and “Police will arrest whomever they catch breaking the law.”
In both cases, the pronoun comes right after the verb “arrest.” So if you apply a simple understanding of pronouns, you would guess you need “whomever” there because it’s an object. But in that second sentence, the word after “arrest” is not the object. The whole clause that follows “arrest” is the object, and that clause needs its own subject: whoever.
For a super-simple example, look at the sentence: I saw who did it. The object of the verb “saw” is the whole clause “who did it.” If the pronoun were the object, you’d have to say, “I saw whom did it.”
Even professional writers, editors and broadcasters get this wrong. A lot.
Look at this sentence from the Aug. 22 New York Times sports section: “He talks to whomever wants to hear about the story of the hat.”
Either the editor didn’t understand object pronouns or the writer made a mistake and the editor didn’t catch it. He or she clearly thought that the preposition “to” needed to be followed by an object pronoun. But in fact, the object of the preposition “to” is the whole clause “whoever wants to hear about the story of the hat.” That’s because “wants” needs a subject and only “whoever” can fill that role.
Anytime you see a “whomever” sandwiched between two clauses, ask yourself if the second verb has a subject. In “Police will arrest whomever they catch breaking the law,” the subject of the verb “catch” is “they.” Clearly, we don’t need to swap “whomever” to “whoever” to do the catching in the verb. But in “Police will arrest whoever breaks the law,” there’s no other word that could be the subject of “breaks,” so “whoever” must be it. Here's the full story in my recent column.
The post 'Whomever' is harder for people who good at grammar first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In the 1988 film Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman's character said his brother, played by Tom Cruise, "yelled and pulled and hurt my neck," suggesting Cruise's character not only pulled his neck and hurt his neck but also yelled his neck. Here's what you need to know about faulty parallels like this one.
The post Faulty Parallels first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A child sitting at the dinner table pushes aside a plate of half-eaten food and announces, “I’m done.” A parent replies, “No, a roast is done. You’re finished.” Is the parent right? Actually, no. Here's the full story.
The post 'Done' and 'Finished' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A while back, an AP Stylebook online subscriber wrote: “Please, no recasts. I cannot find a definitive answer anywhere on the planet. Keep in mind these represent directly quoted utterances. Do we keep or toss the comma after France’s, New York’s and 2001’s? ‘Alice said, “Paris, France’s, sights are breathtaking!”’ ‘Gov. Cuomo said, “Albany, New York’s, crime rate has risen exponentially.”’ ‘Joe said, “September 11, 2001’s, tragic events will be indelibly etched in the minds of everyone.”’”
These are interesting questions because they create a conflict between comma rules and good taste. Comma rules say that when you refer to a city followed by its state, then continue the sentence, the state is followed by a comma. For instance: Albany, New York, is lovely this time of year.
The same rule applies to countries after cities: Paris, France, is home to the Eiffel Tower.
And the same rule applies to years after dates: September 11, 2001, was a tragic day.
But sometimes, especially in casual speech, people can make New York, France or 2001 possessive. New York’s weather is nice this time of year. France’s president will visit. 2001’s events affected us all.
This is almost never a problem, but when the rules call for a comma in the same spot, things get unsightly and a little weird. Notice how, in “Paris, France’s, sights are breathtaking,” it sounds more like you’re talking about France’s sights than Paris’. A similar effect is true for the other two sentences.
Rulebooks like the Associate Press Stylebook don’t tell you what to do in these situations. So subscribers sometimes just pose the question to AP’s editors on the stylebook’s website. Usually, this works out great. But not this time.
“Really, truly, recasting is the thing to do,” replied an editor.
I don't love this answer. I explain why in my recent column.
The post When a comma and a possessive s collide first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people have strong feelings on whether the detective "lit" a cigarette or "lighted" it and whether a room was dimly "lit" or "lighted." Turns out, they're both fine and about equally good.
The post A Dimly Lit Room or a Dimly Lighted Room? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I suspect that every writer I edit held a meeting to decide they would all misuse “include” at the same time. It’s the only possible explanation for the sudden rash of sentences like “The sandwich ingredients include bread, peanut butter and jelly.”
The problem is as much about logic as it is about grammar. In my culinarily simplistic world, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches have exactly three ingredients. Nobody’s getting creative with pesto aioli or salted caramel. Yet “include” seems to suggest that an incomplete list will follow — merely a few examples of the bounty of flavors and textures you’ll find in a PB&J.
According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, “include” means “to take in or comprise as a part of a whole or group.” Personally, I find that a little confusing. But “part of” is clearly central to the meaning. Bread, peanut butter and jelly aren’t “part of” the ingredient list for a sandwich. They’re the whole list. So “include” doesn’t make sense according to this definition.
When “include” isn’t introducing a list, there’s little confusion: “Maria arrived just in time for us to include her in the meeting.” Obviously, people other than Maria were involved. She couldn’t be included in a meeting in which she was the only attendee.
A lot of language commentators feel strongly that “include” refers to just a subset of a whole, not every part of it. “‘Include,’ which has traditionally introduced a nonexhaustive list, is now coming to be widely misused for ‘consists of,’” says Garner’s Modern American Usage.
But, like all things in language, “include” gets controversial. “There are quite a few commentators,” says Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, “who maintain that ‘include’ should not be used when a complete list of items follows the verb.” This reference book, which is not the same as Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, disagrees. Those commentators, it says, “have somehow reasoned themselves into the notion that with ‘include,’ all the components must not be mentioned, which has never been the case.” Where do I stand on all this? I sum it up in my recent column.
The post Can 'include' introduce all the parts? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“The hospital provides a supportive work environment for both doctors and nurses.”
That “both” is, technically, just fine. But when “both” is immediately followed by a plural noun, it could momentarily be construed to be modifying that noun only. Someone looking at the phrase “both doctors and nurses” might first read it as “both doctors” and wonder which two doctors you’re talking about.
Here's more on why editors often chop out "both."
The post Sometimes, 'Both' Must Go first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A while back, a character in a book I was reading got sick. As told in the story, “He wretched” long after his stomach was empty.
Oops. What the writer should have written — or, more precisely, what the copy editor should have caught — was that wretched should have been retched.
The disheartening thing about this error is that it appeared almost 300 pages into an otherwise very well copy edited book.
Whoever was copy editing this book knew what they were doing. Yet even a team of professional editors with great skills aren’t immune to letting typos slip by. That’s troubling because it means that, no matter how hard you try to make a written work perfect, there are no guarantees.
Plus, some typos are particularly easy to make. Wretch and retch are among them.
According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, a wretch is a person. Specifically:
1 : a miserable person : one who is profoundly unhappy or in great misfortune
2 : a base, despicable, or vile person
It’s one of those words you hear a lot in old-timey dialogue, especially British. For example, in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, a character refers to juries as “vulgar grovelling wretches.” And of course, the term “poor wretch” comes up in pretty much every piece of fiction with a Dickensian tone.
From wretch, comes the adjective wretched. But it’s not pronounced like the verb retched. Wretched has two syllables, RETCH-id. And it means:
1. deeply afflicted, dejected, or distressed in body or mind
2. extremely or deplorably bad or distressing
3. being or appearing mean, miserable, or contemptible
The verb retch is simpler. It means only 1. to vomit, 2. to make an effort to vomit.
There’s no trick to keeping them straight, other than just being on your guard. Which, somewhere around page 300 in a 900-page novel, is no small feat.
The post Wretched retching first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A while back, the ask-the-editor section of the Associated Press online stylebook got this question: “Please, no recasts. I cannot find a definitive answer anywhere on the planet. Keep in mind these represent directly quoted utterances. Do we keep or toss the comma after France’s, New York’s and 2001’s? ‘Alice said, “Paris, France’s, sights are breathtaking!”’ ‘Gov. Cuomo said, “Albany, New York’s, crime rate has risen exponentially.”’ ‘Joe said, “September 11, 2001’s, tragic events will be indelibly etched in the minds of everyone.”'”
These are interesting questions because they create a conflict between comma rules and good taste. Comma rules say that when you refer to a city followed by its state, then continue the sentence, the state is followed by a comma. For instance: Albany, New York, is lovely this time of year.
The same rule applies to countries after cities: Paris, France, is home to the Eiffel Tower.
And the same rule applies to years after dates: September 11, 2001, was a tragic day.
But sometimes, especially in casual speech, people can make New York, France or 2001 possessive. New York’s weather is nice this time of year. France’s president will visit. 2001’s events affected us all.
This is almost never a problem, but when the rules call for a comma in the same spot, things get unsightly and a little weird. Notice how, in “Paris, France’s, sights are breathtaking,” it sounds more like you’re talking about France’s sights than Paris’s. A similar effect is true for the other two sentences.
Rulebooks like the Associated Press Stylebook don’t tell you what to do in these situations. So subscribers sometimes just pose the question to AP’s editors on the stylebook’s website. Usually, this works out great. But not this time.
“Really, truly, recasting is the thing to do,” replied an editor. “Just because someone utters a quote doesn't mean, in most cases, that you have to use the quote in full or in part. There's not a definitive style for this and many other questions because Style Rule No. 1 would be: Recast, rephrase, rewrite! So, we don't have a definitive answer either. I could make something up, but that's not wise or helpful. Sorry!”
So what would I do if I had to edit one of those sentences? I talk about that in my recent column.
The post When commas and quote marks collide first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If I want to say that someone sold me a bad car, would I say they were operating under the pretext that it wasn’t junk? Or under the pretense?
According to the Associated Press Stylebook, “pretext” is the way to go in this situation: “A pretext is something that is put forward to conceal a truth: He was discharged for tardiness, but the reason given was only a pretext for general incompetence. A pretense is a false show, a more overt act intended to conceal personal feelings: My profuse compliments were all pretense.”
That’s a teensy difference. A pretext conceals a truth. A pretense conceals feelings. They’re both deceptions used as an excuse to say or do something disingenuous.
But AP style is really just for editors and people looking for a rulebook to conform to. If you want rules that apply to the language in every context, you need a dictionary. And here, in this world of rules for everyone, the pretense-pretext distinction is all but wiped out.
Under the entry for “pretense” in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, the fourth definition is “pretext” — meaning the two words can be synonymous. Under its entry for “pretext,” there’s no definition summed up as “pretense,” but if you click on “synonyms,” you land at a thesaurus page that lists “pretense” as one of the top words you can use instead.
Here's the full story in my recent column.
The post 'Pretense' and 'pretext' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The indefinite article "a" comes before a word that starts with a consonant sound, while "an" precedes a word that starts with a vowel sound. So because A.A. starts with the sound "ay," it's preceded by "an." And because AAA is pronounced "triple-a," most publications use "a" and not "an." Even the auto club writes "Become a AAA member."
The post 'An AAA member' or 'a AAA member'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
After a colon, don't capitalize the first word unless it's a proper noun or it begins a complete sentence. In book editing style, only if a colon introduces two complete sentences should the first generic word be capitalized.
The post When to Capitalize After a Colon first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you want to write that someone is enduring a tough situation, you'd choose the o-u spelling: "You're a real trouper." But sometimes "trooper" can have the same meaning. Here's the full story.
The post 'Trouper' vs. 'Trouper' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sometimes readers of my column write to point out mistakes I made. Every once in a while they're right. But perhaps 95 percent of the errors they catch aren't really errors. They’re based on misconceptions that, ironically, I have addressed over and over again in the column.
Here’s an example:
“In your June 10 column you refer to "editors like me." Unless you're speaking of editors who bear similarities to you, I think the phrase should be "editors such as me.”
The author of this e-mail has been writing to me for at least seven or eight years. I’m sure I’ve mentioned the “like” vs. “such as” issue before in the column, just as I have here. Yet this reader often seems to think he’s educating me about issues I had no idea existed until he e-mailed me.
The issue of whether “like” can be a synonym for “such as” is an old one, and it’s well-known among people who pay attention to language. The popular misconception is that it cannot: “like” means "similar to” and “such as” means “for example” and that anything else equals bad grammar.
Not so. “Like” isn’t just a verb meaning “bearing a resemblance to.” It’s also a preposition that can mean “such as,” according to Merriam Webster’s.
Every other source I checked agrees. Yet I doubt I've convinced my e-mail friend and I'm even more doubtful that I've convinced him that I.
The post 'Like' for 'such as'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You use the word “and” every day, hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. But have you really mastered this most ubiquitous of conjunctions? Turns out, there’s more to using “and” than you may realize. Here are seven things you probably didn’t know about the ultimate English joiner word.
“And” can begin a sentence. I don’t know the origin of the myth that you can’t start a sentence with “and.” Perhaps some long-ago teacher got fed up with students incorrectly breaking sentences into fragments at the point of an “and.” Or perhaps some overconfident observer decided that “and” joins things within sentences and not sentences themselves. In fact, “and” can be grammatical and logical at the start of a sentence. But in that spot, it’s usually unnecessary, which is why it’s unpopular with editors who favor tight prose.
“And” doesn’t ask the ampersand to pitch in when it’s tired. “The cafeteria serves three kinds of sandwiches: ham, tuna and peanut butter & jelly.” Over and over, I see this in my editing work: Writers — too many to count over the years — will whip out an ampersand anytime they want to show a closer relationship than some previous “and” in the sentence shows. Every one of these writers just comes up with this idea on their own. There’s no rule that says ampersands work in concert with “and.” There’s no credible editing style that allows ampersands in running text at all. Yet these writers pop them in anyway.
In my recent column, I explain more about these five facts about "and."
— “As well as” can’t do the job of “and.”
— “And” can’t be replaced by a dash to team up with “between.”
— In lists of three or more things, “and” can follow a serial comma — or not.
— “And” is usually preceded by a comma when it connects independent clauses.
— “And” can team up with “also,” but it probably shouldn’t.
The post 7 things you didn't know about the word 'and' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Since" refers to a time span: Since Joe was five, he has always loved cars. "Because" suggests a cause-and-effect relationship. Because he’s still just ten, he doesn’t own one yet. But "since" can be a synonym of "because" — just be sure to use it wisely.
The post Can 'Since' Mean 'Because'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I never used to believe in ghosts. The idea of hauntings sounded ridiculous to me. Then I started writing about grammar. Now I know better.
For more than a decade now, I’ve been hearing bone-chilling tales of dead teachers haunting former students from the great beyond with bad information: You can’t end a sentence with a preposition. You can't use healthy to mean healthful. You can't start a sentence with but.
The stubborn persistence of these bad teachings never ceases to amaze me. But from time to time these chilling tales go beyond the pale, wowing me with just how bad bad information can be.
Case in point, an e-mail I got a while back:
Dear June. Today, in your column from the Pasadena Sun section of the L.A. Times, you used "the writer got bogged down." I will never forget several teachers, including one particularly memorable Mrs. Hamilton, telling me that using "got" in any sentence anytime was simply being lazy, that it was bad English, uncouth, uneducated, etc. You get the point.
Yup, there was once a teacher who took it upon herself to single-handedly condemn a well established and highly useful word. I particularly like that “uneducated” part -- and the irony of how it came from someone who needed only to open a dictionary to see that she was misinforming her own students. Of course, I didn’t say so to the poor guy in so many words. Instead, here’s what I wrote:
The most common objection to got is that have and got are redundant in phrases like "I have got quite a few friends." Yes, it's inefficient, but it's accepted as an idiom. Every major language authority I know of agrees it's a valid option.
We editors usually trim the gots out. Especially in news writing, which prizes efficiency, "He has got $20'" is a poor alternative to "He has $20." But that's an aesthetic. Not a grammar rule.
From what my correspondent was saying, the teacher was condemning the word "got" in all its uses. That's extreme to the point of being illogical. "Got" is the past tense of get, which can be both a regular verb and an auxiliary verb: "They got married."
It sounds as though Mrs. Hamilton would have everyone say, "They were married." But if so, that's just a personal preference she was trying to pass off as a rule. There isn't a dictionary under the sun that would back her up.
I hear a lot of stories about long-ago teachers who used to lay down laws that weren't laws. (It's wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. It's wrong to split an infinitive. It's wrong to begin a sentence with and.) These kinds of unfounded prohibitions were very fashionable in educational circles for a while. But they never were rules. It's unfortunate kids of yesterday continue to be haunted by bad information.
The post The ghosts of teachers past first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
With phrasal verbs like "run over," "throw away," "give up" and many others, put the object where it sounds best because you're almost certain to be correct. In many cases, like "ran him over" and "ran over him," both are fine.
The post 'Ran Him Over' or 'Ran Over Him'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Most people use “hark back,” “hearken back” and “harken back” to mean “recall” or “refer back to” some previous event. But the original meaning of “hark,” “harken” and “hearken” was not to recall but to hear or to listen carefully. Think: “Hark! The herald angels sing.” In fact, you can still use them that way today: Hark my words. Hearken my words. Harken my words.
“Hark” is the youngest of the three, dating back to the 14th century, with “hearken” and “harken” going back another two centuries or so.
Sometime in the 1800s, people started adding “back” to “hark” for the purpose of giving it what was then a figurative meaning: to recall or refer back to. Soon, “hark back,” “hearken back” and “harken back” would become full-fledged phrasal verbs — word combinations that have a different meaning than the root verb they’re based on. For more examples of phrasal verbs, think about the difference between “give” and “give up”; “break” and “break in”; “cut” and “cut off.” In every case, the word combo means something different from the verb when it stands alone. That’s what makes them phrasal verbs.
So unlike “hark,” “hearken” and “harken,” which mean to listen or listen carefully, “hark back,” “hearken back” and “harken back” are phrasal verbs meaning “to go back to or recall to mind something in the past,” according to Merriam’s dictionary.
Merriam’s usage guide claims that, though “hark” is now rare in the meaning of to listen, “harken” and “hearken” are still used that way. Personally, outside of one old Christmas song, I’ve never heard any form of hark or hearken used to mean “listen.” But when I search a books database to compare “hearken” with “hearken back,” “harken with harken back,” and “hark” with “hark back,” I see that all three words often stand alone and “back”-less. They’re all correct, with or without “back.”
So which is the most widely accepted in edited published writing? It’s “hark back” — my friend’s preference. My preference, “hearken back,” which the dictionary prefers, comes in last place in terms of popularity, and it has for most of the last century. Here's more in my recent column.
The post Hark back, harken back, hearken back first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Think for a moment about the following adjectives: poor, downtrodden, wealthy, well-to-do, meek.
They’re definitely adjectives, right?
Well, here’s a cool thing about English: Sometimes you can use adjectives as nouns (and, I should add, vice-versa). And when you do, there’s even a name for them. They’re called nominal adjectives.
That is, poor people can be referred to as the poor. And that can work as a noun in a sentence: The poor often live in bad school districts.
Ditto that for the wealthy. The wealthy often live in good school districts.
And everyone knows who shall inherit the earth: the meek.
Even the following use can be considered an example of a nominal adjective in use:
I tried on the blue shirt but bought the red. Here, the red is functioning as a noun — the object of the verb bought — even though it’s just shorthand for the red shirt or the red one.
That’s a little different because the red isn’t as substantive a noun as the poor, which is well-known to be a thing (“things” being members in good standing of the group known as nouns).
And there you have yet another interesting (to some people) trait about the English language …
The post The poor, the meek, the red: Nominal adjectives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Of" shows possession, so technically the apostrophe and S in "a friend of Joe's" contains a logical redundancy. But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
The post A Friend of Joe's or a Friend of Joe? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Goers drive me nuts. I’m not talking about the kind of goers that so fascinated Eric Idle in an old Monty Python sketch. I’m talking about the goers you add at the end of words like party, beach, festival, mall — you name it. Any place people go, you can tack a “goers” on the end of.
Because I edit feature articles, goers come up quite a bit. And no two writers “goer” alike.
“Festival goers can also check out the 40-plus carnival rides.”
“Beach-goers flock to Santa Monica ever weekend.”
“Partygoers enjoyed cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.”
Some terms ending in “goer,” for example “moviegoer,” are in the dictionary. Those are easy to deal with. Just do what the dictionary says and make them one word. But when you’re sort of manufacturing a less common term, like if you’re talking about someone who goes to a rally, you won’t find that in the dictionary.
The Associated Press Stylebook, which I have to follow for most of my work, usually has answers for stuff that isn’t in the dictionary. But doesn’t have an entry for “goers.” So after years of working as an editor, I still wasn’t confident in whether to hyphenate “goers,” make attach it to the other word, or make it a separate word.
Then I got the online edition of AP’s guide and everything changed. Unlike the hard copy, which has only official entries, the online version has an “Ask the Editor” function, whose answers come up when you search the site. So when you search for “goer,” you come upon this exchange from 2018:
Question: If we write moviegoer, do we also write rallygoer?
Answer: Yes.
In other words, treat “goer” like a suffix and tack it on to the end of any noun someone is going to: festivalgoer, mallgoer, beachgoer. They’re all correct in closed form, at least in AP style.
The post Rally goer, rally-goer, rallygoer? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Think of "compliment" as praise and "complement" as something that goes well with something else. Think of "complimentary" as praising or, in its other meaning, free of charge. Think of "complementary" as going well together.
The post Don't Confuse 'Compliment' and 'Complement' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You can use “like” as a synonym of “such as” if you want to. Though, if my own editing work is any indication, writers haven’t gotten the memo.
In a recent two-week period, I edited about 25 articles that used “such as” before a list of examples. Only five used “like.”
“The restaurant serves elevated pub food and satisfying eats such as hand-tossed pizzas and specialty burgers.”
“Some studies suggest that eating chili peppers such as jalapenos can relax inflammation.”
“Wear protective clothing such as wide-brimmed hats and long-sleeved shirts.”
“He became an illustrator for major magazines such as Life and National Geographic.”
“… to demonstrate qualities such as cooperation.”
None of these is wrong. But it’s a problem that the writers all seem to think they have no alternative.
A lot of grammar myths have easy-to-trace histories. This isn’t one of them. Yes, if you go back to the 1950s or so, you’ll find certain language cops telling people that “like” means “similar to.” And when something is similar to something else, they’re not one and the same. Thus, these people said, “chili peppers like jalapenos,” by definition, excludes jalapenos. It means only peppers similar to jalapenos and not jalapenos themselves. If that were true, you would be required to use “such as” anytime you wanted include jalapenos in the examples.
But it’s not true. Dictionaries define “like” as a synonym of “such as,” meaning you can use either one to set up a list of examples. I explain in-depth in my recent column.
The post Yes, you can use 'like' to mean 'such as' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A reader was taught in school that "but" can't begin a sentence — that you either have to connect the clause to the previous sentence, preceded by a comma, or you have to use "however" instead. Unlucky for her but luckily for us, she was taught wrong.
The post Can a Sentence Begin with 'But'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“‘Guys are allowed to bring their girlfriend/girlfriends to the event.’ Are both OK?”
That’s what a user on an English language message board wanted to know a while back. And if you’ve never thought about this issue before, prepare for some brain pain.
As you know, subjects and verbs should agree. You walk. He walks. The verb changes form to match the number of the subject. That’s agreement. But objects don’t agree with subjects. You may walk the dogs if there’s more than one. Or you may walk the dog if there’s just one. The subject and verb have no bearing on how many objects you have.
In some sentences, however, that doesn’t work out so well.
For example, try the plural object in our sentence above and you get: “Guys are allowed to bring their girlfriends.” That has a nice mathematical balance to it. There are a number of guys, along with a number of girls. So it’s true, yet the meaning isn’t clear. With “girlfriends” in the plural, you could be saying that every guy has more than one girlfriend — that each guy should bring all his girlfriends. Surely that’s not what the writer meant.
The singular object must fit the bill then, right? “Guys are allowed to bring their girlfriend.” But that seems to suggest that all the guys — no matter how many — share just one girlfriend. Doubtful that’s what the writer meant, either.
Regular readers of this column know that, often, when grammar gives you an either-or, which-is-right scenario, the answer is: both. It’s rare to come across a which-is-right question in grammar where the answer is: neither. But, technically, that’s the case here: Neither the plural object nor the singular object captures your exact meaning. That means neither is wrong, either. So just go with whatever you prefer and take comfort in these words from Barbara Wallraff’s “Word Court”: “When one is at pains to make clear that the individuals in the subject are to be paired one apiece with the persons, places or things in question, the number of the noun can’t be relied on to make the point.” More detail here in my recent column.
The post Guys can bring their girlfriends or girlfriend? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"The only" seems to refer to just one thing, so "one of the only" would mean "one of the one," which makes no sense. But although one of the definitions of "only" is "alone in a class or category," another of its definitions is "few." So "one of the only" is another, correct way of saying "one of the few."
The post Is 'One of the Only' Illogical? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In "I'm doing well," "well" is an adverb. But in "I am well," it's an adjective with a slightly different meaning. And while both are more proper than "I am good" when talking about your health, "good" is flexible enough to use here, too.
The post I Am Good, I Am Well, I'm Doing Well first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The prefix "bi-" to refer to time periods often means "twice." So why do we use it to mean "every two" in "biweekly"? It's complicated. Here's how to navigate "bi-" and "semi-" as they related to time.
The post Does 'Biweekly' Mean Every Two Weeks or Twice a Week? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
For years, I’ve been writing a weekly grammar column for some small community newspapers. I try never to look at it in published form. The reason: typos. It seems like about half the times I've seen an installment of my column online it has had some embarrassing error. I never know who to be angry at: the dodo who made the mistake (me) or the editors who might have caught it. Either way, it's a team effort to make me look bad, and I'm captain of the team.
Take, for example, the time I made an error in the following sentence: Webster's New World College Dictionary is more reluctant to embrace the hyperbolic usage, instead adding to one it its definitions this note: “Now often used as an intensive to modify a word or phrase that itself is being used figuratively: ‘she literally flew into the room.'”
Don’t see the typo? That’s okay, neither did I and neither did the editor who checked it before passing it on to the four publications in which the mistake appeared. The typo is “it its.” I meant to type “of its.”
This is a classic example of my own typographical Achilles’ heel. If there’s one error in something I wrote, chances are it's a wrong or extra preposition, article, or pronoun. These little words make mischief when I delete part of a sentence to rewrite it but fail to delete all the words. So I end up with something like “at on,” “to about,” or “at to.”
I guess I’ll just have to implement a policy of reading every word – especially the little ones –
out loud.
The post Two-letter words are the biggest typo risks first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Style guides disagree on whether to make “for conscience’s sake” and similar terms possessive.
The Chicago manual of style considers these “for blank’s sake” expressions to be possessive, so according to Chicago you would put an apostrophe and S after “conscience” in “conscience’s sake.” But the guide makes an exception for expressions like “for goodness’ sake” where the word before sake ends in an S. here, Chicago feels, you should add just an apostrophe but no additional S because otherwise you’d have too many Ss run together.
The “Associated Press Stylebook,” however, says that for these figures of speech, you add just an apostrophe.
The post For Conscience Sake? For Goodness Sake? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Have you ever watched one of those cheesy basic-cable docudramas set in colonial times? Me neither. But I’ve seen a lot of promos for them. And it always makes me smile that George Washington, John Hancock and the gang are so often portrayed as having posh British accents.
It makes sense. People on this side of the Atlantic weren’t oo far removed from people in Britain
In fact, many were themselves Brits fresh off the boat. So you could see how they might do lots of crazy British things, like fancify their Rs and eat kidney pie.
I never questioned those highfalutin historical accents at all – I figured they were somewhere close to the truth – until I got a copy of Patricia T. O’Conner’s Origins of the Specious. Just a few pages into the introduction, I read this:
“I’m sometimes asked, ‘When did we Americans lose our British accent?’ Answer: We didn’t lose it. The British once spoke pretty much as we do. What we think of as the plummy British accent is a fairly recent happening.”
In the following chapter she explains how this happened. The Englishmen and –women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sounded a lot like the Americans of today. What we think of as a British accent (and the many variations within that could be construed as separate accents) didn’t develop until after the American Revolution.
Then, shortly after we broke away, a fashion started forming among educated folks in English who thought it sounded jolly good to start doing things like dropping their R sounds in words like “far” and “church” and adding other little fancy-sounding flourishes to their speech.
A lot of the Americans who had the closest ties with England – you know, people in New England – picked up the habit. Which is why parking a car too far in Harvard yard is a punchline-worthy activity.
The post Ask not when America lost its British accent — ask when Brits acquired it first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Recently I come across this “12 Common Grammar Mistakes You’re Probably Making Right Now” list in Business Insider. Number 10 on their list of mistakes: ending sentences with prepositions.
I thought that my was pretty much dead. But apparently not. So here’s what to know about the idea that you can’t end a sentence or clause with a preposition.
Prepositions are little words like “with,” “at,” “from,” “to,” “until,” “during,” “including” and many more. Many of them refer to physical proximity, like “from” in “the object fell from the sky,” and like “around” in “she ran around the house.” But others don’t, like “before” in “get it done before tomorrow” and “except,” as in “I saw every episode except the last one.”
Prepositions take objects — nouns or pronouns like “Mary” in “with Mary” or “the moon” in “to the moon.” The prepositions show relationships between the object and the rest of the sentence. “I’m talking with Mary. The rocket will go to the moon.”
Look closer and you can see the logic behind the myth: Prepositions take objects, so it’s weird to separate the two and leave the preposition just hanging out at the end of a sentence: “Mary is the person I’m talking with. The moon is the place the rocket will go to.”
You can also see that these forms are a little awkward. Clearly, it’s often best to follow a preposition with its object instead of stranding it alone at the end of a sentence.
But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to end a sentence (or a clause within a sentence) with a preposition. And every expert out there agrees.
Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says, “Recent commentators — at least since Fowler 1926 — are unanimous in their rejection of the notion that ending a sentence with a preposition is an error or an offense against propriety.”
The above referenced lexicographer H.W. Fowler described this belief as a “superstition.”
The most famous pushback against this myth, “This is the kind of pedantry up with which I shall not put” (or any of several similarly worded variations), is often attributed to Winston Churchill. The real author is unknown, as research by linguist and columnist Ben Zimmer has revealed. But the lessons are clear. There’s no rule against ending sentences with prepositions and doing so — for example by contorting your sentence to avoid a simple wording like “put up with” — can be a terrible idea.
The post The myth that won't die first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There's a lot of good advice in "The Elements of Style." Unfortunately, there's a lot of bad information, too. Here are 10 ways Strunk and White's guide will let you down.
The post 10 Ways Strunk and White Will Let You Down first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you want to follow the examples from professional publishing, use "farther" only for physical distances and "further" for senses that don't refer to physical distances.
The post Further and Farther first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people think that professional editors and writers are walking encyclopedias of English usage. I don’t correct them. But the truth is that, the more of a “pro” you are, the more time you probably spend checking a dictionary. (And I can’t tell you what a relief it was when I finally figured out that I don’t have to memorize the answer to every possible writing conundrum before I could call myself a pro.)
Here are a couple of interesting things I've look up in dictionaries recently.
metamorphosize
This one came up in an article I was editing, in a sentence like “accessories metamorphosize an entire ensemble.” I wasn’t so sure. I checked a couple dictionaries and found no such word. But, from their entries, I could tell that the writer wanted verb metamorphose. No "ize." So accessories can metamorphose an ensemble, but the dictionary says they don’t do it with an “ize.”
acronym
A lot of people think that CIA, FBI, and IBM are acronyms. But it depends on which dictionary you follow. Webster’s New World long took the position that initials do not an acronym make: “a word formed from the first (or first few) letters of a series of words, as radar, from radio detecting and ranging”
According to this definition, if you pronounce each letter individually, it’s just initials (or, if you prefer, an initialism). Only if you use those letters to form a new word does it count as an acronym.
Merriam-Webster’s, however, allows “acronym” to mean initialism.
forevermore
Before I saw it in print, I would have guessed this was three words. Or at least two. But no, according to Webster's New World, this one-word spelling of this adverb is correct.
The post 'Metamorphosize'? Some words I looked up recently first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you’re reading this, you probably know a thing or two about punctuation. But nobody — including punctuation book authors (ahem) — knows it all.
So here are some advanced punctuation tips for good punctuators who want to get even better.
A single quote mark followed by a double quote mark comes after a period or comma. Let’s say you’re quoting someone who’s talking about a specific word, so you put the quotation in regular quote marks and the word itself in singles, like this: “Stop saying ‘whatever.’” The rule that says periods and commas go inside quotation marks applies to single quotation marks, too. The order is period, single quote mark, double quote mark.
An apostrophe comes before a period or comma. Apostrophes look a lot like single quotation marks. Depending on the font, they can be indistinguishable. But they’re different. An apostrophe can represent an omitted letter: thinkin’, talkin’, sleepin’, etc. And unlike a single quote mark that would come after each of those commas, an apostrophe is part of the word. That’s why the apostrophe goes before a period or comma, even when it’s within a quotation: “He’s sleepin’.”
An em dash can have a space on either side, or not. Different publishing guides have different rules for whether you put spaces around a dash — like this, or not—like this. Either way is fine.
If you can rearrange the order of adjectives, they require commas between them. Why are there commas in “a red, purple, yellow and green shirt” but none in “a bright red Hawaiian shirt”? It’s because the adjectives in the first example all have the same relationship with the noun. You can swap the order and it doesn’t affect the meaning: a yellow, purple, green and red shirt. But in our second example, some adjectives are more closely related to the noun than others, so you can’t move them around. “A Hawaiian, red, bright shirt” just doesn’t mean the same thing.
Read more tips in my recent column.
The post Advanced punctuation tips first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Is it wrong to say, "Please get in touch with Mary or myself"? Not exactly, but it's probably not great. Here's how to use reflexives including "myself," "yourself" and "ourselves."
The post 'Myself' and Other Reflexives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Recently I was hired to write a 200-word article based on an 800-word press release about a new coffee shop. I finished and turned it in, then it hit me: It’s just a matter of time before the client who hired me realizes AI programs can write these things for free.
To size up my competition, I pasted the original press release into ChatGPT and asked it to create its own 200-word article, then I compared our work.
ChatGPT bases its writing on lots and lots of online documents and databases, guessing what word should come next based on the words all those other articles used next. The result is a very slick, polished voice, along with a ton of cliches and empty sentences. But ChatGPT’s biggest weakness is that it has no idea what interests humans. What’s more, it doesn’t understand what words mean.
Compare our leads (note: I’ve changed some names and details because my work-for-hire doesn’t belong to me). ChatGPT’s opening sentence: “Caffe Maximo, the brainchild of industry veterans John Doe and Jack Jones, has unveiled its newest jewel in the crown — a bright and modern coffee haven nestled in Redondo Beach.”
A coffee shop is a “brainchild”? That’s a bit of a stretch. “Brainchild” usually means something that arose from an innovative idea, and I’m pretty sure these guys didn’t invent coffee shops. Also: “jewel in the crown”? That cliché only works when the reader knows what “crown” you’re talking about. Then there’s “a coffee haven,” which is odd, and “nestled,” which is shopworn and at the same time not quite accurate.
Here’s my first sentence: “Redondo Beach is finally getting a taste of the ‘farm-to-you’ coffee beloved by L.A.’s most discriminating chefs and connoisseurs.” My thinking here, as a human being, is that when a truly high-end coffee joint comes to town, readers care more about the coffee than, say, “unveiling a jewel in a crown.”
Because here’s what you wouldn’t know from reading ChatGPT’s version: This coffee brand is among the best — a Michelin-starred chef serves it in his restaurants, as do a number of other chichi California eateries. But ChatGPT never mentions this coffee brand’s impressive bona fides. You can read more about how I measured up to ChatGPT in my recent column.
The post ChatGPT and me first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
People who use "peruse" to mean "browse" or "skim" don't realize that, in its primary definition, it means to study closely and carefully — the opposite of casual browsing.
The post Peruse first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Years back, a reader of this column mentioned that, all of a sudden, she was hearing the word “whinge” everywhere. What was up with that, she wanted to know. I had no answer. To my recollection, that was the first time I’d ever come across the word “whinge.”
Back then, I didn’t know about Ngram Viewer — a Google service you can use to search published writing to learn how popular a word is over time. Ngram Viewer lets you choose from several different databases of published works, some dating back to 1800. Just put in the word and you’ll see the percentage of books your word appeared in, plotted over time.
That’s how I learned that my reader was right: “whinge,” which means to complain or whine, was extremely rare in print until about 1980, when it suddenly began skyrocketing, peaking in 2012. So I wondered: Is “whinge” replacing “whine”? Ngram Viewer lets you plot words in comparison to each other, so I typed in “whinge, whine” and saw that my theory was wrong. “Whine,” like “whinge,” also started getting more popular around 1980, peaking in the 2010s. Yet “whine” remains far more common — appearing about 40 times as often as “whinge.”
This all reminded me of another reader question I couldn’t answer many years ago: Is “fraught with” losing ground to just plain-old “fraught”? In my experience, definitely. I never heard “fraught” by itself until pretty recently. So I searched them both. It turns out that the standalone “fraught” has gotten more popular in my lifetime, but that’s only because it dipped in popularity in the decades leading up to the 1960s. For a century and a half before then, “fraught” without “with” was about as popular as it is today.
You can read what I learned about "bandana"/"bandanna," "immersive," "step foot" and more in my recent column.
The post Is a word you hate on the rise? Ngram Viewer can tell you first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sometimes, it's hard to know whether a word is plural or singular. Often, the choice is up to you.
The post A Variety Is or a Variety Are? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
This sentence contains an example of an error I see all too often, including in the work of professional writers: Known as ‘hashtags,’ these keywords are popular in social media.
That’s not how single quotation marks work. Yet almost every time I see this punctuation mark, this is how it’s used — a job I call “quotation marks lite.”
Regular quotation marks have several jobs. Their main job is to indicate direct quotations or excerpts. They can also indicate irony.
Finally, quotation marks can indicate that a certain word is actually a focus of the discussion. Consider this sentence: I know “that” is often overused. The quotation marks are the only way the reader can be sure that we’re talking about the word “that.” Without the quotation marks, what’s meant by “that” could be misconstrued.
This is a sanctioned use for quotation marks, one that the Chicago Manual of Style refers to as discussing “words as words.”
Not many people know this and instead think quotation marks only indicate direct speech. So when some people want to discuss a word itself, they figure that regular quotation marks don’t fit the bill. Single quotation marks seem like the perfect compromise: not too soft, but not so strong that they indicate direct speech.
Unfortunately, single quotation marks are not just milder forms of regular quotation marks. They have a specific job to do: They work within regular quotation marks.
Say you’re quoting someone who’s quoting someone else: Bob said, “Joe yelled, ‘Hello.’”
That’s when single quotation marks come into play. They do all the things regular quotation marks do, except they do them within regular quotation marks. Like their beefier siblings, single quotation marks can indicate “words as words,” but only within other quotations: Bob said, “Joe can’t pronounce ‘nuclear.’”
There are several reasons why these simple punctuation marks are so misunderstood.
First, a closing single quotation mark often looks identical to an apostrophe. This causes problems when a single quotation mark appears next to a period or comma. For example, see in our “nuclear” sentence above how the period comes before the single quotation mark as well as before the regular quotation mark?
An apostrophe would not go there. Because an apostrophe represents a dropped letter, it stays attached to the word it’s part of, so a period never comes before it: I’m just sayin’.
Second, many computer programs will change an apostrophe into an open single quotation mark. Type “‘Tis the season” or “the ‘90s” into a word-processing program and you’ll see what I mean.
Third, anyone who takes a cue from news media could be easily confused. In headlines, many news outlets use single quotation marks in place of regular ones.
But usually, unless you’re writing a quotation that appears within another quotation, there’s no call for single quotation marks. And if you’re ever tempted to use them as “quotation marks lite,” try to resist the impulse.
The post There's no such thing as 'quotation marks lite' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Think about the sentence: The new healthcare center is a facility where patients can come without an appointment.
What’s wrong with that? Well, technically, nothing. It’s grammatical and logical. But if, like me, you’re in the habit of zeroing in on all the clauses in a sentence, you can see why this could be considered not the best writing.
The core of the main clause, when stripped down to its bones, says little more than “the center is a facility.” And that’s about as sorry a statement as you can squeeze into a main clause.
In the best writing, every word, phrase and clause counts. And if you pay attention to how pros do it, you’ll see they never waste a main clause to state something so painfully obvious. Here's how to write a more engaging main clause instead.
The post Don't Waste a Main Clause on the Obvious first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a word I change a lot when I’m editing: “while.” I see it used like this often: While pedaling along the beachfront sidewalk is delightful, so too is stopping for a snowcone at the beachfront snack bar.
A myth out there alleges that this is an outright error. The idea is that “while” means “during,” so you can’t use it to mean “though” or “although.” Not true.
while. conjunction:
-
… on the other hand … whereas
-
… in spite of the fact that, although (while respected, he is not liked)
3 … similarly and at the same time that (while the book will be welcomed by scholars, it will make an immediate appeal to the general reader)
That’s Merriam-Webster’s take on “while.” So clearly, according to definition 1, the example sentence about pedaling on the sidewalk is correct. But is using “while” this way a good idea? That’s a different question.
Whenever “while” comes before an action, especially an action expressed as an “ing” verb, it sounds like you’re using the other definition of “while”: “during the time that.” So “while pedaling” sounds like you mean “during the time that you’re pedaling.” And in this sentence, it’s going to be a long time until the reader gets your real meaning “while pedaling is …” When we get to the verb, "is," we can see that "while" was meant as “although.”
In my book, any “while” that can lead the reader astray should probably be replaced with “although” or “though.”
Although pedaling along the beachfront sidewalk is delightful, so too is stopping for a snowcone.
The post 'While' vs. 'although' or 'though' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Newspaper style says to assign separate meanings to "insure" and "ensure." "Use ensure to mean guarantee: 'steps were taken to ensure accuracy,'” the Associated Press Stylebook says. “Use 'insure' for references to insurance: 'the policy insures his life.'” But dictionaries aren't as strict.
The post Ensure vs. Insure first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“My partner and I’s bikes were stolen,” a woman posted on my local Nextdoor.com recently.
Not familiar with Nextdoor? It’s the reason why, some years back, everyone you know in every town from coast to coast started talking about the crime wave hitting their neighborhood. The real crime was social media nudging out local news, siphoning advertising dollars away from professional journalism and toward a barrage of hysterical, context-free anecdotes about porch pirates and noises that sound like gunshots. But I digress.
Point is, a lot of folks go on this hyperlocal social media site to tell their neighbors about crimes, coyote sightings and whatnot and, when they do, they don’t always use perfect grammar. Nothing wrong with that. These aren’t doctoral dissertations. But sometimes the grammar is surprising. Revealing. Like “my partner and I’s.”
As kids, we got it drilled into our heads that “me” is often improper. “Kim and me are going to the park” was swiftly corrected by a parent or teacher saying, “It’s Kim and I, not Kim and me.” This valuable lesson about subject and object pronouns got filtered through our little kid brains and settled there as: “I” is bad. It doesn’t go with Kim or any other person. If you don’t want people to think you’re dumb, avoid “I” anytime there’s an “and” plus another person.
The result: Sentences like “The manager saw him and I” and “This is between you and I” and other “and I” structures that miss the mark of perfect grammar precisely because the speaker was trying too hard to be proper.
A lot of experts point out that these sentence structures are acceptable in casual speech. But that’s the problem. The folks using “I” this way are aiming for proper speech. They’re trying to be as grammatical as possible, and it backfires.
I explain how to avoid this problem in my recent column.
The post My partner and I's? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Danglers, including dangling participles, are phrases that apply to your main clause in a way that doesn't make logical sense, like "Walking down the beach, my shoulders got sunburned," which seems to say your shoulders were walking. Here's how to avoid them.
The post Danglers first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Recently, I reread something I wrote years ago about “good things come to he who waits” vs. “good things come to him who waits” and then, when I tried to summarize the lesson, I got it exactly wrong. Not only did I misunderstand the grammar, but I misunderstood what my 2016 self was trying to teach me. I just didn’t get it. But I’ll forgive myself because it’s a tricky issue.
The grammatically correct form is “him who waits,” with the object pronoun “him.” That may seem pretty obvious to anyone who understands that “to” is a preposition and that prepositions take object pronouns and not subject pronouns.
Give it to him, not give it to he.
Show it to us, not show it to we.
Tell it to her, not tell it to she.
You know this intuitively. But folks who pay very close attention know that sometimes, there’s an exception. When the object of a preposition or verb is not a single word but a whole clause, that clause needs a subject. In those cases, you can have a subject pronoun sitting right where an object pronoun normally goes.
Give the job to whoever wants it, not give it to whomever wants it.
Whoever is a subject pronoun. Yet here it sits where an object pronoun would normally go because it’s the subject of its own verb: wants.
It’s kind of like “I know he lied.” The whole clause “he lied” is the object of the verb, “know.” The point is, whole clauses can be objects.
In “Good things come to him who waits,” there’s a verb right there, “waits.” And it’s pretty clear who’s doing the waiting: he is. So it seems like the whole clause “he waits” should be the object of the preposition, which would make it “Good things come to he who waits.” But actually that’s wrong because “who” — not “he” — is the subject of the verb “waits.”
“Who” is a relative pronoun in our sentence. Relative pronouns — that, which, who and whom — head up relative clauses.
The cat, which was meowing, was gray.
The dress that caught my eye didn’t come in my size.
There’s the man whom I love.
There’s the man who loves me.
Relative clauses have a surprising job. They modify nouns. They’re basically adjectives. In “the cat, which was meowing,” the “which” clause modifies the noun “cat.” That makes the whole clause an adjective. In “the dress that caught my eye,” the “that” clause modifies the noun “dress.” Again, an adjective.
In “good things come to him who waits,” the relative clause “who waits” is also an adjective. So what is it modifying? The pronoun “him.”
In our sentence, the true object of the preposition is in fact the object pronoun “him.” The verb that comes after “him,” “waits,” already has its own subject, “who,” and together “who waits” is working as an adjective.
This isn’t just my analysis. Experts agree. Fowler’s Modern English Usage, for example, cites the following sentence as an error: “Any contact with Flora would have to include he who was keeping an eye on her.” That’s wrong, Fowler’s says. It should be “include him” because “him” is the true object of the verb “include.”
Of course, when a grammar rule is this complicated, no one’s expected to get it right. So I’ll forgive myself when I forget it all over again in the near future.
The post Good things come to him who waits? Or he who waits? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Using "palette" instead of "palate" to mean a sense of taste is a very common error. Here's how to keep all three of these homophones straight.
The post Palette, Palate, Pallet first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One common habit I see in bad writing, especially in amateur fiction, is excessive use of participial phrases to squeeze in information. Consider a passage like:
Reaching into her purse, Mary pulled out her phone. She flipped it open, scanning her stored numbers. Realizing she didn’t have John’s cell, she snapped the phone shut. Hurrying home, she decided it was best to postpone the call anyway.
Here’s how to make a passage like this better.
The post Participial Phrases in Bad Writing first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you end a sentence with a preposition? Yes. Can you say so online and not send angry social media users into attack mode? Apparently not.
That’s the lesson of a recent Instagram post by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary that stated plainly and accurately: “It is permissible in English for a preposition to be what you end a sentence with. The idea that it should be avoided came from writers who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there’s no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong.”
The denizens of Instagram weren’t having it.
“This represents something ugly,” one replied.
“I don’t like it,” said another.
The outcries came in spite of Merriam’s perfectly illustrating their point: “This is what we’re talking about.”
Not familiar with the issue? That’s OK. It gets less relevant with each passing year. Telling students not to end sentences with prepositions was a fad among teachers in decades past, especially in the 1950s and ’60s. The echoes of those lessons grow fainter every year. And because they were never based in fact anyway, you don’t need to worry where you’re putting your prepositions. But if you’re interested, here’s the lowdown in my recent column.
The post Sentence-ending prepositions create an Insta uproar first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Rock & Roll
rock-n-roll
rock’n roll
rock n’ roll
rock and roll
I've seen all these forms and more in my editing work, and it's my job to figure out which one to keep. Yes, they’re all perfectly clear and understandable. But that’s not enough for editors. We have to worry about the whole consistency issue, too. So I always change them to rock ’n’ roll.
I never bother to look it up. I know it’s rock ’n’ roll. I’ve been doing this a long time. But when I’m passing along what I know to other people — mainly, here — I always double-check my facts.
So when the issue came up again recently, I turned to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, which is the final word on these matters at the publication I edit. Here’s what I learned: The entry for rock ’n’ roll gave this for a definition: rock-and-roll.
Whenever a dictionary entry for one word refers you to the entry for another, that’s the dictionary’s way of saying that the other is the main entry — in this case, that rock ’n’ roll is merely a variant of the preferred rock-and-roll.
That surprised me: Where did I get the idea it was rock ’n’ roll? I checked the house style guide for the publication and that’s where I found it: Our house style is rock ’n’ roll, which trumps even our house dictionary, which, though it allows rock ’n’ roll, clearly prefers rock-and-roll. That was a relief. It meant 1. that I haven’t been doing it wrong all these years, and 2. that I don’t have to switch to the weird-looking rock-and-roll.
But that's just for news editing style. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, which most book publishers follow, doesn’t like rock ’n’ roll as a first choice, either. According to that dictionary, rock ’n’ roll is acceptable, but the preferred form is rock and roll.
If you're using a version with apostrophes, make sure your word processing program doesn't turn your first apostrophe into an open single quotation mark, which curves in the opposite direction. If it does, just type a second apostrophe after the first one then delete the first one.
The post How to write rock 'n' roll first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some say “bring” can mean only movement toward the speaker and “take” means only movement away from the speaker. The rules aren't quite that rigid, and native speakers shouldn't waste time worrying about this one.
The post Bring and Take first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Are the hyphens in this sentence correct?” a colleague asked me recently: “The couple moved in to the beautiful 175-luxury apartment-home community just two weeks after it opened.”
Hyphens are often intuitive. People who’ve spent exactly zero minutes of their lives reading about hyphen rules tend to get right terms like “a good-looking car” or “a cloud-filled sky” without even thinking about them.
Other times, hyphens aren’t so clear. That’s especially true for compounds with more than two words, for example when you have “175” and “luxury” and “apartment” and “home” all modifying a single noun: “community.”
Luckily, with some hyphenation basics under your belt, you can make good choices in every situation.
The basic principle: Hyphenate words that work together to modify another word that follows. That is, words that team up to form an adjective, describing a noun. Or words that work together to form an adverb, describing a verb or an adjective.
Compare: “I saw a dog eating lobster” and “I saw a dog-eating lobster.” In the first one, “dog” isn’t part of an adjective. It’s the object of the verb “saw,” working as a plain-old noun. What did you see? A dog, and it was eating lobster.
But in “I saw a dog-eating lobster,” you didn’t see a dog at all. You saw a crustacean. Its tendency to eat canines is merely descriptive.
This is what hyphens do: prevent confusion. They help make it clear which part of a word cluster is the object or subject by sort of sequestering all the other words that could be mistaken for the object or subject.
In the jargon, we say hyphens connect “compound modifiers.” Adjectives and adverbs modify other words, so they’re modifiers, and when you string words together with hyphens, the result is a compound.
Here's my recent column explaining why I used three hyphens to make "175-luxury-apartment-home" a single compound.
The post Advanced hyphenation first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The correct form is “good things come to him who waits” because the object of the preposition "to" is "him" and "who waits" is really just an adjective clause modifying "him."
The post Good Things Come to He Who Waits or Him Who Waits? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“While on the glacier, it was impossible not to feel humbled and awe-struck by its enormity.”
“I stood outside the arena amazed by its enormity.”
“When I look up at the night sky I am just overwhelmed by its enormity.”
If you were a student of William Strunk in the early 20th century carefully following the instructions laid out in his classroom guide “The Elements of Style,” you would have had no problem using the word “enormity” to refer to size — as the writers of the passages above did.
But if you read a copy of Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style” in the late-1950s or later, you would think that it’s a mistake to use “enormity” to mean bigness.
Yet if you open a dictionary today, you’ll see it’s not a mistake at all. What gives?
Well, like a lot of words, “enormity” has gone through significant changes over the years, some stickler-approved, some not.
Team Stickler is best represented by E.B. White, a onetime student of William J. Strunk, who in the late 1950s added about 50 pages to his former professor’s short classroom guide, transforming it into the bestseller that still rakes in the bucks today.
Among the many bits of information White inserted to make Strunk’s classroom instructions sound like universal rules for every English speaker was this: “Enormity. Use only in the sense of ‘monstrous wickedness.’ Misleading, if not wrong, when used to express bigness.”
If you’re looking for the safest, most buttoned-down way to use “enormity,” you can stop reading here. Just stick to the meaning about badness, not bigness, and no one can say you’re wrong. If you want a more thorough understanding of the issue, you can read about it in my recent column.
The post The enormous issue with 'enormity' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people say "try and" is always wrong. But it's actually OK.
The post 'Try And' vs 'Try To' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Michael: The incident has already been reported.
When you see that sentence, do you think that I’m talking to Michael, or do you think that Michael said that and I’m quoting him? What if we added one more line for context?
Michael: The incident has already been reported.
Timothy: Then, sir, all is lost!
It’s starting to look like dialogue, right? Like the words after the name Michael are not me talking but in fact are Michael’s own words. Naturally, if I added quotation marks, all doubt would be erased.
Michael: “The incident has already been reported.”
But the quote marks would be wrong. For dialogue, according to both the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style, from which I lifted this Michael-Timothy dialogue verbatim, you should use only a colon and no quotation marks.
Yet a colon could mean the opposite. Sometimes colons are used to indicate you’re addressing someone directly. You see this most often in correspondence — emails, letters and the like.
Michael: I hope you’re well.
If this were the first line in an email, the reader would know immediately who’s talking. Plus, if you throw in a word before Michael like “dear” or “hey,” you erase all doubt. Dear Michael: I hope you’re well.
It’s a small miracle that this system doesn’t cause more problems. We can usually infer who’s talking from the context. For example, when we see a news headline that says, “Biden: You can’t have the strongest economy in the world with a second-rate infrastructure,” we know that it’s probably not someone at the newspaper speaking directly to Joe Biden but instead a shorthand way of attributing the quote to the president himself. Even if that’s not immediately clear, it usually takes no more than a sentence or two for the reader to understand who’s talking.
It’s a pretty good system, usually. But it didn’t work out so well for Monica Ciardi, a New Jersey mom who went on Facebook to vent about the way two judges handled her child-custody dispute with her ex-husband. Among Ciardi’s many angry posts was this one: “Judge Bogaard and Judge DeMarzo: If you don’t do what I want then you don’t get to see your kids. Hmm.”
Soon after, local police swarmed Ciardi’s house, handcuffed her and put her in jail, where she would spend the next 35 days for “terroristic threats, harassment and retaliation against a public official,” according to the New Jersey Monitor.
Ciardi says she wasn’t speaking to the judges — wasn’t harassing them or threatening them on her 50-follower Facebook account. She was instead paraphrasing the judges’ words and actions as she interpreted them — summing up the jurists’ implicit message. “She got arrested because she forgot quotation marks,” Ciardi’s public defender, Mackenzie Shearer, told the paper.
Yes, quotation marks could have prevented the whole unfortunate incident. But technically you can’t forget a punctuation mark if it was never required in the first place. Here's my recent column explaining the situation.
The post When a lack of punctuation landed a woman in jail first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One mai tai plus another mai tai does not make two mai tai's. It's two mai tais. Here's how to keep those errant apostrophes out of plurals.
The post Apostrophes Wrongly Used in Plurals first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A while back someone ask me about “login.” Should it be one word or two, she wanted to know. Or, more precisely, she wanted to know where I “stand” on the matter.
While I’m always flattered when someone thinks my opinion is worth a diddle, the truth is that it’s not. So “where I stand” is wherever a good style guide or reference book tells me to stand.
According to the Associated Press Stylebook, “login” is a noun and “log in” is a verb. So, if you're following AP style, you use your login to log in. Piece of cake.
The Chicago Manual of Style doesn’t have an entry for "login." And neither Webster’s New World College Dictionary nor Merriam-Webster’s includes a listing for the word. So documents edited in Chicago style should use the two-word "log in" for both the noun and the verb.
The “login” situation is a good guide for other one-word-vs.-two-word conundrums. Often, the noun form is one word and the verb is two words. Take “lineup”/ “line up”: You tell all the players in the lineup to line up on the field. Most style guides and dictionaries agree on this matter.
Here are some stumpers that are easily solved simply by applying the noun-is-one-word formula:
makeup / make up – One word as a noun meaning composition or construction: the patient’s psychological makeup. Also one word as a noun meaning cosmetics (though American Heritage also allows “make up.”) Two words when a verb.
backup / back up – One word as a noun or adjective referring to an accumulation (The sink overflowed because of all the backup) or a form of support (Chief, call for backup). Two words as a verb.
workout / work out – One word as a noun, two as a verb.
pickup / pick up – Whether you're talking about a truck, a UPS man fetching a package you want delivered, or succeeding with a romantic prospect, the noun is one word and the verb two.
giveaway / give away – One word as a noun, two words as a verb.
signoff / sign off – Ditto above. One word as a noun, two as a verb.
leftover / left over - Ditto that ditto. One word as a noun, two as a verb.
And, by the way, nouns can function as adjectives. So if you have a makeup case, a pickup time, a backup plan, a workout routine, or lineup changes, those are all one word.
The post 'Log in' vs. 'login' and other one-word-or-two conundrums first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In most editing styles, comprise means to contain. Compose means to make up. So, if you're following these styles, the whole comprises the parts, and the parts compose the whole.
The post Compose and Comprise first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“I’ll dress warm,” I wrote to friends recently in a group email about a get-together on the patio of a local café.
What happened next will sound familiar to every careful user of the English language: I second-guessed my own grammar. “Is ‘warm’ OK instead of ‘warmly?’” I wondered. “How do those rules work again? And, even if I got it right, do I have to worry my friends will think I was wrong? Can I defend my choice? Will I have to?”
If you know people who don’t care a whit about their grammar, don’t look down on them. Envy them. These folks not only sidestep a lot of this anguish, but, ironically, their nonchalance often ensures good grammar. After all, natural language is where grammar rules come from.
Winging it prevents hypercorrection, which is what happens when you work too hard to speak grammatically and, as a result, make a mistake. “Between you and I” is a good example. The more grammatically correct form is “between you and me,” since “between” is a preposition and prepositions take object pronouns. But people trying to be proper use “I,” ironically making their choice less proper than the people who didn’t try so hard.
That goes double for adverbs. Consider the sentence: Slice the onions thinly. To someone who’s fretting over grammar, the adverb “thinly” might seem necessary, since you’re talking about an action: slicing. But you’re not describing an action. You’re describing a noun: the onions.
“One must analyze the sentence,” advises Bryan Garner in Garner’s Modern American Usage. Here's the full story in my recent column.
The post People who don't care about grammar often get it right anyway first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Most of us are taught that adverbs are words that usually end in -ly and that modify actions, as in Kate runs quickly, or modify adjectives or adverbs, as in Kate is truly incredibly fast.
But these manner adverbs constitute just one type of adverb. Adverbs include words that don’t end in -ly at all and don’t modify actions. Instead they answer the questions “when? and “where?”—words like “soon” and “tomorrow”—or they link the idea in once sentence to a previous sentence—words like “therefore” and “however.”
Here's the full story.
The post Lesser-known Adverbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s an example of a sentence structure I just learned to hate: “There are lye-based products that clear debris out of pipes.”
You may not see anything odious about that perfectly common sentence structure. But when you compare it to a version that’s been revised by a professional editor, the problem becomes clear. Here’s the edited version: “Lye-based products clear debris out of pipes.”
Looking at the two versions, you immediately see that “there are” is unnecessary. Just extra words. Worse, these words force you to add one more word: “that.” Instead of saying the products clear out debris, you must say these are products “that” clear out debris. So the structure creates a wordier-than-necessary sentence.
True, shorter sentences aren’t always better. But they usually are. They make the best use of readers’ time and attention, wasting none of it on unnecessary words.
But needless words aren’t the only problem with the longer sentence. A closer look at the syntax reveals deeper problems.
In our revised version, the main clause has a tangible subject: lye-based products. Tangible subjects have a sensory effect on readers, evoking images, sounds or smells. Lye evokes burning and stinging and danger and a certain power. Even pairing it up with a bland, vague noun like “products” doesn’t diminish its effect on readers.
In the original sentence, the subject was the pronoun “there.” Technically, this is called the “existential there,” which is just a structure we use to say something exists. As a subject, “there” is a real yawner — as devoid of specificity as a word can be.
Existential “there” always uses a form of the verb “be,” in this case “are.” Forms of “be” are among the least-dynamic verbs you’ll find. Being is always less action-packed than doing. I explain how to handle this in my recent column.
The post Another sentence structure to hate first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Lay is a transitive verb, meaning it takes an object: Lay the book on the table.
Lie is intransitive, meaning no object: I lie here staring at the ceiling.
It's the past tense and past participle forms the get confusing. They are:
lie/lay/lain
lay/laid/laid
If you forget those, you can always check a dictionary.
The post Lay and Lie first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I don’t usually focus on pronunciation matters. They don’t much interest me — probably because they don’t frighten me. I know that pronunciation is dictated by usage — we speakers are the ones who vote for our preferred pronunciations every time we speak. So if everyone else pronounces a certain word a certain way for long enough, I can, too.
But there are a few pronunciation matters I find interesting, mainly because they came on my radar before I realized how the rules get laid down.
The one that’s one my mind today is “forte,” as in “Working with computers is definitely your forte.” Everyone pronounces that “for-tay.” I thought nothing of doing so myself until I came across an old Mallard Fillmore comic strip shredding to bits anyone who pronounced it that way. It should be pronounced, the author insisted, just like “fort.”
Sound like hogwash? Of course it is. But don’t take it from me. Here’s the word on dictionary.com, which will pronounce it for you if you press the little audio button saying you can pronounce it either “fort” or “for-tay.”
The post How to pronounce 'forte' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A sentence like "Joe is not that big of a sports fan" doesn't need the "of." In fact, that preposition serves no real purpose there.
The post Intrusive 'Of' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When it comes to grammar and usage, I’m generally non-nonplussable. I’ve been studying this stuff a long time. So when a friend or acquaintance asks me about a word, I usually have something intelligent to say.
But all that went out the window recently when, at a small gathering of friends, I was asked about “nonplussed.” Everyone else at the table had an opinion on the subject. The consensus was that people tend to use “nonplussed” to mean the opposite of what it really means. “Right, June? What say you, June?”
To which I said me — nothing. I had a fuzzy recollection of once being aware of how this word worked. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what the controversy was — or even the definition.
Clearly, it was time for a refresher on “nonplussed.”
The verb “nonplus,” means to perplex or baffle. But you don’t hear it much as a verb. People don’t often say, “Yo, don’t nonplus me, dude.” They could, but they don’t.
Mostly, you hear it in sentences like “He was nonplussed,” in which it’s a verb participle being used as an adjective. Using past-tense verbs as adjectives is standard, by the way. Think: “broken heart,” “painted fence,” “canceled flight,” “known quantity” and “waxed floor.”
“Nonplussed” can be spelled with one S or two, but the double-S form seems to be preferred by dictionaries.
As a noun, “nonplus” means a state of perplexity or a quandary. But this, too, is rare. You don’t often hear “The math questions on the test really threw me into a nonplus.”
In fact, this is how “nonplus” first entered the English language in the 16th century: as a noun meaning “quandary,” which was picked up from the Latin “non plus,” which means “no more.” Here’s an example from 1593 cited by Merriam-Webster. “I am brought to a nonplus, O Lorde what shall I saie?”
It took another century or so before “nonplus” evolved into a verb meaning “to cause to be at a loss as to what to say, think, or do,” which is basically what it means today.
But recently, "nonplussed" has become controversial, which I explore in my recent column.
The post Nonplussed about "nonplussed" first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people believe "none" is always singular. Not so. Sometimes it's intended as a plural and can take a plural verb like "are."
The post None Is vs. None Are first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One of the most common things I have to change in the articles I edit is the way addresses are written. Here's an example typical of the stuff that comes us:
The museum is at 281 Maple Ln., Topeka, KN, 50022.
There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, there’s almost no wrong way to write an address. And, of course, getting it right is much more important than making it pretty. But the way that the AP and Chicago style manuals tell editors to write them can be beneficial to any writer who wants to go easy on their readers’ eyes and doesn’t have an editor to help them.
The most important thing is consistency. An article or blog entry that changes its address style from one sentence to the next isn’t doing the reader any favors. It's jarring and can detract from the information: “The museum, located at 9120 Third Street, moved from its former location at 9128 43rd Terr. in order to be closer to its corporate offices at Three 82nd St.”
So here are two simple approaches, based on the two major editing styles, that can make your addresses more flowing and integrated into a larger message.
Many newspaper styles say to use numerals for everything in an address, including numbers less than 10. They abbreviate only “Street,” “Avenue,” and “Boulevard," making them “St.,” “Ave.,” and “Blvd.” But they only abbreviate these terms when they appear with an exact street address. If the street name stands alone, the street name shouldn’t be abbreviated. So, according to this style, you’d write:
The museum is at 281 3rd St., at the corner of 3rd Street and Wilshire Boulevard.
Newspapers don’t use postal codes for states. So it’s “California” instead of “CA.” If you want to mirror newspaper style, avoid those two-letter postal abbreviations. On the other hand, if you like the handy two-letter versions better, you can make that a style rule for your own website or blog.
Also, many newspapers don’t include the state for any address in the state the newspaper covers. So, for example, in the Los Angeles Times, cities mentioned are always considered to be within California unless expressly stated otherwise. "They visited Fresno; Eureka; Eugene, Oregon; and Spokane, Washington."
Book and magazine styles don’t like abbreviating street names. They usually spell out Boulevard regardless of whether it appears in “100 Wilshire Boulevard” or just plain old “Wilshire Boulevard.”
And no styles I know of ever abbreviate Drive, Circle, Terrace, Way, or Place.
So if you want an easy-to-remember and easy-to-read style, just either spell out every street name or spell out all but Ave., St., and Blvd. appearing with street numbers, use numerals for all numbers, and only include states when they're not obvious.
The post How to write addresses first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Affect is a verb and effect is a noun — usually. In rare cases, the opposite can be true. Here's how to get both right every time.
The post Affect vs. Effect first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Whenever I need to use a word that has more than one correct form, say for example past-tense forms like dreamed vs. dreamt or plural forms like fungi vs. funguses, I check the dictionary. For every word with multiple correct options, dictionaries always have a preference. And they indicate it by listing their preferred form first.
For example, in Webster’s New World College Dictionary under fungus, the first thing you see is “fungi or funguses,” meaning the dictionary prefers fungi.
So you can imagine my shock when I looked up the noun medium and saw that the dictionary’s first choice for a plural was not media but mediums. Had I stopped there, I would have forever believed that this Webster’s — the dictionary I have to follow in most of my work — would have me say, “Print is one news medium, digital is another, and together they’re two different types of mediums.”
That’s completely counter to conventional wisdom. Most people who pay attention to this stuff will tell you without hesitation that one news medium and another news medium together form two news media. (Which is different from a fortune-teller type “spiritual medium,” which in the plural is “mediums.”) Yet, in the very place that this dictionary indicates its preferred forms, it seemed to be saying that I should opt for mediums over media.
Good thing I kept reading. Under its third definition for the noun medium, Webster’s says: "3. pl. usually media: any means, agency, or instrumentality, specif., a means of communication that reaches the general public and carries advertising.”
In other words, the preferred plural indicated at the beginning of the listing wasn't the same as the preferred plural for one specific definition of the word. So, yes, if you consult two fortune tellers you talked to two spiritual mediums. But if you read a newspaper and a magazine, you consulted two types of media.
As for whether media is necessarily plural, that depends on its use. Media is sometimes treated as a plural, News media are covering this thoroughly, and sometimes treated as a singular, The media is going to have a field day.
The post What's the plural of 'media'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
All the spectators turned their heads? Or all the spectators turned their head? Making complements agree with subjects isn't always easy — or logical.
The post Subject-complement Agreement first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome.” That single line from former Vice President Mike Pence’s book “So Help Me God” contains what Pence reportedly told investigators is a serious punctuation error: the comma.
Pence was talking with Donald Trump on Christmas Day 2020 when he told the then-president either “You know, I don’t think I have the authority” or “You know I don’t think I have the authority.” According to ABC News, Pence told investigators looking into the Jan. 6 insurrection that what he really said was the no-comma version: that Trump knew that Pence didn’t believe he had the authority to change the outcome of the presidential election. But either Pence or one of his editors stuck a comma in there, changing the meaning of the sentence and offering a perfect example of just how important commas can be.
Commas have a number of jobs. They can separate coordinate nouns, like “We have a cat, a dog and a hamster.” They can separate coordinate adjectives, like “Our cat is cute, cuddly and playful.” They can separate whole clauses that are connected with a conjunction, like “Our cat is cute, but our dog is cuter.” They can set off a direct address, meaning when you call someone by a name, which is why “Let’s eat, Grandma” means something quite different from “Let’s eat Grandma.” They can separate nonrestrictive information, which means clauses that don’t influence the meaning of the noun: “The man, who was driving, was drunk” means there was just one man, but “The man who was driving was drunk” means you’re singling out the guy behind the wheel from some other guys.
In Pence’s book, the comma is doing yet another job: setting off an introductory clause. Here’s my recent column examining how that works.
The post Pence, interrupted: How a comma undercut the then-VP's message to Trump first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
With collective nouns, sometimes whatever sounds best, is best.
The post The Couple Is or The Couple Are? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Every year, people writing holiday greetings repeat the same mistakes: Merry Christmas from the Smith’s! Happy Holidays from the Wilson’s. We look forward to seeing you this year at Joe Gomez’ house. And on and on. So here’s my 2023 edition of how to make names plural, possessive and plural possessive in your holiday greetings.
Don’t use an apostrophe to form the plural of a family name. Clay and DeeDee Smith are the Smiths, not the Smith’s.
Don’t use an apostrophe to form the plural of a family name even if it ends in a vowel. Just because the plural name Mancinis looks like the last syllable should be pronounced “iss,” that’s no excuse for using an apostrophe. Ignore your ear and follow the rule: Add just an S to make plurals of last names ending in vowels. One Mancini, two Mancinis. One Popescu, a whole family of Popescus. One Cho, all the Chos.
Use and ES and no apostrophe to form the plural of a family name that ends in S, Ch, Sh, X or Z. “We’re visiting the Walshes this Christmas” is correct. Not “the Walsh’s.” “We’re traveling with the Williamses” is correct. Not “the Williams’s” or “the Williams’.” For these, it’s especially important to remember whether you want to make the name plural, possessive or both, because these names in possessive form get tricky. But to simply make plural a name ending in S or another of these letters, just add the ES: We love spending time with the Basses, the Gomezes and the Maddoxes.
Don’t change the spelling of a name that ends in Y. Berrys aren’t berries. They’re people whose last name is made plural the same way most names are: with just an S. The Quincys. The Murphys. The Zelenskys.
Don’t insert an apostrophe in front of an S that’s part of the name. If you’re writing a card to people with the last name of Williams, don’t talk about them as “the William’s.” Two people named James are never “the Jame’s.”
Form possessives of singular and plural names the same way you form possessives of singular and plural generic nouns. You already know to add an apostrophe plus an S to make most singular nouns possessive: the cat’s tail. You also know that if the noun is plural, you usually make it possessive with just an apostrophe placed after the plural S: the cats’ tails. Keep that in mind when writing possessives of proper names on holiday greetings. The house owned by the Smiths is the Smiths’ house. The party thrown by the Mangiones is the Mangiones’ party. Of course, if just one person named Mangione is throwing the party, it’s Bob Mangione’s party. But it’s those plural possessives that you have to watch out for.
Don’t make exceptions for names ending in X or Z. Outdated style books used to say that names ending in X or Z had their own set of rules for forming possessives. Not so. For singular possessives ending in X or Z, add apostrophe plus S: Donna Cox’s party. Paul Martinez’s house. For plural possessives ending in X or Z, first make plural by adding ES, then add the apostrophe on the end as you do for all plural possessives. The Coxes’ party. The Martinezes’ house.
Pick your style for forming possessives of singular proper names ending in S. Some rule-makers say that singular proper names that end in S form the possessive just like every other word: by adding an apostrophe and S: Mr. Jones’s hat. Others say to add just an apostrophe: Mr. Jones’ hat. Either way is fine. Just remember this applies only to singular names.
The post Happy holidays from the Smith's? How not to mess up names on holiday greetings first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Who and whoever are subjects. Whom and whomever are objects. But be careful when the pronoun is in the middle of the sentence. Sometimes you need the object form: "The company will hire whomever they can." But other times, you need the subject form because the object clause needs its own subject: "The company will hire whoever can get the job done."
The post Whom and Whomever first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
For certain nerdy types (you know the ones), language books make great gifts. Unlike mysteries and memoirs that are quickly devoured in e-book form — then forgotten — informative, fun grammar and writing guides double as reference books. You can wrap one up and put it under the tree knowing your recipient will reach for it again and again for years to come.
Here’s my 2023 language book gift guide for every type of word nerd.
For the rule follower: Most people, even grammar savvy types, don’t know about usage guides. These reference books look like dictionaries, with alphabetized entries for words and language concepts. But instead of listing definitions, they offer expert insights on usage matters. Look under E to find a discussion of when “everyone” takes a singular or plural verb. Look under D to learn that a “double genitive” like “a friend of Joe’s” is not an error even though it doubles up on the possessives. Look under C to learn about “compose” and “comprise.” Two great usage guides for the grammar buff on your list: Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage and Garner’s Modern English Usage.
For the Grammar Girl fan: The most beloved grammar podcaster of all time, Mignon Fogarty has a new book out just in time for Secret Santas. In The Grammar Daily: 365 Quick Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl, Fogarty delivers one easy, practical writing tip per day, every day for a year. On Day One, you’ll learn that the possessive of McDonald’s is McDonald’s. A few weeks later, you’ll learn that even though “anxious” usually carries a negative connotation, you can use it to mean “eager.”
Read about my other picks — Dreyer's English, Rebel With a Clause, the Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier and Nine Nasty Words — here in my recent column.
The post Gift books for word lovers first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Grammatically, there's nothing wrong with starting a sentence with and, but or so. But your sentences may be more efficient without them.
The post Can You Start a Sentence with And, But or So? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Readers probably don’t care much whether an article or story attributes quotations with “says” or “said.” Nor do many care whether it comes before or after the name: said Jones, Jones said — it just doesn’t have a big effect on the reader.
Yet, to me, it’s becoming a bigger issue every day.
When I was first learning to edit, it was at a publication where very specific views on both matters reigned: The first was that newspaper writing should aim to be conversational — real-world language that doesn’t draw attention to itself but that downplays itself in order to emphasize the message.
That was the reason we put “said” after the name, unless there was a reason not to. In everyday conversation people don’t say things like, “Said my friend, mall parking is free.”
Regardless of the verb, English shows a strong preference for placing a verb after the subject in declarative sentences. So even though you could sometimes say, “Drove Gerald,” chances are you’ll always opt for “Gerald drove.”
As for “said” versus “says,” the former is usually more precise. “Says” is present tense and describes an ongoing action. So when you’re reporting something someone said in the past and just once, “said” is more logical.
So I edit according to these principles. And, the more I do, the more invested in them I become. It’s especially annoying to me that, when writing feature articles, many writers never, ever, ever put the “said” after the name. Every attribution is “said Wilson.”
Obviously, when a modifying noun or phrase follows the quotation attribution, "said" works best when it comes first:
… said Wilson, author of three math textbooks.
… said Wilson, the company’s president and CEO.
… said Wilson, who saw the accident from his balcony.
In those cases, you need to place the modifying phrase next to the thing it modifies, "Wilson."
One more point about “said” and “says”: Consistency is important, but it shouldn’t trump logic. If you’re writing something using the “Wilson says” form, make "says" your default choice throughout, except when you want to emphasize that it was said in the past and just once. Likewise, if you’re writing in the “Wilson said” style, stick with “saids” everywhere unless you’re quoting something he says repeatedly.
Whatever you do, don’t get irked if an editor changes it. We can be a little rigid on this matter. Ahem.
The post 'Said' vs. 'says' in quotation attributions first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There's a subtle difference between "may" and "might." To use them best, trust your instincts.
The post May vs. Might first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you back your hard drive up? Or must you back up your hard drive? Can you calm yourself down? Or must you calm down yourself? Can you blow balloons up? Or must you blow up balloons? Can you hang the phone up? Or must you hang up the phone? Can you keep the shenanigans up? Or do you keep up the shenanigans? Can you look the contract over? Or must you look over the contract?
And what if we replace all those nouns with pronouns? Like, for your hard drive: back it up or back up it? For balloons: blow them up or blow up them? For the phone: hang it up or hang up it? For the contract: look it over or look over it?
Like so many other aspects of English, phrasal verbs are easy to use but hard to understand. To use them, a native speaker can just follow their gut. You already know that if you’re helping a friend cope with a divorce, you’d say, “You’ll get over him” and not “You’ll get him over.” Yet, remarkably, you’d probably pick a different spot for the pronoun when suggesting she “think it over.”
A phrasal verb isn’t just a verb that teams up with a preposition. Instead, a phrasal verb is a two- or three-word combo that has at its head a verb and has a different meaning from the verb alone. For example, when you run out of a building, you’re not using a phrasal verb. You’re using “run” to mean “to move on your feet faster than walking.” So it has the same meaning with “out” as it does standing alone.
But “run out” is a phrasal verb when it means to exhaust a supply of something. When you say you run out of milk, you’re no longer talking about breaking into a jog. The meaning is different.
Learn more in my recent column.
The post Phrasal verbs: You can look them up, but you can't look up them first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
As kids, we're taught that "me" is usually wrong, as in "John and me went to the park." But "I" is often wrong, too. Use it only when it's the subject of a verb, for example when you both went (verb) to the park. When it's the object, use me: "Come to the park with John and me."
The post John and I vs. John and me first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
To understand when “a while” is preferable to “awhile,” you need a firm grasp on grammar concepts most of us are never taught: the true nature of adverbs, how adverbs differ from adverbials and how prepositions work with objects. Yet people who never learned those concepts often get “a while” and “awhile” right anyway.
For example, when I do a Google search for “Let’s just wait for a while,” which is correct, I get about 470,000 hits. But when I search for “Let’s just wait for awhile,” which is wrong, I get fewer than 16,000 hits.
Here’s what most English speakers don’t know they know about “a while” and “awhile.”
For starters, we’re talking about different parts of speech. “A while” is a noun. Well, technically it’s a noun phrase because it has more than one word. But that’s splitting hairs. A noun phrase works just like a noun.
“Awhile” is an adverb. Contrary to what your third-grade teacher may have led you to believe, adverbs aren’t just those ly words that describe actions. Instead, an adverb answers the question “when?” “where?” or “in what manner?” Plus, sentence adverbs like “therefore” and “however” modify whole clauses or sentences. So if you look up “tomorrow” in a dictionary, you’ll see that it’s both a noun and an adverb. That makes sense because it answers the question “when?” Another example: “There” is also an adverb because it answers the question “where?” Sometimes, these rules for adverbs are a less intuitive, which is why it’s not completely clear that “awhile” answers the question “when?” But it deals with time the same way, so it’s an adverb.
“For” is a preposition. Prepositions take objects, which are always either nouns, pronouns or whole phrases or clauses working as nouns. So when you buy a gift “for Walter,” the noun “Walter” is the object of the preposition. If you’d rather say you’re buying a gift “for him,” the pronoun “him” is the object of the preposition.
Adverbs can’t be objects of prepositions. You can’t say “for quickly” or “at happily” or “with slowly.” And because “awhile” is an adverb, you can’t say “for awhile.” Only the noun form can go there: for a while.
You might guess that, if “awhile” can’t be used as a noun, then “a while” can’t be used as an adverb. So you’d surmise that “stay awhile” is correct and “stay a while” is wrong. Not so. The reason: adverbials. Here’s the full story in my recent column.
The post 'Awhile' or 'a while'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A comma before the conjunction in a list of three or more things — red, white, and blue — is called a serial comma or an Oxford comma. And despite what serial comma partisans will tell you, it's optional. Red, white and blue is equally correct.
The post Stay Neutral in the Serial Comma Wars first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
For years, every time I saw “chaise lounge” or “chomping at the bit” in an article I was editing, I changed it.
By traditional copy editor standards, they should be “chaise longue” and “champing at the bit.” Our name for the long chairs called chaises actually comes from the French, in which “chaise longue” literally means “long chair.” Yet for decades, careless American writers have glossed over that last word and assumed it was the English word “lounge.”
Likewise, “champing” isn’t a verb that comes up much these days. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it means “to chew hard and noisily.” And, based on my experience as a kid hanging around horse stables, it’s the standard word for describing how horses chew. In my mind, it’s a horse-folk term.
Horses aren't a primary mode of transportation these days, so it makes sense that we’d be more comfortable with the idea of “chomping” than with the horse-centric “champing.”
But recently, I’ve started to feel funny about “fixing” them. When I do, I feel that I’m clinging to some bygone standard that is losing relevance by the minute. The “traditional” forms seem less realistic all the time.
A Google search confirms what my gut’s been telling me:
champing at the bit: 45,000 hits
chomping at the bit: 1.28 million hits
chaise longue: 24,600,000 hits
chaise lounge: 12,300,000 hits
It’s easy to see which way the tides are turning.
The post 'Chaise lounge' and 'chomping at the bit'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When your sentences go on too long, or when they're not structured well, your reader suffers.
The post Run-ons, Comma Splices and Sentence Fragments first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Most of us have bosses. And even long after the days when people were inclined to call a boss "Mr." anything, most of us nonetheless feel obligated to show them a little deference.
I suppose that’s why so many copywriters and even features writers think that the titles of company bigwigs must be capitalized in every circumstance.
Joseph Jeeves is the President and Chief Operating Officer.
Mary Jessup is the Executive Vice President in Charge of International Mergers and E-Commerce Manager.
I long ago lost my ability to be objective about all the things that may be wrong with that approach. Instead, my measured opinion on all this caps is a straightforward “yuck.”
Professional publishing doesn’t like using this many caps. So, if you want your writing to look like something in a professionally written publication, neither should you. The easiest thing to do is just to never capitalize them at all. But if you want to emulate the news media, consider the Associated Press Stylebook's recommendation:
"In general, confine capitalization to formal titles used directly before an individual’s name," but, "lowercase and spell out titles when they are not used with an individual’s name: The president issued a statement. The pope gave his blessing.
“Lowercase and spell out titles in constructions that set them off from a name by commas: The vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, declined to run again.”
In other words, when there are commas separating it from the name, it’s not part of the name. You’re not saying Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. You’re saying: The vice president, who is named Nelson Rockefeller.
The bottom line: To make your writing look professional, avoid capitals whenever possible, and resist the urge to pay homage to anyone with capitalization like: Nelson Rockefeller, Former Vice President of These United States, Distinguished Gentleman, and Exceedingly Wealthy Individual.
The post When not to capitalize job titles first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
To write smart, avoid these common apostrophe errors.
The post A Crash Course in Apostrophes first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can two people talk among themselves? Can three people have disagreements between them?
According to some of the more strict language authorities, no. That’s not how “among” and “between” work. But in the real world, the definitions are more forgiving.
Let’s start with this rule for publishers explained in the Chicago Manual of Style: “‘Between’ indicates one-to-one relationships (between you and me). ‘Among’ indicates undefined or collective relationships (honor among thieves).”
What if you have one-on-one activities within a group of more than two? For example, when you’re talking about pairs of member countries of the European Union that trade with each other? The Chicago Manual says “between” works in these situations because you’re still talking about one-on-one exchanges: “‘Between’ has long been recognized as being perfectly appropriate for more than two objects if multiple one-to-one relationships are understood from the context (trade between members of the European Union).”
The equally influential Associated Press Stylebook has the same rule: “The maxim that ‘between’ introduces two items and ‘among’ introduces more than two covers most questions about how to use these words: ‘The choice is between fish and tofu. The funds were divided among Ford, Carter and McCarthy.’” AP agrees that one-on-one relationships within larger groups get “between,” as well: “‘Between’ is the correct word when expressing the relationships of three or more items considered one pair at a time: ‘The games between the Yankees, Phillies and Mets have been rollicking ones.’”
As far as anyone can tell, this rule dates back to 1851 when the “Grammar of English Grammars” (not published, as far as I know, by the Department of Redundancy Department) by a language expert named Goold Brown, insisted that “between” used for more than two people or things “is a misapplication of the word ‘between,’ which cannot have reference to more than two.”
Other grammar authors followed Brown’s lead, and the idea caught hold that you can never say, as Jane Austen did: “This, of course, is between our three discreet selves.”
But years before these experts starting say this use of "between" for more than two was wrong, other experts — notably, one Noah Webster — said it was fine. Here's the full story in my recent column.
The post Yes, you can use 'between' to refer to more than two first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Hyphenation rules are all over the place. So you don't have to worry about hyphenating perfectly. But you can aspire to hyphenate well. Here's how.
The post Perfect Hyphenation? No Such Thing first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If it’s Wednesday and you went to the dentist six days ago, did you go last Thursday? Or just Thursday? What if your appointment is six days in the future? Would you say you’re going next Tuesday? And if you’re talking in October about your appointment 11 months ago, would you say that was last November?
Now imagine you’re the listener, not the speaker. If your friend says in October she went to the dentist last November, would you assume it was 11 months prior or 23 months prior? And if she says she has an appointment next Tuesday, would you assume that’s the nearest Tuesday or the one after that?
The words “next” and “last” are trouble. Consider this reader email sent to longtime Atlantic and Boston Globe language columnist Barbara Wallraff and published in her 2002 book “Word Court”: “I am writing this note on a Wednesday. In my mind, next Tuesday is six days away and next Thursday is eight days away. To my wife, next Thursday is tomorrow.”
Before I saw this, I figured there were two ways to interpret “next” when it modifies a day of the week. Either it means the day soonest to come, which would mean that 24 hours after Wednesday is indeed next Thursday, or it means the one after that — that on Wednesday, tomorrow is this Thursday, six days in the future is this Tuesday and in 13 days comes next Tuesday. But this Wallraff reader apparently had a third take: “next” means a day that follows the beginning of a new week, presumably on Sunday.
So what’s right? What do “next” and “last” mean in these contexts? The answer, I regret to inform you, is that there is no answer.
“In ‘next’ I think I detect the handiwork of the same folks who decided that Sunday should be not only the first day of the week but also half of the week end,” writes Wallraff, who acknowledges there’s no clear rule. She recommends this way of looking at it: “The ‘next’ in the phrase typically [refers] to next week. Never, not even on Wednesday, is ‘next Thursday’ tomorrow.”
For all the trouble these words cause, there’s a surprising shortage of help to be found in language guides. So it took a bit of research to come up with this guidance in my recent column.
The post Which Thursday is next Thursday? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Is a participle the same as a particle? Is a dependent clause the same as a subordinate clause? How about an essential clause? Is that the same as a restrictive clause? The short answer is for all these questions is yes. The long answer is: Don't get intimidated when you hear unfamiliar grammar terms. You may already know the concepts by a different name.
The post Grammar Jargon Squared first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“The ship floundered in rough seas and eventually sank.”
“The ship floundered in the swells off of the Outer Banks for a while before breaking apart.”
“When a cargo ship floundered on the shore, it was often considered providence.”
When I searched Google recently for wrong uses of the verb “flounder,” I found a lot of flubs. Or did I? On second glance, I’m not sure any of the errors I caught by searching the term “ship floundered” were actually errors. On the contrary, the error may have been mine for believing the grammar scolds who complain that almost no one uses “founder” and “flounder” correctly.
“People commonly confuse ‘flounder’ and ‘founder’ because they sound similar and have similar spellings,” one blogger warns. “The words ‘flounder’ and ‘founder’ are easily confused,” says another. And there are lots more where these two came from. For the most part, these online language commenters are right: The verbs “flounder” and “founder” are easy to confuse. But what’s remarkable is that, at least in a nautical context, you’re likely to get them right even if you’re confused.
I explain why in my recent column.
The post Here's why a ship can 'flounder' even though ships usually 'founder' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In casual writing, "alright" is OK. But in professional publishing, the rules are clear: use "all right."
The post Is 'Alright' All Right? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
An inauguration is where we get to see the president sworn in.
How do you like that sentence? Does anything strike you as a little off? How about this one:
A hurricane is when wind speeds reach 74 miles per hour.
or
The purpose of toothpaste was invented to help people care for their teeth at home.
When I’m editing newspaper articles, from time to time I find myself staring at a sentence like one of these and scratching my head. The sensation is a little like getting rear-ended at a traffic light. You just sit there blinking, trying to figure out what’s wrong with the world, momentarily unable to remember how the world is supposed to be.
There’s a term for this problem. It’s called faulty predication. And it’s explained like this: Faulty predication occurs anytime a subject doesn’t make sense with the verb. More precisely, it happens when the subject can’t logically do or be whatever the verb says it’s doing or being.
Let’s look at our first example. An inauguration is where we get to see the president sworn in. I chose this one because it’s nice and fuzzy. Is it okay? Is it not?
The subject is “an inauguration” and the verb “is” says that it is “where.” Technically, that doesn’t make sense because an inauguration isn’t a place. But can you stretch the meaning to “where” to something like “an event at which,” giving us “An inauguration is an event at which we get to see the president”? Possibly. And you certainly could make the argument that the reader understands what you mean. But it’s sloppy. I wouldn’t let it stand in an article I was editing.
Ditto that for “A hurricane is when.” Technically, a hurricane isn’t a when. More precise would be “a hurricane occurs when” or “a hurricane is what happens when."
Our final example, “The purpose of toothpaste was invented” isn’t as forgivable. It’s illogical. The purpose was not invented. The purpose of toothpaste is … Toothpaste was invented for the purpose of … There are a number of ways to extract a logical statement out of this sentence, as long as you’re focused on the illogic of saying the purpose was invented.
The only way to avoid faulty predication mistakes is to stay vigilant and, especially, to reread what you’ve written. When in doubt, ask yourself: Can my subject really do what I’m saying it’s doing? If not, look for a better way to make your point.
The post Faulty predication first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In casual contexts, it's not wrong to use "thru" as a shortened form of "through." But when in doubt, spell it out.
The post Thru? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I saw you working hard.
I appreciate you working hard.
At a glance, these sentences seem grammatically identical. But in fact, the grammar of the second one is wildly controversial, with some experts insisting it’s an error called a “fused participle.”
The fused participle concept comes up most often in the sentence: “I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me.” Critics of this form say it should be: “I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me.” And that one-letter variation, “your” replacing “you,” makes all the difference in the world. But to understand how that changes the grammar, you need to zoom in on how all the parts work together in the sentence.
In “I saw you working hard,” the object of the verb “saw” is “you.” I saw you. The next word, “working,” is a verb participle functioning as a modifier — essentially an adjective. It may seem odd to classify a verb form as an adjective, but we use verb participles this way all the time: a cooking class, a walking stick, your thinking cap, growing pains, a hiking excursion. In all these examples, a verb participle is modifying a noun, meaning it’s working like an adjective. The participle in “you working” has the same role, even though it comes after the noun.
So when you say, “I saw you working,” you get a grammatical sentence with a verb (saw), followed by its object (you), followed by a modifier of that object (working).
But in “I appreciate you driving him home,” the object of the verb “appreciate” isn’t really “you.” You’re not saying, “I appreciate you as a person” or “I appreciate that you exist.” It’s the driving that you really appreciate. So “driving” is the true object of the verb “appreciate.” Yet the first word after “appreciate” isn’t “driving.” It’s “you.” Between the verb and its true object, there’s another word — “you” — just sitting there with no grammatical job to do. The participle “driving” is just kind of fused to “you” with no clear role. From a standpoint of pure grammar, it’s nonsensical. Here's the full story in my recent column.
The post What's a fused participle — and is it really an error? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
To founder means to sink. To flounder means to struggle or move about clumsily. A ship can do both, technically, but if you're writing about a sea vessel, you probably want "founder."
The post 'Founder' and 'Flounder' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you say, "There is a man walking down the street," you're flipping around a simpler sentence like "A man is walking down the street." That's the power of existential "there."
The post Existential 'There' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Should you write "all told" or "all tolled"? The first one: all told.
There’s a good chance you knew that already. I knew it for years, right up until I stumbled across some bad information on the subject, which led to a series of unfortunate events.
For years I knew the term as “all told.” Again, that’s correct. I considered “all told” a close cousin of “when all is said and done.” That’s not exactly right, but it’s a good way to think of it because it equates the telling in “told” with the saying in “said.” Both words refer to talking.
Then, some years ago, I came across a wrong bit of information. I read, I don’t remember where, that “all told” is wrong and that it should be “all tolled.”
I wrote a column about it before I realized it wasn’t true. A writer friend of mine who read the column repeated its incorrect message in a book. Only by sheer luck did we realize the error before the book went to press.
To get this right, remember that it’s about telling – when all has been told. But for a historical understanding of the term, well, that’s not exactly how it works.
“One archaic meaning of ‘tell’ is ‘to count,’” says Garner’s Modern American Usage. “Hence the idiom is ‘all told’ -- ‘All told there were 14 casualties’ -- which dates from the mid-19th century. Some people write ‘all tolled,’ perhaps because ‘toll’ can mean ‘to announce with a bell or other signal.’ But this is an error.
The post 'All told' or 'all tolled'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you use regular quotation marks to indicate you're using a word in an ironic or questionable way, you're using scare quotes.
The post Scare Quotes first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Reader Louise wrote: “My big pet peeve is those who say, ‘It was a great trip for Joe and I.’ … I want to scream, ‘You wouldn't say it was a great trip for I.' It's ‘me’!"
There are several standards of correctness in English. Grammar is one. Idiom, or common usage, is another. A subject pronoun like “I” in an object position is ungrammatical, but you can’t say it’s 100% wrong because it’s idiomatic. Still, to anyone who cares about grammar, it’s bad form. Plus, it’s a minor tragedy because people who say “for Joe and I” usually choose “I” because they’re trying to be grammatically correct — and failing. To get these right, follow Louise’s model: Try the sentence without the other person: “A great trip for I” is clearly wrong, so that’s how you know the most grammatical choice is “It was a great trip for Joe and me.”
Reader Mike is peeved by the phrasing “where is it at?” “It grates like fingernails on a chalkboard,” he writes. Over the years, a lot of people have told me they feel the same way. As an editor whose job is to delete needless words, I understand their reaction. The “at” at the end of “where is it” is unnecessary. But unnecessary isn’t quite the same as being wrong, exactly. Consider “where is it at” to be a casualism that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
Meanwhile, Reader Sherry wrote to ask about people who use “so fun” instead of “so much fun.” Reader Katie doesn’t like when people who’ve been asked “How are you?” respond with “I am well.” And Reader Dick thought he spotted an error in my column. Read how I answered them all in my recent column.
The post 'For Joe and I' and other reader peeves first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Really, there are just four basic sentence types: Statements, questions, commands and exclamations. Here's a closer look.
The post Declarative, Interrogative, Imperative, Exclamatory first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One of my favorite summer activities is relaxing on a chaise longue under an umbrella with a good book. It’s a nice escape from the grueling work of changing “chaise lounge” to “chaise longue” in article after article this time of year — and wondering why I bother. A “chaise longue” is, of course, one […]
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Here are the best ways to write kinship names.
The post Momma or Mama? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Semicolons have two functions. They connect independent clauses, and they work like commas in situations where a comma isn’t strong enough, for example in a list of items that already contain their own commas.
The post Avoid semicolons first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A lot of writers assume that long from ... to phrases, like "From spending time with family and friends to browsing the local shops," take a comma. Usually, though, they don't.
The post From Soup, Comma, to Nuts? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Copy editors notice a lot of little stuff that other people might not. The online news sites that continue to nudge out traditional news outlets often contain tiny hints that they’re being produced by people who aren’t as well versed in language and style as older forms of media. One of the most common examples […]
The post What to capitalize in a headline first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you put periods in "US"? Do you put spaces between the initials in "J. R. R. Tolkien"? Usually, it depends on which editing style you're following. The most important thing is to be consistent.
The post Periods and Spaces in Initials first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When I saw “men’s’ clothing” with two apostrophes, I figured it must be a typo. I was editing a professional writer who’s been on the job for years, and I know from experience that writers make typos, but none — none of them — think that two apostrophes go in “men’s’ clothing.” But then I […]
The post Plural possessives are tricky first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When two versions of the same word are correct, like "preventive" and "preventative," how do you choose?
The post 'Preventive' or 'Preventative'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Fiction writers should know as much as possible about syntax and usage rules and punctuation and word choice and spelling. Then, whenever they feel it's appropriate, they should ignore those rules completely. Once a fiction writer has demonstrated that he knows his craft, readers will give him the benefit of the doubt in all his language choices. But if it’s clear he has bad grammar, every departure from the “proper” can and will be chalked up to ignorance.
The post Should fiction writers care about grammar? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Just because “who” can’t refer to things does it mean that “that” can’t refer to people? Not necessarily. It turns out there’s no rule against using “that” to refer to people: "The man that I marry." "The family that prays together. "
The post The Man 'That' or the Man 'Who'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Though dissatisfied and unsatisfied appear to be synonyms, there are distinctions. Unsatisfied is more frequently used to modify nonhuman terms (such as ambition, debts, curiosity, demands, claims) than human ones and that in all instances the meaning is generally of something or someone being ‘unfulfilled’ or ‘unappeased.’”
The post Dissatisfied and unsatisfied first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Just because a sentence lacks action doesn't mean it's in the passive voice. Here's how to avoid passive construction and why sometimes it's fine.
The post Passive Voice first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you tell which of the following, if any, are complete sentences? Outside! Now! Stop! Onward! Beautiful! Here’s your first hint: Yes, one of these is a complete sentence. But only one. The rest aren’t errors, mind you. There’s nothing wrong with punctuating an incomplete sentence as if it were complete. When you do so, […]
The post Spot the complete sentence first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Have you ever heard someone say that a verb was in the past tense? How about that it’s in the first person? Or maybe that something is in the passive voice? Or perhaps that a verb should agree in number with its subject. It seems there’s no limit to the number of categories we can […]
The post Verbs: Mood, Modality, Tense, Aspect, Number, Person and Voice first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When I saw “men’s’ clothing” with two apostrophes, I figured it must be a typo. I was editing a professional writer who’s been on the job for years, and I know from experience that writers make typos, but none — none of them — think that two apostrophes go in “men’s’ clothing.” But then I […]
The post To get plural possessives right, take it step by step first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
We all know what synonyms are. But the terms homonym, homophone, homograph and antonym are also useful.
The post Synonyms, Homonyms, Homophones, Homographs, Antonyms first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A better guide for when to choose “less” or “fewer” isn’t about mass nouns and count nouns. It’s about singulars and plurals. Consider this scenario: You’re in the express lane, which is for 10 items or fewer, and you realize you have 11 items, so you take one out of your cart. You now have one less item, not one fewer item, since “item” is singular here.
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"You're doing it wrong" is better than "You're doing it wrongly" because "wrong" and "wrongly" don't follow the standard form in which the adverb necessarily ends in -ly.
The post Wrong and Wrongly first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The best guide for when to choose “less” or “fewer” isn’t about mass nouns and count nouns. It’s about singulars and plurals. If you take one out of your grocery cart, you now have one less item, not one fewer item, because “item” is singular.
The post 'Less' and 'fewer' isn't just a matter of mass nouns vs. count nouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Not sure whether to say "my husband's and my first trip"? "My husband and my first trip"? Style guides are unclear whether to make the first noun possessive when the second person is also the speaker.
The post 'My Husband and I's First Trip'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The Oxford comma, or serial comma, comes before the conjunction in a list of three or more things. If you write, “The flag is red, white, and blue,” you’re using an Oxford comma. If you write, “The flag is red, white and blue,” you’re not. Either way, you’re using correct punctuation because this comma is optional.
The post AP softens on the Oxford comma first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It's not "all intensive purposes" and you probably don't want to use "spitting image," either.
The post 'All Intents and Purposes,' 'Spit and Image' and Two More Figures of Speech People Mess Up first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“People like you and I feel betrayed.” See anything wrong with that sentence? Most people probably don’t, but there is a problem with it and, for me, the problem is eye-opening. Here’s the issue: If you want to be as proper and correct as possible, that “I” should be “me.” And for all the years […]
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"Irregardless," is in poor taste. But it's not wrong. It's in the dictionary.
The post Irregardless first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s an interesting email I got a while back:
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Usually people who write me have a specific problem with a usage and ask me whether I agree that a usage is wrong. But in this case, she didn’t have a specific problem. It was kind of my job to figure out her problem -- then address it.
I did the best I could. Here was my response:
<<I'm not sure what exactly the issue is with "Enjoy summer better," either. Perhaps it's rooted in an idea that "better" is an adjective and therefore can't modify a verb like "enjoy"? It actually is both an adjective and an adverb: http://www.yourdictionary.com/better. In the latter form, it means "in a more excellent manner" or "in a more suitable way."
So "better" is grammatical as a modifier of "enjoy." But it's a little unidiomatic. It's more common to say you enjoy something "more" than to say you enjoy it "better." So, yeah, it's a kind of odd.
The other issue could be that "better" always suggests a "than."
"I like Joe better" only works in a context in which the listener already knows who I'm comparing Joe to.
Your example sentence leaves the "than" concept implied. "Enjoy summer better than you would have without our service" is, I suppose, the general idea. But without an explicit "than" or any context to suggest one, a lone "better" seems a little out of place.
As for "Enjoy back to school better," it's a bit of a stretch -- though not wrong, per se -- to treat "back to school" as a noun. Still, I'm sure most linguists would argue that it's sufficiently established as a noun to render this sentence grammatical.
Hope that helps!>>
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Just because a restaurant was the first to put scrambled eggs in taco shells, it doesn't mean you capitalize "scrambled egg tacos." And just because someone is chair of the Fine Arts Department doesn't mean you need capitals in "She teaches fine arts." When in doubt, when the term could be a proper name or generic, opt for the generic interpretation and lowercase it.
The post Some Things You Don't Need to Capitalize first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
We’ve all been there: You’re about to write or say a word when you realize there are two forms and you don’t know which is correct. One of them is shorter, like dissociate, the other seems more logical, like disassociate.
Maybe you’re struggling to choose between preventive and preventative. Or recur vs. reoccur, dissemble vs. disassemble, mischievous vs. mischievious, flammable vs. inflammable, comment vs. commentate.
Which do you choose? And how do you know?
Sometimes in language there’s a blanket solution, like “The one that sounds best is probably best.” But with these word pairs, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. The only way to be sure is to look them up.
Here are some word pairs you can only navigate with a dictionary.
Disassociate/dissociate. I’ve never been comfortable with either of these words. They both sound a little wrong to me. So I usually find a workaround, like “avoid” or “not associate with” or “sever ties with.” Now that I’ve finally looked them up, I can see that all my mental gymnastics were unnecessary: dissociate and disassociate are synonyms, according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, which argues that playing favorites here is silly: “Dissociate is recommended by a number of commentators on the basis that it is shorter, which it is by a grand total of two letters — not the firmest ground for an endorsement. Both words are in current good use, but disassociate is used more often in the U.S.”
Disassemble/dissemble. If English were logical, disassemble/dissemble would work just like dissociate/disassociate. But it’s not, so these words have two completely different meanings. To disassemble means to take something apart — to do the opposite of assembling it. But to dissemble means to lie or otherwise misrepresent something. They’re not interchangeable.
For more, see my recent column here.
The post Dissociate/disassociate, preventive/preventative, recur/reoccur and other mischievous/mischievious word pairs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you evacuate a building? Or are the people in it evacuated? Both are fine because "evacuate" is both a transitive and an intransitive verb.
The post Evacuate first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Every outfit I tried on was either too casual, too loud or too frumpy.”
A funny thing about language: When you use it without thinking, you usually do just fine. It’s only when you stop and question words, grammar and meaning that you realize you don’t understand some element of the language as well as you thought you did.
I was reminded of this recently when someone asked me about “either” to introduce three things, as it does in the sentence about the outfits. Doesn’t “either,” by definition, refer to a choice between exactly two things? A statement is either true or false. A protagonist is either good or bad. Your car either runs or it doesn’t.
So how can “either” set up three things?
Well, according to some people, it can’t. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage lists 10 grammar experts who, in the early 1900s, started saying it’s wrong to use “either” to refer to more than two things. Oddly, grammar experts in the mid- to late-1800s had no problem with it, but this new crop of scolds started a trend.
There’s a flaw in their logic, as Merriam’s points out: The experts who say “either” must refer to only two things don’t take into account that it can be a pronoun, an adjective or a conjunction, and it works differently in each role.
Here’s my recent column showing why in one of its jobs, “either” can refer to more than two things.
The post Can 'either' refer to three things? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"The" puts a huge burden on your reader. Unlike "a," it suggests that your reader should already know about the thing you're referencing. That's why, sometimes, using "the" instead of "a" can be confusing or even rude.
The post Surprisingly Burdensome 'The' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a before-and-after, but not necessarily in that order, from the world of editing. See if you can tell which phrasing for a light feature article was penned by the writer and which is the edited version.
If you fly United with regularity …
If you fly United a lot …
I suspect your inner editor cringed at “with regularity.” It’s stuffy. It’s wordy. It’s vaguely reminiscent of a laxative commercial.
If you had this reaction, congratulations: You have a better sense of language and communication than the real-life editor who changed “a lot” to “with regularity” — much to the writer’s chagrin.
I know this because I’m the chagrined writer.
In this column, I usually share experiences from my work as an editor. In that role, I have a bird’s-eye view of many common writing problems and how to spot and fix them. It’s the job. And it produces a lot of useful examples for anyone who wants to write better or just understand good writing.
But sometimes I wear the other hat, the writer’s hat. And in that role, I am, from time to time, the victim of editorial malpractice. “With regularity” may be the worst assault against my prose yet.
So what’s so bad about “with regularity”? A number of things.
For starters, skilled editors know that, in publishing, conciseness is a virtue. Every word that can be cut, should be cut. Why? Because, as PlainLanguage.gov puts it, “unnecessary words waste your audience’s time.” The prepositional phrase “with regularity” contains more words and syllables than you need: “a lot,” “often” or “regularly” would be more efficient.
Another problem with “with regularity”: People don’t talk that way. Feature articles are supposed to meet the reader on her own turf. As PlainLanguage.gov puts it, “Great writing is conversational.” Know who shares this belief? The very organization that employs that editor. Here’s a line from that company’s own editing guide: “Always edit for tight writing. Aim to be as succinct as possible while telling readers what they need to know.”
Also, “regularity” is a nominalization. Most editors I know are not familiar with this term, but they don’t need to be. They understand it instinctively. Harvard professor and linguist Steven Pinker explains in a 2014 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Why Academics Stink at Writing — and How to Fix It: “English grammar is an enabler of the bad habit of writing in unnecessary abstractions because it includes a dangerous tool for creating abstract terms. A process called nominalization takes a perfectly spry verb and embalms it into a lifeless noun by adding a suffix like -ance, -ment, or -ation.”
I would add “-ity,” to Pinker’s list of nominalizing suffixes and note that you can nominalize adjectives as well as nouns. For example “actuality” is a stuffy noun form of the adjective “actual.” “Curvilinearity” is a silly derivative of the adjective “curvilinear.” And “regularity” is a clumsy nominalization of the adjective “regular.”
Why are nominalizations bad? Here’s Pinker again: “Instead of affirming an idea, you effect its affirmation; rather than postponing something, you implement a postponement. Helen Sword calls them ‘zombie nouns’ because they lumber across the scene without a conscious agent directing their motion. They can turn prose into a night of the living dead.”
One final problem of “with regularity”: By searching Google’s Ngram Viewer, we can see that “regularly” is about 20 times more common in published books and articles than “with regularity,” meaning professional editors and writers consider “with regularity” bad form.
So why on earth would a professional editor change “a lot” to “with regularity”? I’m not sure. But in an age when ranking high on Google searches counts more than quality writing, it seems fewer and fewer editors know how to edit. In my experience, some seem to think that editing means just putting the writer’s words into your own words, without regard for whether they’re better.
The post 'With regularity'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some verbs, like "make," take objects: He makes furniture. They're called transitive verbs.
Others, like "stand," don't take an object object: I'd prefer to stand. These are intransitive verbs.
A third type, be "seem," refer back to the subject: He seems nice. These are called linking or copular verbs.
The post The Three Types of Verbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Something that drives me crazy is the word ‘awake,’” a reader in California wrote to me. “I hear newscasters saying, ‘I was woked up. He woked me up. I was waked up, wokened up.’”
This issue gets tricky. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, “wake” gives you a number of past-tense forms to choose from.
For the simple past tense, Merriam-Webster’s prefers “woke.” But it also recognizes “waked.”
Yesterday I woke.
Yesterday I waked.
And, yes, you can use “up” if you want to with any of these, according to Webster’s.
Yesterday I woke up.
Yesterday I waked up.
As for the past participles, Webster’s allows three forms. (Remember that past participles the ones that work with forms of “have.”) For wake, the preferred past participle is “woken.” But they also allow “waked” and “woke.”
In the past I have woken.
In the past I have waked.
In the past I have woke.
In the past I have woken up.
In the past I have waked up.
In the past I have woke up.
There is no “woked.” But it’s not wrong to say “I was waked up.”
The post Waked up, woked up? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You can run the gauntlet or the gantlet. And you can throw down the gauntlet, but not the gantlet. Here’s the difference between these two almost-interchangeable words.
The post Gauntlet and Gantlet first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a word I never fail to stumble over: waver. As in the recent Yahoo News Headline “Apple wavers as court Reverses Ban on Samsung Smartphone.”
Every time I see “waver” in print, I experience one brief moment of thinking it should be “waiver.” And vice-versa: anytime I see “waiver” I think it should be “waver.” It only takes me a split second to realize I’m wrong. But it’s still a little unnerving to have my mental defaults exactly backward.
For the record, here, per Merriam Webster, is the difference.
waver: verb. to vacillate irresolutely between choices; fluctuate in opinion, allegiance, or direction
waiver: noun. the act of intentionally relinquishing or abandoning a known right, claim, or privilege; also : the legal instrument evidencing such an act.
More simply, to waver is to change your mind. A waiver is a legal relinquishment or exemption.
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Your sense of taste is your palate. Colors form a palette. You stack merchandise on a pallet.
The post Palate, Palette, Pallet first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In an old episode of "The Wire," a newspaper reporter wrote in an article that people were “evacuated” from a burning building. Wrong, her editors tell her. You don’t “evacuate” a person from a building. To evacuate a person, her editors tell her, means “to give them an enema.”
It was an amusing moment in the show made more interesting by the fact that the show’s creator, David Simon, is a former Sun editor. It gets even more interesting when the reporter picks up a copy of “Webster’s New World” dictionary — the Associated Press Stylebook’s designated dictionary and therefore the very one that newsroom would use — and affirming that, yes, the editors were right. “Evacuate” cannot be used to describe removing people from a building.
The tone of the newsroom banter rang true. Professional wordsmiths spend a lot of time talking about such usage matters. But the content of the conversation — the stuff aobut “evacuate” — well, I just wasn’t buying it. The fact that the show knew which dictionary to use had impressed me so much that I almost believed they were telling viewers the truth about its contents. But not quite.
So I picked up my own copy of “Webster’s New World.”
The first two definitions show that to “evacuate” a person can indeed mean to give him an enema. They are: 1. to make empty; remove the contents of; specif., to remove air from so as to make a vacuum; and 2. to discharge (bodily waste, esp. feces).
But the third definition was different:
- to remove (inhabitants, etc.) from (a place or area), as for protective purposes
That means that you can evacuate a person by removing him or her from a place. And it contains another lesson, too. Never get your facts from people whose primary job is to entertain.
The post Can you evacuate a person? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Spell-check is an invaluable tool for catching mistakes in your writing, but you can't rely on it for everything.
The post When spell-check helps — and when it doesn't first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Nothing says “This was written by an amateur” like … nothing. White space. Blank space. The number of times you hit that long button at the bottom of a keyboard. Knowing when to insert a space can give your writing top-tier professional polish. Sound like a goal? Here are five pro tips for using the space bar.
- Single space between sentences.
- Put a space before an ellipsis.
- Know when to space around dashes.
- Know when to space between initials.
- Check a dictionary for spacing between words.
1. Single space between sentences.
The question of whether to put one space or two after a period or other terminal punctuation mark is hotly debated and highly controversial. That’s ridiculous. There’s no controversy here.
For decades, the professional publishing world has followed the standard of using just one space between sentences. That’s true for both book publishing and news media. Even longtime holdout the Modern Language Assn., which guides students on how to write papers, now agrees, saying the only time you would put two spaces between sentences is when your teacher or professor prefers it.
2. Put a space before an ellipsis.
An ellipsis, a series of three dots that indicate that words were cut out or someone trailed off mid-thought, is always preceded by a space … like this. But if you’ve ever looked closely, you might have noticed that sometimes it sure looks like the first dot touches the word in front of it. Sometimes it even looks like there are four dots, not three, and the first one touches the word before it. I can explain.
When the text before an ellipsis is a complete sentence, the rules say you end that sentence with a period. Then you insert a space and then the three-dot ellipsis. … Computers often reformat this series to make it look like four dots in a row, with no spaces between them. But in fact, what you’re seeing is period, space, period, period, period. So technically there’s still a space in front of the ellipsis. When the stuff before the ellipsis is not a complete sentence, don’t add the extra period. Just space, dot, dot, dot.
Here's the rest in my recent column.
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"The person went to the place to get the things" is less engaging for readers than "The bodybuilder moonwalked to Victoria's secret to try on silk robes." So you should always choose the most specific nouns and verbs possible.
The post Choosing Specific Nouns and Verbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Recently, author Neil Gaiman posted on Mastodon a link to a blog titled “The 20 Best Lou Reed Songs of All Time” with this comment: “the first time I’ve read an article that I could swear was generated by AI. Whenever it actually describes the lyrical content of a song it’s either slightly wrong, very wrong, or so generalized as to be possibly talking about any possible song.”
I don’t know much about music, but I know a little about writing, so I was curious whether the form was as revealing as the substance. It was.
Here are the first two sentences about song No. 10: “How Do You Think It Feels” is a track from Lou Reed’s 1973 album “Berlin.” The song is a haunting ballad that explores themes of heartbreak, loneliness and despair.
Now song No. 11: “Disco Mystic” is a track from Lou Reed’s 1979 album “The Bells.” The song is a funky, upbeat track that features a driving bassline and infectious rhythm.
No. 12: “Ennui” is a track from Lou Reed’s 1974 album “Sally Can’t Dance.” The song is a laid-back, jazzy track that features a smooth saxophone solo and Reed’s trademark deadpan vocals.
No. 13: “Kicks” is a track from Lou Reed’s 1976 album “Coney Island Baby.” The song is a fast-paced, guitar-driven track that showcases Reed’s trademark snarling vocals.
I don’t know whether this unbylined blog was written by a computer or by a cat walking on a keyboard. But a human writer seems unlikely. In all my years of editing writers good and bad, I’ve never seen anyone use identical sentence structures on repeat. For every entry, the first sentence had as its subject either the song title, the words “the song” or a synonym, all followed by “is” then another synonym for “song,” often “track.” Then they repeat Lou Reed’s full name, followed by a year, followed by an album title.
At their heart, all 20 first sentences say, “The song is a song.” Here in my recent column is a closer look at why the writing seems not human, plus a look at how real, talented writers might do it.
The post Did AI write this blog? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The word "why" in "the reason why" is unnecessary. Does that mean it's wrong? No.
The post The Reason Why? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a sentence that stopped me dead in my tracks while editing recently: “By purging these bacteria from your gut, online health gurus and supplement marketers claim that probiotics can improve your overall health.”
It sounds fine and the meaning is clear. So this sentence is OK. But editors don’t settle for OK. We aim for precise, unambiguous sentences in which the words say exactly what the writer meant. By editor standards, this sentence didn’t cut it.
Don’t see anything wrong? Ask yourself who, exactly, is doing the purging? As written, this sentence says that health gurus and marketers are doing the purging: “By purging … health marketers say.” That’s not what the writer meant.
Readers naturally expect that the first noun after a modifying phrase is the person or thing the phrase applies to. But when the wrong noun is in that position, the phrase doesn’t attach properly. Instead, it dangles.
A simplified example: “By purging voters, the registrar was breaking the law.” See how the subject of the main clause, “the registrar,” is clearly the one who was doing the purging? But shuffle that around and the intended meaning gets lost: “By purging voters, the election was skewed by the registrar.” Technically, we’re saying that the election purged the voters because “the election” comes right after the modifying phrase.
So here, the phrase “by purging” is a dangler because it doesn’t connect properly to the thing it applies to: the registrar.
The dangler in our original sentence is easy to fix. After “claim,” just delete the word “that” and insert a comma: “By purging these bacteria from your gut, online health gurus and supplement marketers claim, probiotics can improve your overall health.”
Our new comma works with the first one to set off the whole bit about gurus and marketers as parenthetical information.
Ensconced in commas, this clause signals that this is an aside — not the subject of “by purging.” That will come later in the next bit which begins with “probiotics” — the correct subject of “by purging.”
Here’s another dangler that caught my eye recently: One day while working on the farm with her father, they came across a wasps’ nest.
This one makes my head hurt. It was in a story profiling an entrepreneur, so it was clear at this point in the story who “her” referred to. But who do we mean by “they”? Obviously, it would mean both the entrepreneur and her father were it not for one little problem: the first part of the sentence dangles. Why? Because it’s about one person — the person who was working with her father. “They” suggests they were both working with her father, even though one of them was her father. Hence my headache.
To fix this, change the structure of the opening phrase: “One day while she and her dad were working on the farm.” By making this a complete clause, containing both a subject and a verb, you no longer have the modifying participle “working” looking for a subject to attach to. You already gave “working” its subject. So when the word “they” comes up, it’s a logical reference to both the woman and her father.
Another alternative that eliminates the dangler: One day while she was working on the farm with her father, the pair came across a wasps’ nest.
Danglers like these aren’t a huge problem because the reader easily gets the meaning. But if you want to write with precision, make sure that the first noun after a modifying phrase is the person or thing the phrase applies to.
The post Danglers can be tricky first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
People say it's wrong to use "ranging" or "range" to describe things that aren't number ranges, as in "menu offerings are diverse, ranging from fresh seafood and meats to pastas." But it's fine if you don't care what those readers think.
The post False Ranges? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Recently, I was editing an article and came across a reference to a consortium, then to another consortium, then (here it comes) to two consortiums.
I didn’t want to futz with it. I liked it fine. And the tendency I’ve seen in some people to go all Julius Caesar when forming the plural of any Latin noun always struck me as a bit much. I’m talking about the people who lunge at the chance to use “memoranda” without even considering whether it should be “memorandums” because, hey, that’s how you’d do it in ancient Rome.
This may be a good way to justify how they spent a couple precious semesters in high school, but it’s not a good policy for forming plurals. In fact, if you did this with memorandum, you’d be making a bad call.
Webster’s New World College Dictionary allows both “memorandums” and “memoranda” as the plural of “memorandum.” But it prefers “memorandums.” And editing styles usually defer to their dictionaries’ preferred forms, in part because it helps ensure consistency. Otherwise, if editors chose whichever correct form they wanted, some would choose “memorandums” and others would choose “memoranda” and a publication that didn’t watch such things could have all kinds of inconsistencies.
So when I saw “consortiums” I really didn’t want to be that editor who gets all Latin happy on a writer’s word choice. But, of course, it’s not my call anyway. So I had to check.
The dictionary I was editing from, Webster’s New World, says the correct plural is “consortia.” So I had to change it. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, however, allows both plural forms, though it prefers “consortia.”
You can use either one you prefer. Just don’t judge an editor too harshly if she changes it on you.
The post One consortium, two ... consortiums? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In "Tomorrow's a new day," tomorrow is a noun. But in "I'll see you tomorrow," it's an adverb. Monday is not considered an adverb in the dictionary, but it still works like one in "I'll see you Monday." The reason: Even words that aren't categorized as adverbs can function as adverbials.
The post When Can a Noun Work Like an Adverb? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I try not to cringe when people use language in a way that seems wrong to me. My idea of what’s right, as I’ve learned the hard way, isn’t necessarily right. So who am I to judge? But though I can hold my tongue, I can’t just turn off my cringe impulse at will, as evidenced by my reaction when I hear people say, “If worst comes to worst.”
To me, that first T is like nails on a chalkboard. How can worst come to worst, I wonder, if it’s already worst? Clearly, the fear is that something already bad — a worse thing — could go even further downhill, all the way to its worst possible state. So obviously, people who use two “worsts” in this expression are botching up the logical original wording, “if worse comes to worst.”
So I scoffed and I sniffed and I silently judged every time I heard the version with two “worsts” until the year 2023 when, after about 20 years of writing about grammar, I finally looked it up.
Good thing I held my tongue. “The traditional idiom, evidenced by the Oxford English Dictionary consistently from the 16th century, is worst comes to worst,” writes Garner’s Modern English usage.
Merriam Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage reports that the expression “worst comes to worst” seems to have first appeared in print in 1597, its meaning identical to the way people use it now: “if the worst that can possibly happen does happen.” It wasn’t till more than a century later that the expression I assumed was the original, “worse comes to worst,” appeared in print.
“Presumably it was the desire to make the phrase more logical that gave rise to the variant ‘if the worse comes to the worst,’ which was first recorded in 1719, when it was used (in the past tense) by Daniel Defoe in ‘Robinson Crusoe,’” Merriam’s writes.
Interestingly, when I searched a version of “Robinson Crusoe” online, I found on page 183 “if the worst came to the worst” — with two Ts — meaning that sometime between the publication of the edition Merriam-Webster referenced and the edition I saw, someone had changed Defoe’s “worse” to “worst” in order to make it correct according to the standards of his time.
This back-and-forth supports Merriam’s central point about the two forms of this expression: “In the centuries since, this phrase has shown a stubborn unwillingness to settle into fixed form.”
Here's more in my recent column.
The post Worst Comes to Worst? Or Worse Comes to Worst? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Normally, "are" goes with a plural subject like "we" and "am" goes with "I." Yet the construction "aren't I" is perfectly correct and a great lesson on the power of idiom.
The post 'Aren't I' is ungrammatical, so why is it OK? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Many older adults said they feel positively about their lives,” the New York Times reported recently.
That sentence probably sounds as acceptable to you as it did to the Times editors. But what if they wrote instead: “Many older adults feel happily about their lives”? The structure is identical, but suddenly the grammar seems wrong. The adjective “happy” would seem like a better choice — many adults feel happy — than the adverb. So “happily” makes a good test of whether the New York Times’ sentence required an adverb or an adjective.
Well-informed people can disagree about whether the Times should have used “positive” instead of “positively.” But in my view, they made a mistake. They should have used the adjective “positive.” To understand why requires a quick look at which verbs are modified by adverbs.
We were all taught in elementary school that adverbs modify verbs and adjectives modify nouns: Happy adults sing happily. That’s true, but there’s more to the story.
There’s a whole category of verbs that take adjectives, not adverbs, as their complements. They’re called copular or linking verbs, and they either refer back to the subject or deal with the senses.
The most common copular verb is “be,” along with its conjugated forms including “is,” “am” and “are.” Native English speakers understand intuitively that “be” works differently from other verbs. Think about these sentences: He is nicely. We are hungrily. I am sadly. In every case, an adverb comes after the verb and in every case that’s obviously the wrong choice. All those sentences need an adjective: He is nice. We are hungry. I am sad. That’s because the verb “be” is a copular verb. It refers back to the subject. And because subjects are nouns or pronouns, they’re modified not by adverbs but by adjectives.
And there's more. Here's my recent column on which verbs take adjectives instead of adverbs.
The post Feel positively or feel positive? Why the New York Times made the wrong call first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There's more than one way to spell ambience/ambiance, accouterment/accoutrement and lots of other words. Not sure which to choose? One way to ensure consistency: always go with the first spelling listed in the dictionary.
The post Different Spellings for the Same Word? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you have two children, ages 10 and 12, is the 12-year-old the oldest? Or is she the older? Can you say she’s your eldest child? Or must you say she’s the elder child?
The answer, believe it or not, is very controversial. Some people say that when you’re comparing only two things, you can’t use the superlative — the “est” form — and that only the comparative — the “er” form — will do.
Even the language bosses are bitterly divided.
“When two items are being compared, a comparative adjective is needed, ‘the greater of the two’; when more than two are being compared, the superlative is needed, ‘the greatest of the three,’” says the 2003 edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage, which calls it a “blunder” to use the superlative in comparisons of two.
Other experts make a strong case that superlatives are fine for comparisons of two.
“No one will misunderstand you if you say, ‘She is the oldest of the two,’” writes Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage. “The rule serves no useful purpose at all. It is therefore a perfect shibboleth, serving no practical function except to separate those who observe the rule from those who don’t.”
Here's more in my recent column about how to navigate this language issue.
The post Is the older of two also the oldest of two? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Hopefully. Decimate. Data as a singular. Singular they. Some words are so fraught that people will think you're wrong even if you use them right.
The post Skunked Terms first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“When is it grammatically correct to use ‘more clear’ in place of ‘clearer’?” an internet user asked on Quora last year.
There are some problems with this question. The first is that the writer was under the impression that “more clear” is the grammatically correct wording in some contexts, while “clearer” is correct in others.
Second: The writer posted this question in a public forum, where people who don’t know the answer can pretend that they do and where, as a result, people contradict each other with absolute certainty.
“‘More clear’ is not English,” one user replied. “The expression is ‘clearer.’”
“The use of either one is grammatically correct,” said another.
No one teaches us in school where to turn with questions like this. Even I found this matter tough to research. So you can’t blame the questioner for seeking out help on the internet, where you can get good answers and bad answers, with no way to know which are right, served with a generous helping of spam ads for stock market tips and software products.
So what’s a well-meaning English speaker to do? First, toss out the idea that there’s only one correct way to write or say something. English is pretty flexible, so more than one wording can be grammatical. Think about “aren’t I” and “amn’t I” and you’ll see what I mean.
Second, understand where correctness comes from in English. There’s no Grammar Penal Code — no official list of what’s right and wrong. Instead, there are three elements that determine correctness: syntax, dictionary definitions and common usage.
Syntax means the grammatical mechanics of sentences, for example how subjects should agree with verbs. You don’t say, “We knows how,” you say, “We know how.” “Know” is the correct conjugation for the first person plural, so “knows” is ungrammatical when paired with “we.”
Dictionary definitions are more straightforward. If you say “dog” when you mean “cat,” you’re using the word “dog” wrong.
The third arbiter of correctness in English, common usage, tells you whether a structure is so well established that it’s considered idiomatic — correct despite being ungrammatical. “Aren’t I” is the best example. The pronoun “I” usually pairs up with “am,” not “are.” But at some point, “aren’t I” became standard idiom, so it’s correct even though it’s ungrammatical.
So how does all this apply to the choice between “more clear” and “clearer”? Here's my recent column explaining why both are acceptable.
The post Can you say 'more clear' instead of 'clearer'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Octopuses or octopi? Cactuses or cacti? Mediums or media? Some nouns we adopted from the Latin language are hard to make plural because the Latin system for forming plurals as so different from ours. Here's how to get them right every time.
The post How to Make Latin Words Plural first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Are you dissatisfied with a recent purchase? Or are you unsatisfied with it? The two words seem interchangeable because, in most cases, they are. But a closer look shines a light on the fascinating nuances of the English language and how we use words when we’re not paying attention.
“Dissatisfied” and “unsatisfied” both mean “not satisfied.” But they aren’t exactly the same.
“Though ‘dissatisfied’ and ‘unsatisfied’ appear to be synonyms, there are distinctions evident in the usage examples in the Merriam-Webster files,” says Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage.
Despite the word “Dictionary” in its name, this book is a usage guide, which has a different job from that of Merriam-Webster’s actual dictionaries. Usage guides don’t just list words with their definitions. They analyze how words are used, based on databases full of examples from print and speech.
So while Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines both “unsatisfied” and “dissatisfied” as “not satisfied,” the usage guide homes in on an important difference in the examples in its research database: “These examples show that ‘unsatisfied’ is more frequently used to modify nonhuman terms (such as ambition, debts, curiosity, demands, claims) than human ones and that in all instances the meaning is generally of something or someone being ‘unfulfilled’ or ‘unappeased.’”
Clearly, the idea of an unsatisfied debt relies on a specific definition of “satisfy”: to carry out the terms of something, like a contract, or to meet a financial obligation. The idea of a dissatisfied customer builds on a different definition: to make happy, please or appease.
But that doesn’t explain why the two terms use different prefixes. Both “un-” and “dis-” have multiple definitions, but none that can make sense of the differences between “dissatisfied” and “unsatisfied.” Apparently, “dis-” just hitched itself to the “happy” meaning of “satisfied” while “un-” teamed up with the contractual or financial meaning.
These words aren’t mutually exclusive. There’s nothing wrong with saying you’re unsatisfied with your purchase. But, fascinatingly, you would never say a debt is dissatisfied, which would seem to suggest that the debt is a living creature with feelings.
All this brings to mind a more famous controversy around a similar word pair: disinterested and uninterested. The kerfuffle started in the early 1950s when language experts started complaining that “disinterested” was being widely misused and that misuse was eroding a helpful and “elegant” distinction.
“Disinterested,” these folks said, didn’t mean not interested. It meant impartial. As one expert put it in 1970, “The umpire, ideally, would be disinterested; the one who did not care about the game would be uninterested.”
So in this view, if you said you were disinterested in pop music or history or your uncle’s war stories, you would be saying something different from what you meant.
But like so much of the language fussiness that came into fashion in the 1950s, this idea is a little misguided. It was never true that “disinterested” originally meant impartial and that this original definition was eroding due to sloppy usage. Merriam’s usage guide examines Oxford English Dictionary entries going back to the early 1600s to show that this belief is “erroneous.”
“The OED shows that the earlier sense of ‘disinterested’ is the simple negative of ‘interested,’” Merriam’s reports. There’s no evidence it meant “impartial” until a half century later. Meanwhile, “uninterested” has done an about-face: When it first appeared in the 1700s, “uninterested” meant impartial or fair in the way that “disinterested” does today.
So anyone who thinks the distinction between “disinterested” and “uninterested” has been going downhill can rest assured that the words today are closer to their original meanings than they were 50 or 60 years ago.
The post Dissatisfied or unsatisfied? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Along with
As well as
In addition to
Accompanied by
Added to
Coupled with
Expressions like these connect nouns the way "and" does, but they don't make a subject plural the way "and" does. That's how they can trick you into making subject-verb agreement errors.
The post 'As Well As,' 'Along With' and Other Connectors Can Trick You Into Making a Grammar Mistake first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Bank owned properties, commonly called REO or real estate owned, is one of the most common foreclosure investment practices today.” This sentence, which I saw on a real estate website, shows how easy it is to create a subject-verb agreement error.
Verbs should agree in number and person with the subject. Usually, this is simple: It’s “I am,” not “I are.” It’s “he walks,” not “he walk.” But it’s not always that easy.
The longer your sentence, the easier it is to lose track of which word is supposed to be the subject, making it that much easier to use the wrong verb conjugation.
In “Bank owned properties commonly called REO or real estate owned is one of the most common foreclosure investment practices today,” the main verb is “is.” The subject it’s supposed to agree with is a little hard to pin down because it’s surrounded by so much other stuff. But when you zero in on it, you see that the real subject is “properties.” So at its core, this sentence says “properties is.” Of course, it should be “properties are” in which a plural verb matches a plural subject. But the writer stumbled and there was no editor on the job to catch him.
Whenever your subject gets complicated, pay careful attention to the verb to make sure the two agree.
The post Subject-verb agreement in the real world first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Even if you've mastered apostrophes, some terms can still trip you up:
it's / its
there's / theirs
let's / lets
who's / whose
Here's how to keep them straight.
The post Apostrophe Traps first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A friend asked me about the commas in this sentence, which appeared in a textbook she was editing: "Greta had learned about different cultures, and perhaps more importantly about her own.”
My friend, Tracy, thought it would be better if she moved the commas around and wanted to know if I agreed. Here’s how she wanted to write it: "Greta had learned about different cultures, and, perhaps more importantly, about her own."
There’s no single answer here, but, as I told her, I like her commas better because they're more logical. Technically, you’re not supposed to put a comma before an “and” that doesn't precede a whole clause. Though you can if you really want to indicate a strong division or pause.
So here commas do a more logical job of setting off a parenthetical — “perhaps more importantly” — from a sentence that otherwise wouldn't need a comma: “Greta learned about different cultures and about her own."
And if you bristled about the use of “importantly” instead of “important,” you’re not alone. Tracy didn’t like it, either, just like the many people who prefer “important” to “importantly” in contexts like these.
These folks think the adverb form, “importantly,” is wrong here because adverbs describe the manner in which an action takes place. From this perspective, “Greta learned about different cultures, most importantly, her own,” suggests that the adverb “importantly” is modifying the verb “learned,” saying that she somehow went about learning in an important way.
That would be true if adverbs only modified verbs. But in fact adverbs can modify whole sentences or thoughts, as in “Unfortunately, my flight was canceled.” So “importantly” is always an acceptable way to modify a whole thought.
The post Comma question from a friend first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Short sentences are often best, but there's nothing wrong with long sentences if they work. Understanding the mechanics of sentence-building — like coordination and modifying phrases — and omitting needless words are key to making long sentences effective .
The post How to Master Long Sentences first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I’m a little fussy about past participles. Unjustifiably fussy. It may have to do with the fact that I married someone from small-town Massachusetts, where everything is “I have ate this” and “I should’ve went to that” and “You could’ve brung your sister.” And every time I visit, I have to mute the little voice in my head that says, “It’s I have eaten this” and “I should have gone to that” and “You could’ve brought your sister.”
I should let it go. It’s a waste of energy to expect people to use my preferred past participles, especially because most of the past forms that make me flinch aren’t wrong, exactly. “Dreamt” is as correct as “dreamed,” whether I like it or not.
Even when I’m right, it’s silly to care. People don’t say, “I have lain on the beach for an hour.” They say “laid.” According to leading dictionaries, “laid” is wrong in this context. But it’s a moot point. People aren’t going to start using “lain” in casual conversation.
If you don’t want to accommodate my absurdly stringent standards, you don’t have to. But if you’d like to know how to choose stickler-approved past participles, here’s a primer.
The past participle is the form of the verb that goes with “have.” Take the verb “begin,” for example. In the present it’s “I begin.” In the simple past tense it’s “I began.” But in past tenses that use a form of “have,” you say, “I have begun.” So “begun” is the past participle of “began.”
When “have” is in the present and working as an auxiliary, the verb tense is called the present perfect: I have begun. But when the auxiliary is “had,” which is the past tense of “have,” it’s the past perfect: I had begun. But those labels aren’t important. Either way, the word you’re pairing with “have,” “has” or “had” is a past participle.
For regular verbs, past participles are identical to simple past tense forms. For example: Today I walk. Yesterday I walked. In the past I have walked. Just add “ed” at the end of the verb.
Irregular verbs don’t follow a formula for their past tenses. Sometimes, the past participle is identical to the simple past tense: Today I think. Yesterday I thought. In the past I have thought. Other times, the past participle is different: Today I know. Yesterday I knew. In the past I have known.
In many cases, there’s more than one correct past participle. You can say, “I have swum in that lake many times” or “I have swam in that lake many times.” They’re both right.
The hardest thing about past participles isn’t choosing the right one. It’s knowing how to look them up. They’re all in the dictionary, but you have to understand how dictionaries communicate this information to you. Here's my recent column explaining how you can look them up.
The post How to get past participles right every time first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Metaconcepts are stuffy, reader-unfriendly terms that turn simple ideas into vague, abstract concepts. Common culprits include “approach,” “condition,” “context,” “framework,” “issue,” “level,” “model,” “perspective,” “process,” “strategy,” “subject” and even “concept” itself. Here's why they make writing so bad.
The post Metaconcepts first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I think I speak for a lot of editors when I say: Bad grammar doesn't bother us as much as you'd think. Everyone makes grammar mistakes. Instead, we have our own unique peeves, many of them based on the errors professional writers make over and over and over. Here are a few of mine.
Quotations that haven’t been set up properly. “‘They are the finest educators in the country,’ said John Doe, president of the education association, speaking of Barb Taylor’s team.” If you have to add “speaking of,” “referring to” or something like that in a speech tag, you’re doing it wrong. In this example, which I adapted from a real article, the reader has to slog through almost 20 words to learn the meaning of the first word, “they.” Fix this by talking about Barb Taylor’s team before you quote John Doe.
Ampersands on auto pilot. “We’ll serve beer and wine, gin & tonic and rum & Coke.” Some people think ampersands show closer connections than the word “and” can show. So “beer and wine” can be connected with “and,” but for the inseparable pair “gin & tonic,” only an ampersand will do. This makes good sense except for one tiny detail: There’s no such rule. In running text, just use “and.”
For every organization, a force-fed abbreviation. Lots of writers believe that readers need to be taught the initials of every organization immediately after its full name: The National Assn. for Abbreviation Obsessives and Similarly Afflicted Individuals (NAAOSAI). Sometimes they’re training readers in how to read the rest of the article: “Memorize this abbreviation now if you want to understand what I’m saying from here on!” Rude. Other times, the abbreviation never appears again. The writer is just saying: “Stop what you’re doing and note that this organization has initials.” Rude and pointless. The Associated Press Stylebook agrees with me: “Avoid alphabet soup,” the guide says. “Do not use abbreviations or acronyms that the reader would not quickly recognize.” Instead use words the reader knows: the association, the group, the club or, if all else fails, its full name.
Needless words. I recently edited an article that started a sentence with “But what’s possibly most important to acknowledge is that …” This type of wordiness is a big problem if you want your readers to remain conscious. This phrase should be chopped out entirely, or at least pared down to “perhaps most important.” Always look for opportunities to streamline your sentences. Instead of saying the company “is committed to providing” quality care, say the company provides it. Instead of saying the organization’s leaders “make a point to” invest in their local community, just say they invest in their community. Instead of saying an adviser “serves to” guide students, just say she guides them. Instead of saying that patients experience “symptoms such as” headache and fever, just say they experience headache and fever. Instead of saying, along with “a host of partners like” the Humane Society, the ASPCA and others, just say along with the Humane Society, the ASPCA and others. Instead of saying the school superintendent “was pondering the idea of finding” a way to shelter homeless students, just say she was looking for a way. Instead of saying that the common cold and flu viruses “gain entry into” the body, just say they enter the body. Instead of saying “start by separating three eggs,” just say “separate three eggs.” These real-world examples all show how, by cutting out needless words, you can hold your readers attention while saving them a lot of time.
The post Some editor peeves for 2023 first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Should you capitalize "captain," "president," or "chief executive"? If you don't have time to check a style guide, follow this rule: when in doubt, don't.
The post When to Capitalize People's Titles first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a word that makes me all chop-happy when I edit: “both.”
I comes up a lot in sentences like this one: “The hospital provides a supportive work environment for both doctors and nurses to provide superior patient care.”
That “both” is, technically, just fine. It’s used correctly, of course. But it has one drawback. And when you weigh that drawback against the benefits of this “both,” I see no reason to leave it.
The drawback is that “both,” when immediately followed by a plural noun, might momentarily be construed to be modifying that noun only. In other words, a someone looking at the phrase “both doctors and nurses” might first read it as “both doctors” and wonder which two doctors you’re talking about.
Granted, they wouldn’t be confused for long. It only takes a split second to realize that “both” is modifying the whole noun phrase “doctors and nurses.” But if your goal is optimum clarity, precision, and economy of words — which mine usually is when I’m editing — you have to question that “both.”
Does it really add anything that offsets its drawbacks? Not in this sentence. “The hospital provides a supportive work environment for doctors and nurses” says it all just as well with fewer words. So I would chop “both” out of the sentence without hesitation.
Writers use “both” more often than needed because, in spoken English, it can add some emphasis. It can say: Wow. Not just doctors but even nurses have a good gig here. But in print it doesn’t always have the same effect. Readers can’t always “hear” the way the word sounds in the writer’s mind. So “both” can do more harm than good.
Sometimes “both” can achieve the desired effect in print. Used well it can drive home that “wow” point quite well — even before a plural noun it doesn’t modify alone. That’s why I weigh the merits of “both” on a case-by-case basis.
But my simple rule of thumb is: If “both” isn’t adding anything to the sentence and it comes before a plural noun that isn’t its sole partner, “both” is an extra word we can do without.
The post When to cut 'both' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Vis-a-vis doesn't mean "regarding," though lots of people use it that way.
The post Vis-a-vis first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In an old “Seinfeld” episode, perennially hotheaded Frank Costanza resurrects a holiday he invented years before, Festivus. Instead of a Christmas tree, there’s a Festivus pole. Instead of carols, there are “Feats of Strength.” But perhaps the most important Festivus tradition is “The Airing of Grievances,” in which the family members sit around the dinner table while Frank tells them all the ways they’ve annoyed him over the past year.
Me, I’d never trade the eggnog and mistletoe to get screamed at. But now that the gifts are unwrapped and the cookies are long gone, I have some bones to pick with certain writers. So here, in my recent column, is a deep dive into my 2023 editor grievances: Quotations that haven’t been set up properly. Ampersands on auto pilot. Organizations' initials in parentheses after the name. Needless words.
The post Editor grievances first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Setting up your quotations properly and knowing what kinds of information do and don't belong in quotes can make your writing more effective.
The post Working with Quotations first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The subjunctive isn’t as scary as it sounds. Technically, it's optional.
Consider a sentence like “It’s crucial that he goes to college.”
One letter, the “s” at the end of “goes,” makes that sentence indicative as instead of subjunctive. Normally, starting off with something like “it’s crucial” sets up the subjunctive mood. And if we instead said, “It’s crucial that he go” instead of “goes,” it would have been subjunctive. But because we used “goes,” it was not.
The subjunctive is a grammatical mood that occurs in statements contrary to fact: wishes, suppositions, demands, commands, and statements of necessity like “it’s crucial that.”
In those sentences, the subjunctive replaces the regular conjugated verb, like goes, with the base form of the verb, like “go.” Sometimes there’s no difference between the indicative and the subjunctive because the conjugated verb is identical to the base form of the verb. “I go to work” is indicative. “It’s crucial that I go to work” is subjunctive, but there’s no audible difference because both forms of “go” are the same.
In the past tense, the subjunctive applies only to the verb “be,” which becomes “were.” So in the past tense, “be” can become “was,” as in “I was going.” But if you put this as a statement contrary to fact, like a wish, you’d use the subjunctive “were”: I wish I were going.
One of the most interesting things about the subjunctive is that grammar guides don’t say you must or even should use it. So it’s not wrong, exactly, to say “It's crucial he goes” instead of the more proper subjunctive “It's crucial he go.”
It’s up to you.
The post The best thing about the subjunctive: It's usually optional first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"If he be poor" is an example of the subjunctive, and it shows how piratey-sounding speech can teach us about this important grammatical mood.
The post What Pirate Talk Can Teach Us About the Subjunctive first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been giving this note to my editing clients: “Replace floating hyphen with proper em dash.” It comes up when I’m proofreading images, like PDFs, and I see a hyphen with just a space on either side connecting two parts of a sentence – like this. But it wasn’t until very recently someone asked me about the term “floating hyphen.” Is that a real thing?
Of course it is, I said. Then I googled it and learned that, apparently, I had made the term up. But my point remains true: A hyphen is not an em dash. Nor is it an en dash. Each of these three punctuation marks has its own special job.
Em dashes, often simply called dashes, are sentence punctuation — a way to connect ideas and phrases and clauses. If you don’t want to use them, you don’t have to. Commas, parentheses and colons can usually get your point across in any spot where you might use a dash.
But if your sentence already has enough commas or if you want to create visual emphasis — like this — you can use em dashes to signal a change in sentence structure or thought. Or you can use em dashes to set off parenthetical thoughts — and who doesn’t love those? — in a sentence. They can also set off lists of items — names, places, things — mid-sentence or at the end. You can even use em dashes for dialogue, datelines or taglines or to show that speech was cut off mid-sentence.
Personally, I consider it a mistake to use an em dash between complete clauses — this sentence is an example. A period or possibly a semicolon would be better. But not everyone agrees with me.
News publications usually put a space on either side of an em dash — making it sort of float. Book and magazine publishing usually omit the spaces—their dashes touch the word on either side. Both are correct. Here's more in my recent column.
The post Em dashes, en dashes and hyphens first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people really hate "have got," as in "I have got a lot of friends." But if you're OK with extra words, "have got" is an acceptable alternative to "have."
The post Is 'Have Got' Another Way to Say 'Have'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sending out holiday greetings this year? Christmas cards, emails, posts on the family Facebook page and party invitations are all wonderful opportunities to embarrass yourself with punctuation and grammar mistakes. So here, continuing my annual tradition, is the 2022 edition of the most common holiday greeting grammar flubs and how to avoid them.
Wrong: Happy holidays from the Miller’s! Right: the Millers. If your last name ends with any letter other than S, Z, X, Ch or Sh, make it plural by just adding S. No apostrophe. Two people named Miller are the Millers. Three people named Smith are the Smiths.
Wrong: Happy holidays from the Ricci’s. Right: the Riccis. A name that ends in a vowel may look weird with an S at the end, but that’s no excuse to add an apostrophe. If your last name is D’Angelo, two of your family members are D’Angelos.
Wrong: Happy holidays from the Jones’, the Ramirez’s or the French’s. Right: Joneses, Ramirezes, Frenches. Seeing a theme here? No matter the name, you should never use an apostrophe to make it plural. These names work just like common nouns ending in S, Z, X, Ch and Sh, which add ES to form the plural — bosses, blintzes, axes, marches, marshes. So two Ramirezes, no apostrophe.
Wrong: We’re visiting the Miller’s house, the Ricci’s house, the Williams’ house, the Jones’s house, the Ramirez’s house or the French’s house. Right: The Millers’, Riccis’, Williamses’, Joneses’, Ramirezes’, Frenches’. Unlike plurals, possessives actually do take apostrophes. But when you’re talking about something that’s owned by more than one person, like a house, first make it plural — one Williams, two Williamses — then add the possessive apostrophe at the end: the Williamses’ house.
Here's more in my recent column.
The post Happy holidays from the Miller's? How not to mess up holiday greetings first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Relative pronouns like "who" agree with their antecedents, like "I." So make the verb match the antecedent: It is I who am.
The post It Is I Who Am? Or It Is I Who Are? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Style guides, notably the Associated Press Stylebook, have long considered “alright” an error: the correct spelling should be “all right,” they say.
But if you're not following a style guide, "alright" isn't so bad. Merriam-Webster is okay with it. Webster's New World College Dictionary calls it a "disputed spelling" of "all right." American Heritage dictionary calls it nonstandard.
So if you want a safe choice, go with "all right." Otherwise, "alright" is alright.
The post 'Alright' isn't quite 'all right' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Unlike the standard auxiliary verbs "have" and "be," modal auxiliary verbs like "must," "can" and "should" have special properties.
The post Modal Auxiliary Verbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Dictionaries now define “cringe” not just as a verb and a noun, but also as a slang adjective meaning “so embarrassing, awkward, etc. as to cause one to cringe; cringeworthy.”
The post Is 'cringe' an adjective? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One must not use the pronoun "one" in casual contexts or anywhere a conversational tone is required.
The post The Generic Pronoun 'One' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Dictionaries have a lot more to offer than just word definitions. They also show you different forms of a word. Dictionaries also tell you how to form tricky plurals, pronounce a word, use an idiom correctly and whether a noun can be used as a verb.
The post Got language questions? Your dictionary probably has the answers first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you have a Canadian quarter and you're in the USA, do you try to palm it off on an unsuspecting store clerk? Or do you try to pawn it off? The original expression is comes from a sleight-of-hand trick, passing something from one person's palm to another's. Which is why "palm off" should be […]
The post 'Palm Off' or 'Pawn Off'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Which of the following sentences is punctuated correctly? Look for fresh basil at your local grocery store, and, if it isn’t available, tell the staff to stock up.Look for fresh basil at your local grocery store and, if it isn’t available, tell the staff to stock up.Look for fresh basil at your local grocery store […]
The post When comma rules collide first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you want to hold your reader's attention, action-oriented verbs are often better than verbs that contain no action.
The post Action Verbs (Not to Be Confused with Active Voice) first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The one-word lineup is a noun. The verb form is two words. There’s no need to ever hyphenate it. Though, technically, according to the rules of punctuation, you could.
The post Lineup, line up, line-up first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It's not always a good idea to use "while" to mean "though" or "although" because, in some contexts, its meaning can be misconstrued.
The post Can You Use 'While' to Mean 'Though' or 'Although'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Like “there’s,” the contraction “here’s” gets used a lot in front of plurals, especially when some modifier like “a few other” or “some” comes before the noun. Here’s some things you should know. Here’s all the ways you can look at this problem. I don’t remember who taught me so or when, but somewhere I […]
The post 'Here's' or 'here are'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
This is one grammar term that's pretty useful to know. An appositive is a noun that restates another noun, like "a nice guy" in: The company president, a nice guy, throws great Christmas parties. Here's the full story.
The post What's an appositive? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When I was a young editor, I was taught that “headquarter” isn’t a verb — that the word exists only in the plural and only as a noun. So a company can have its headquarters in New York, but it can’t be headquartered in New York. I didn’t bother to look it up. Why would […]
The post Yes, 'headquarter' is a verb first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A dash is not a hyphen — it's about twice as long and unlike a hyphen it can connect different thoughts like the ones in this sentence. Regular dashes are called em dashes and they have a different job than that of the rarer, shorter en dash.
The post All About Dashes first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"I got to go" is an ungrammatical way to say "I have to go" or "I've got to go." But "got" is fine in many other cases, like "I got a raise."
The post 'I got to go'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sometimes a noun isn't just a noun. It's also an adjective. When it's modifying another noun, these nouns-turned-adjectives are called attributive nouns.
The post Nouns as Adjectives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“I’m not adverse to a little risk,” I said recently in a conversation about personal finance. Then I quickly revised my wording. “Averse. I’m not averse to a little risk.” For all my years of studying English grammar and usage, I’ve never been comfortable with the difference between “averse” and “adverse.” My solution: I usually […]
The post 'Averse' and 'adverse' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
An "in" before a "to" doesn't always get squeezed together to form "into." Sometimes, "in" or "on" is part of the verb and should stay separate.
The post Into, In To, Onto, On To first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Homonyms are named the same. Homophones sound the same. Homographs look the same.
The post Homonym, homograph or homophone? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Plurals almost never take apostrophes, even when your noun ends in a vowel and looks funny without one: luaus, boos, alibis, Morellis.
The post When Not to Use Apostrophes first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Think of fleshing out as completing something, like adding flesh to bone. Think of flushing out as shooing an animal out of its hiding place.
The post Flesh Out and Flush Out first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In “this is she,” the first and last words both refer to the subject because of the dynamic created by the copular verb “is.” That’s why, if you’re aiming for proper English, “this is she” is correct.
The post 'This is she' or 'this is her'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Reader Don in Los Angeles County wrote recently with a question about a well-known grammar issue called a “split infinitive.” “I learned about them 50 years ago and I am somewhat sensitive about them still,” Don writes. “I always see them in everyday writing in The Times and other media. Are they now considered OK […]
The post To go boldly? Good news about the so-called 'split infinitive' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Why is "well" correct in "well-paying" but "good" is correct in "good-looking"? It's the grammar.
The post Well-paying but Good-looking? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Filler words that weaken your writing and undermine your message.
The post 'Actually' and Similar Adverbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Indefinite pronouns don’t have antecedents – at least, not express ones like personal pronouns, which are the most common types of pronouns.
The post Indefinite Pronouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If the stuff introduced by the colon is not a complete sentence, don’t capitalize the first letter. If the words that follow the colon form at one sentence, AP style says to capitalize the first letter. In Chicago style, you capitalize the first letter after the colon only when the colon introduces two or more sentences.
The post When to capitalize after a colon first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Reader S.A. in Orange County, California, wrote recently with an interesting question: “I often hear or read comments where an unneeded ‘of’ is inserted, such as ‘It’s not that big of a deal.’ Shouldn’t it be ‘It’s not that big a deal’? It seems odd for people to add an extra word.” S.A. isn’t alone. […]
The post Too big of a deal, or too big a deal? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The rules for hyphens talk a lot about making modifiers, like "hat-making" in "the hat-making business," where it works like an adjective to modify the noun "business." But style books give very little help on when to hyphenate compounds you use as nouns: "He wants to learn hat making/hat-making." Often, you have to guess whether […]
The post When to Hyphenate Nouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Don’t write “it’s” in place of “its.” When you want to show possession, as in “The dog wagged its tail,” don’t use an apostrophe. Instead, use “it’s” only when you mean “it is” or “it has”: It’s raining. It’s been nice talking to you.
Don’t write “your” in place of “you’re.” If you want to tell someone “you are right,” the shorter form is “you’re right.” The one without an apostrophe, “your,” shows possession: Is that your phone?
Don’t write “who’s” when you mean “whose.” With an apostrophe, “who’s” means “who is” or “who has”: Who’s there? Who’s been eating my porridge? “Whose” deals with possession: Whose car is that?
Know the difference between “they’re,” “their” and “there.” “They’re” with an apostrophe means “they are”: They’re nice. “Their” shows possession: Their grades got better. “There” is a location, “Put it there,” or a way to say something exists, “There are a lot of people outside.”

The post Back-to-school grammar tips first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Wrong" is both an adjective and an adverb. So what's the point of "wrongly"? It usually comes before a participle, like "wrongly accused," often to describe an injustice. But there are no set rules on when to choose it.
The post Wrong and Wrongly first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When I was a beginning editor, old-timers coached me on the difference between “compare to” and “compare with.” They were different, these experienced editors explained, and couldn’t be used interchangeably. “Compare to,” they said, shows how things are alike, as in “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” and “compare with” means to examine […]
The post Compare to vs. compare with first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Personal pronouns. Possessive pronouns. Reflexive pronouns. Relative pronouns. Indefinite pronouns. Demonstrative pronouns. Understanding the difference can improve your mastery of the language.
The post The Different Types of Pronouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you say, "Can I go to the bathroom"? Yes, you can. The rules governing "can" and "may" aren't as strict as you've been taught.
The post 'Can' vs. 'may' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you're writing, don't spend so much time sweating the little stuff that you forget about the big stuff. Here's how to anticipate what your reader wants to know.
The post Who, What, When, Where, Why, How first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One of the most common things I change in the articles I’m editing is demonstrated in sentences like this: “The menu includes a delicious, macadamia-crusted sea bass and a selection of seasonal, red wines.” If you don’t see an error in there, don’t feel bad. Depending on how you look at it, there may not […]
The post Commas between coordinate adjectives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You can hyphenate two words that modify another, like a loose-knit group, if it aids understanding. But don't do it with an ly adverb, like a loosely defined term. The reason: The ly clearly shows the relationship between the words.
The post Why You Shouldn't Hyphenate -ly Adverbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In the 1800s, using the word “can” to ask for permission was considered standard English. But in the century that followed, something happened. Grammar fussbudgets got it in their heads that “can” should refer to ability and “may” should refer to permission. So if you ask whether you can go to the bathroom, you’re not […]
The post It's OK to use 'can' to mean 'may' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Instinct goes a long way in helping you decide how to choose between these words.
The post When to Use 'Anymore' and 'Any More' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One time in my newspaper I column, I wrote: “Even professionals have to look these things up.’” A reader named Barbara was irate: “You do that thing that raises the hair on the back of my neck," she wrote. "You split an infinitive! Excuse me just a minute while I walk out to the patio […]
The post On split infinitives and phrasal verbs first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
To be complete, a sentence requires at least a subject and a verb. So how bad is it when it doesn't?
The post Are Sentence Fragments a Problem? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Take a look at this passage: There were many factors that precipitated the American Revolution. Colonists had grown tired of living under oppressive British rule. But without a doubt, the rallying cry of “no taxation without representation” is remembered as the most important sentiment that lead to the rebellion and, ultimately, the Declaration of Independence. There’s an error […]
The post Lead Test first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sometimes you see plural verbs with team names: “the Miami Heat are.” Other times they're singular: “the Miami Heat is.” Which is right? They both are.
The post Are Team Names Plural or Singular? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Churchgoer and concertgoer are in the dictionary, which puts to rest any questions of whether they should be one word, two words or hyphenated. But what if you want to write about someone who goes to the park or the mall or the track? Dictionaries don't list goer as a suffix, which means it's not […]
The post Churchgoer, Concertgoer, Park Goer? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Avoid adverbs” is a popular bit of writing advice. There's some wisdom there, but the it’s usually applied too broadly and sometimes interpreted as “all adverbs are bad.” That, of course, is ridiculous. Adverbs are essential parts of speech, and even the much maligned manner adverbs — the ones that modify verbs and often end […]
The post Some adverbs deserve to die first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The word "every" has an unusual property: Add it to a some sentences that require a plural verb, like "The dog and cat are in the yard," and suddenly you need the singular verb: "Every dog and cat is in the yard." Here's the whole story.
The post The Peculiar Power of 'Every' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Magician used slight of hand skills to steal money while working at the cheese counter at Harrods,” announced a headline in the Daily Mail. Don’t make this mistake. Trickery involving sneaking movements is “sleight of hand.” According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, sleight is a noun meaning deceitful craftiness, stratagem, dexterity or skill. Of course, you […]
The post 'Sleight' of hand, not 'slight' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you wear a grey shirt to a back yard barbeque if, in your judgement, it seems alright because your accoutrements match the ambiance? Not on my watch. Grey, barbeque, back yard, judgement, alright, accoutrements and ambiance are just a few of the terms I change on sight — not because they’re wrong but because […]
The post Alright, grey, judgement, barbeque: Alternate spellings and how to choose the best one first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
PhD or Ph.D.? Master's or masters? Here's how to write academic degrees.
The post How to Write Academic Degrees first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
One of the biggest problems I see in marketing pieces I edit isn’t subject-verb agreement or apostrophe abuse or “forego” in place of “forgo.” It’s empty sentences. Marketing copy is especially prone to empty sentences. The writer is trying to convince you to buy something. But he can’t say, “Just buy this thing.” He must […]
The post Empty sentences and how to fix them first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Dummy operators: When to use the word "do" when forming a question.
The post Do You Know About Dummy Operators? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Put every manner adverb to the “take it out” test. If, by taking the adverb out of the sentence, you lose nothing, keep it out. If you lose some important bit of information, put the adverb back in.
The post Is it true you should avoid adverbs? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you accidentally emphasize the wrong information in your sentence, your message can fall flat. Here's how subordinating conjunctions can put your reader's attention right where you want it.
The post Upside Down Subordination first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Don't know whether to choose "gotten" or "got"? Need to know the plural of "medium"? What's the correct spelling of "doughnut/donut"? Does your sentence require "swam" or "swum"? To most people, these answers are out of reach. But once you understand how to use a dictionary, a whole world of answers opens up.
The post How to Use a Dictionary first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Collective nouns are singular in form, “a team,” but refer to a group of two or more people or things. In other words, they’re singular and plural at the same time. And since verbs are supposed to agree in number with their subjects — one cat is, two cats are — the roughly 200 collective nouns in our language cause a lot of confusion.
The post The couple is or the couple are? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Collective nouns are singular in form, “a team,” but refer to a group of two or more people or things. In other words, they’re singular and plural at the same time. And since verbs are supposed to agree in number with their subjects — one cat is, two cats are.
The post 'The couple is' or 'the couple are'? Collective nouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Use just one space between sentences. Use a space before ellipses.
The post Spacing Between Sentences and Around Ellipses first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A look at cliched expressions: first and foremost, burst into tears, sweat profusely, bleed profusely, it’s a win-win, underscores our commitment, a perfect storm, think outside the box, decadent
The post Avoiding clichés is harder than it sounds first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
nouns, verbs, articles, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions are the building blocks of communication. Here's a quick overview.
The post Parts of Speech first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The two best things you can do to fix a weak sentence: Look for a vivid subject – a person or a tangible thing – and look for an action-oriented verb.
The post Weak Sentences and How to Fix Them first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Highfalutin, fancy language doesn’t make readers think you’re smart. Quite the opposite. A 2005 study showed that the fancier your language, the dumber readers will think you are.
The post Big words don't make readers think you're smart first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Associated Press style says to put movie and book titles in quotation marks. The Chicago Manual of Style, which is followed by book and magazine publishers, says to use italics for book and movie titles.
The post Italics or quotation marks for movie and book titles? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Stationary and stationery, breath and breathe, dessert and desert, compliment and complement: Here are the words that can cause errors even if you know better.
The post 50 Easily Confused Words to Watch Out For first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
To choose between the indefinite articles "a" and "an," consider the pronunciation of what follows. In cases like historic, AAA and FBI, that's harder than it sounds.
The post 'A historic' or 'an historic'? 'A FBI agent' or 'An FBI agent'? 'A AAA-rated hotel' or 'an AAA-rated hotel'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"If” and “whether” come pretty naturally to most of us. And contrary to what confused people might say, there’s no reason worry about them.
The post Can You Use 'If' and 'Whether' Interchangeably? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"And I" isn't always better than "and me." To choose, first consider whether your pronoun is a subject or an object.
The post Sometimes 'me' is better than 'I' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Is it true you can't use "aggravate" to mean "annoy"? No. But you should still understand the difference between irritate and aggravate.
The post Aggravate and Irritate first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Language is ever-evolving, and “loose” usage isn’t wrong. But as an editor, I often opt for traditional, stickler-approved uses just because they seem more appropriate to published works. Here are some of the terms I change even when they’re not technically wrong. Peruse. If you’ve ever talked about casually perusing titles at a bookstore, you’ll be […]
The post Words I change even though I don't have to first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Semicolons can be useful when you need to separate items that contain commas, like city-state combinations.
The post Semicolons in a Series first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Would you write “a county-wide event” or “a countywide event” and, more important: why? Anyone who knows the basics of using hyphens knows they connect two words that together modify a third. The word “county” and the word “wide” can be joined with a hyphen and thereby work as an adjective to describe “event.” So […]
The post Hyphenation: Are you attaching a suffix or a whole word? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Unless you're talking about the law, it's okay to use "rob" to mean "burglarize."
The post Rob vs. Burglarize first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s an interesting word-choice conundrum I came across in my copy editing a while back: “A completely retooled Buick borne of German design.” “Borne,” in my mind, usually comes up in terms like “airborne virus.” I think of it as meaning “carried” or “transported.” So it seems to be completely distinct from “born,” which means […]
The post Borne Of vs. Born Of first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Adverse usually means unfavorable or harmful. Averse usually means not willing or not inclined. You have a little more flexibility than that, but not much.
The post Adverse and Averse first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Scientists have unearthed startling revelations about our Homo sapien forebears,” CNN reported in December. But is that true? I’d argue no because we don’t have Homo sapien forebears. In fact, there’s no such thing as a Homo sapien. It’s Homo sapiens. So why did CNN use “Homo sapien” instead of “Homo sapiens”? Probably because it sounded right. […]
The post 'Homo sapien forebears'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you convert a verb or an adjective into its noun form, like "the walking of the dog" or "the landscape has beauty," it can throw cold water on your message — turning dynamic or descriptive words into abstractions. Here's what you need to know about nominalizations.
The post Nominalizations first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a pro tip for how to make your reading more pleasing to the eye: Use fewer capitals. A lot of writers don’t realize that many capital letters are optional — especially capitals that originate from companies or their products. For example, when writing a restaurant review, they’ll write Macadamia-Crusted Swordfish with Wasabi Miso Mashed […]
The post Should you capitalize 'wasabi miso mashed potatoes'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you want to stick to the most precise definition of "enormity," think of it as a great evil and not of great size.
The post 'Enormity' Is Less About Big and More About Bad first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Ukrainians pronounce their capital city, Kyiv, using sounds that don’t quite exist in English. But it’s closer to “Keev” than to “Key-ev,” which is more of a Russian pronunciation. Other facts about the Ukrainian language.
The post 'Slava Ukraini!,' how to pronounce Kyiv, and other things to know about the Ukrainian language first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Put a space before and after an ellipsis. If it comes after a complete sentence, first end that sentence with a period, then insert a space, then your three dots.
The post How to Use Ellipses first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Every one of us have a role to play” or “Every one of us has a role to play”? “A bunch of students were waiting outside” or “a bunch of students was waiting outside”? “It is I who am here” or “It is I who is here”? “None of them knows what they’re doing” or […]
The post How to navigate difficult subject-verb agreement problems first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
All writing is built on just five basic sentence structures.
The post The Five Basic Sentence Structures first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Adverbs aren’t just those -ly words that describe actions. They’re a broader class of words that includes “therefore,” “outside” and “tomorrow.” Any word that answers the question “where,” “when” or “in what manner” is probably an adverb. The “manner adverbs” we learned about in school are just a subset. When you want to know whether […]
The post Seven deadly adverbs you should cut from your writing first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"The city was literally brought to its knees!" If you use literally this way, you'll be peeving a lot of people. But it's not wrong, exactly.
The post Literally first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In a recent Twitter poll, Ellen Jovin, grammar expert and author of the forthcoming book “Rebel Without a Clause, asked followers to choose between “What she enjoys is dictionaries” and “What she enjoys are dictionaries.” Exactly 42.9% of respondents chose “is” and 42.9% chose “are.” Just 11.9% chose “could be either.” If you’re ever taking a […]
The post 'What she enjoys is dictionaries' or 'What she enjoys are dictionaries'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Open an old book like Oliver Twist and you'll see lots of exclamation points. Today's writers aren't so generous with them.
The post Exclamation Points Then and Now first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Spelling is important. Right? Anyone will tell you that. Except the thing is, sometimes it isn’t. And, when it’s not, sometimes it’s my job to act like it is anyway, which makes me feel like a bit of a schmuck. Case in point: Not long ago, one of the section editors I work for mentioned […]
The post Spelling matters ... except when it doesn't first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You don't have to observe a difference between disinterested and uninterested. But if you do, think of disinterested as meaning unbiased and uninterested as not interested.
The post Disinterested vs. Uninterested first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Today, democratic principles underlie our system of government. In the past, different principles did the same for older systems of government. How would you put that in the past tense? In the past, principles underlied older systems of government? Underlay? Underlain? Underlaid? When the question popped into my head recently, I had to confess I […]
The post What's the past tense of 'underlie'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some say "myriad" is only an adjective and not a noun, which means you can't use "a myriad of." They're wrong, but professional editors often prefer the adjective form.
The post 'A Myriad Of' or Just 'Myriad'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I was recently asked to settle an argument about whether you should write “I’m not into sports” or “I’m not in to sports.” Instinct may tell you it’s the first one, and you’re right. But understanding why is another matter — especially when you ponder similar sentences like “He’ll drop in to see you tomorrow,” […]
The post 'Into' or 'in to'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Q: Is the word "running" a verb, a noun or an adjective? A: All of the above. Here's how to identify "ing" forms.
The post Is That 'Ing' Word a Verb, a Noun or an Adjective? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Sometimes people ask me about pronunciation. And it always makes me sad. More often than not, the person asking the question has been haunted by it for years and never knew where to turn for an answer. They’re thrilled that, at last, they have found a language expert who can set the record straight once […]
The post Should you pronounce the T in 'often'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Just because "I could've sworn" sounds like "I could of sworn" doesn't mean there's an "of" in there.
The post 'Could Of' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The new year is here. What better time to learn how to write New Year’s, as well as Presidents Day, Mother’s Day and a full 12 months’ worth of hard-to-write holidays? Here’s your guide to navigating the apostrophes, plurals and capitalization of holidays in 2022. New Year’s/New Year/new year. When you’re talking about the holiday, […]
The post How to write these holidays first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Flat adverbs, which drop their "ly" endings, are actually fine — especially if they're already listed as adverbs in the dictionary.
The post Drive Slow? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The expression "to pawn off" comes up a lot, including in published writing like a Los Angeles Times article some years back about about mooncakes — small, dense cakes filled with things like red bean paste or cheesecake. Apparently, mooncakes are like China's equivalent of our fruitcakes because they are a lot more popular with […]
The post 'Pawn off' for 'palm off'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The negative "couldn't" is the logical and traditional choice in this expression, but "I could care less" isn't necessarily wrong.
The post I Could Care Less? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Want to improve your communication skills in the new year? Here are some easy resolutions you can make. I will remember the meaning of “if.” You’d be amazed how often I fix misused “ifs” in my editing work: “If the worst happens and you get into a car accident, continue reading for some expert tips and […]
The post Writing resolutions for 2022 first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A sentence like "Also delicious is the apple pie" puts the adjective in the subject position. Nothing wrong with that grammatically. But this structure is often a crutch for writers who don't have much to say.
The post 'Also' Plus an Adjective Can Be a Lame Way to Start a Sentence first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A sign in front of a restaurant reads: “Today’s special. So’s tomorrow.” Not the best way to tempt hungry passersby, but an excellent way to catch the attention of language buffs like Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty, who asked on Twitter: “Is there a linguistic term for a play on words like this?” I didn’t know a […]
The post Garden-path sentences, zegumas and syllepses first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
'Continual' and 'continuous' are similar — but not quite the same.
The post 'Continual' vs. 'Continuous' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
T’was just weeks before Christmas 2021 when I heard a word I probably should have learned decades ago: “clitic.” It’s a language term. I’m supposed to know those. But this one has eluded me till now — just in time to explain the “t” in my cheery holiday “t’was.” I’ll let Merriam-Webster sum it up: […]
The post What's a clitic? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Co-worker or coworker, antiAmerican or anti-American, pre-1950 or pre1950? There's no one-size-fits-all rule for hyphenating prefixes and suffixes. But the rules are flexible.
The post When to Hyphenate Prefixes and Suffixes first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I don’t remember much from school (who does?) but I do remember quite clearly being told that “too,” “either,” and “also” are set off with commas in uses like: Greg saw it, too. I’d like some, also. Tina didn’t come, either. The idea is that when one of these adverbs modifies a whole sentence, and […]
The post Should you put a comma before too, either or also? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
What's longer than a hyphen, shorter than an em dash and can do some jobs better than either? Meet the en dash.
The post All About the En Dash first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
For some verbs, past tense forms are easy to confuse. Here’s a list of commonly misused past tenses and past participles. For some, Webster’s New World College Dictionary lists more than one correct options. In those cases, the dictionary often puts its preferred form first and uses "or" to introduce other acceptable. DIVE. Past tense: […]
The post Verbs easily confused in the past tense first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people say it's wrong to use adverb forms of "first" and "second." Not true. Here's why these two words are OK.
The post 'Firstly' and 'Secondly' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Grammatically, what's the difference between "Joe saw the CEO and "Joe is the CEO"? In the first one, you have a classic case of a verb, “saw,” with its direct object, the CEO. But in the second one, the verb “is” is not so much an action as a reflection back on the subject. Verbs […]
The post Copular Verbs and Their Complements first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There’s no formula for writing a good sentence. But over the years I've spent a lot of time fixing truly awful sentences and, in the process, I've learned some ways to make sentences better. These tips won’t apply in every situation. But they’re worth considering when you find your sentence is in trouble. TIPS FOR […]
The post How to write better sentences first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Why do some people say “an historic” but others say “a historic”? For a long time I thought it was because the “an” advocates were conspiring to annoy me. But it turns out there is, in fact, some logic to their choice. But before we get to that, let’s get the big question out of […]
The post 'A historic' vs. 'an historic' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Last week we looked at direct objects — "a letter" in "I sent Joe a letter." This week we look at indirect objects, the "Joe" in that sentence.
The post Indirect Objects first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here’s a question a professional editor asked me a while back: “Is it true you can’t start a sentence with “it”? We were at a conference, standing in a busy hallway among other people waiting to ask questions. So I didn’t have the time to ask: Where’d you hear that? What’s the thinking behind it? […]
The post Can you start a sentence with 'it'? Of course. Do you want to? Maybe not. first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you spot the object in "I sent Joe a letter"? This week's podcast looks at direct objects, like "a letter" in that sentence. Next week, we'll look at indirect objects, the "Joe" in that sentence.
The post Direct Objects first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Pretty much every writer I’ve ever edited has one habit in common: Every time they mention an organization, be it a company, a nonprofit, or a government department, they immediately insert its initials in parentheses. The Student Resource Research Center (SRRC) works with the National Association of Educational Consultants (NAEC) to help freshmen locate tuition […]
The post Please Don't Do This to Your Reader (PDDTTYR ) first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Contrary to popular belief, "hoi polloi" doesn't mean elite people but instead the masses. But it's up to you whether to use "the" in front of it.
The post Should You Put 'The' in Front of 'Hoi Polloi'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Any discussion about starting sentences with “and” should begin by emphasizing that there’s no rule against doing so. A lot of people will tell you there is, but they’re misinformed. You can start a sentence with any conjunction including "and," “but,” and “so,” provided it makes sense. I start lots of sentences with the word […]
The post Deleting 'and' at the beginning of sentences first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It's a very common mistake: You use "he," "his," "she," or "hers" without making clear who he or she is. Here's how to avoid these unclear antecedents.
The post Unclear Antecedents first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When people resist changes to the language, I get it. Who wants to be told that the rules they learned in school — stuff they believed, like “healthy” can’t mean “healthful” — are obsolete, or worse, fictional? That the sweat equity they once invested in being right now renders them wrong? They wasted their time, […]
The post Singular 'they' has been around for centuries first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you've heard that "graduate" can't be a transitive verb, as in "I graduated college," you heard wrong. Here's the full story.
The post 'Graduate' College or 'Graduate From' College? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When it comes to apostrophes, there are a lot of do’s and don’ts. The least-understood and most crucial of all is: Don’t use an apostrophe to form a plural. One luau plus another luau is not two luau’s. It’s two luaus. One Roddenberry plus another Roddenberry do not make up the Roddenberry’s. They’re the Roddenberrys. […]
The post The do's and don'ts of apostrophes first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When the words after a colon don't form a complete sentence, start with a lowercase letter. But when a complete sentence follows, the rules on capitals depend on editing style.
The post When to Capitalize After a Colon first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I don’t like to talk about my job at social gatherings. When I do, some people immediately assume I’m some kind of grammar nazi and that they have to watch every word they say around me. Others think I’m their kind of grammar nazi and start talking about how they support my crusade for good grammar. I […]
The post Is 'irregardless' a word? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
With phrasal verbs like "run over," you often have two options for where to put an object.
The post 'Ran him over' or 'ran over him'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There’s a lot more to bad writing than missed commas and subject-verb agreement errors. In fact, most of the problems I fix in my editing work have nothing to do with grammar, spelling or punctuation. Instead, a huge number of the mistakes writers make involve things like logic, clarity and remembering the reader. Here are […]
The post Real editing notes I gave to real writers first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people say "since" can never mean "because." They're wrong, but it's better to avoid using "since" this way anyway.
The post Since and Because first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A good portion of my time every week is spent reading and changing sentences like this: “The festival runs May 21-28 with the gates open every day from 10 a.m.-8 p.m.” What’s wrong with that, you ask? Well, nothing, technically. Except that in professionally edited articles, hyphens and dashes aren’t words. Sentences are supposed to […]
The post May 21–28 or May 21 to 28? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A child sitting at the dinner table pushes aside a plate of half-eaten food and announces, “I’m done.” A parent replies, “No, a roast is done. You’re finished.” Is the parent right? Actually, no. Here's the full story.
The post Done vs. Finished first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You learned about the parts of speech in grade school. Dog is a noun. Play is a verb. Quick is an adjective. Adverbs end in ly. Now that you’re grown up, you can handle the unvarnished truth: Language, like life, isn’t so simple. Dog is both a noun and a verb. Play can also be […]
The post 'Well' isn't always an adverb, 'myriad' isn't always a noun ... first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In normal usage, there is a difference between historic and historical.
The post Historic vs. Historical first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here's a sentence from an article I was editing while back: "What's more — aside from a specialized curriculum — private schools are notoriously known for their smaller classrooms." It's the kind of sentence that might not command much attention from the reader. It gets the job done, sort of. But upon closer inspection, it's […]
The post Redundancies can kill your writing first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some dictionaries say an acronym is a specific type of abbreviation that's pronounced as a word, like NAFTA, not a set of individually pronounced letters, like FBI. But not all dictionaries agree.
The post Is an Acronym Different From an Abbreviation? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Every once in a while, I come across a sentence that uses “others” like this: “Smith’s poems have appeared in the New Yorker, PoetsQuarterly, and Reflections, among others.” It’s the kind of thing that you could let slip by you a thousand times and think nothing of it till one day you pause long enough […]
The post 'Among others' should make clear: other whats? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The difference between "compared to" and "compared with" is often exaggerated.
The post 'Compared To' or 'Compared With'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you’re ever tempted to write “in regards to,” don’t. Ditto that for “with regards to.” It’s too risky. Readers may think less of you if you do. True, you can’t police everything you write to appease sticklers. After all, they can find fault with almost any arrangement of words. But “in regards to” and […]
The post 'In regards to'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Is it wrong to say "It begs the question" when you mean to say "It raises the question"? Not exactly, but you may want to avoid it anyway. Here's why.
The post Beg the Question first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Lexicographers spend all day looking for new words and new ways people are using old words. They search different “corpora,” or language databases, to see how often the terms show up. Then they try to gauge whether the word has become entrenched enough to warrant a spot in the dictionary. Often, they get it right. […]
The post Crisphead, buppie, axion and other words that haven't stood the test of time first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You rein in spending, like a horse's reins, but your idea reigns supreme, like a queen or king reigns. Here's the whole story.
The post Rein vs. Reign first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Does your Bostonian friend hail from the City of Boston or the city of Boston? Before you answer, here’s a hint: It depends who’s asking. I flunked this question on an editing quiz recently. I got it wrong even though I’ve spent decades — literal decades — getting paid to change City of Los Angeles to city […]
The post Should you capitalize 'city' in 'city of Boston'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
These two words have distinctly differently emphases, but their meanings overlap.
The post Anxious vs. Eager first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A while back I was editing an article and came across a sentence like “The community is predominately white.” It took me till the second read to notice that “predominately” wasn’t “predominantly.” And I was pretty proud of myself when I caught this “error.” But luckily I wasn’t so cocky as to trust my own […]
The post Predominantly or predominately? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You got the job you wanted. You got the job that you wanted. Why is "that" optional? It's called the zero relative pronoun.
The post Zero Relative Pronoun first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you think "less" is for mass nouns like "milk," and "fewer" is for count nouns like "jellybeans," you'll choose well most of the time. But you'll do better if you think of "less" as being for singular nouns and "fewer" for plural nouns. Here's the full story.
The post Less vs. fewer first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
As every qualified language commentator under the sun has been saying for years: There’s no rule against ending a sentence with a preposition. Yet the myth lives on. When I wrote a recent column about a co-worker of mine who’s still victim to the myth, I got a number of e-mails from readers who were […]
The post Ganging up on the myth that you can't end a sentence with a preposition first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
It was the headline that launched a thousand linguistics blog posts: “Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms.” In 2009, a copy editor spotted this headline in Japan Today. Then he logged on to an internet language forum to ponder the question: “What’s a crash blossom?” The rest is linguistics history. What had been a nonsensical […]
The post Crash blossoms first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Using "forego" in place of "forgo" is a very common error. If you mean to do without something, do without the E.
The post Forgo and Forego first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“I have been arguing with my husband about the word ‘try’ for years and I think you might be the right person to help me figure it out,” a reader wrote recently. “I was taught that it is unacceptable to say ‘try and’ because it should be ‘try to.’ An example would be as follows: […]
The post 'Try to' vs. 'try and' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
You can use "a while" in almost any situation, but "awhile" isn't as versatile. For an easy cheat, don't use "awhile" after "for." Here's the whole story.
The post A While vs. Awhile first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“Our Bomb Squad officers were in the process of seizing over 5,000 pounds of illegal fireworks in the area of 27th Street and San Pedro. Some of the fireworks were being stored in our Bomb Squad trailer as a precautionary measure. Unknown at this time what caused an explosion.” That was the only tweet from the Los […]
The post How the LAPD took the bang out of its explosion announcement ... first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Even if you know better, this error can sneak up on you.
The post Sneak 'Peak'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Of all the nitpicky tasks I perform while copyediting and proofreading, here’s the nitpickiest: You know how you use apostrophes when you write rock ’n’ roll or ’80s or ’twas? Well, my job includes making sure that those apostrophes are actually apostrophes and not apostrophe imposters. Type rock ’n’ roll into Microsoft Word, look at […]
The post When is an apostrophe not an apostrophe? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A popular gripe among language pedants: It's nonsensical to say "the reason is because." Logically, it should be "the reason is that." Are they right? Yes and no, mostly no.
The post The Reason Is Because? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
E is the most-used letter in the English alphabet. It’s also the most evil. This seemingly innocent vowel comes up in 11% of words in the dictionary, leaving second-place S in its dust at 8.7%. But in my highly unscientific analysis, E comes up in a hugely disproportionate number of spelling errors — like, maybe […]
The post Commonly misspelled words where E is the culprit first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Would you say the camper lighted the fire or lit the fire? Here's how to decide.
The post Lighted vs. Lit first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The Cult of the Oxford Comma reared its ugly head recently on Twitter when an obscure California attorney tweeted an example of the Oxford comma’s supposed superiority. The tweet was an image of a Politico headline: “How Harry Reid, a Terrorist Interrogator and the Singer From Blink-182 Took UFOs Mainstream.” Above the image was the lawyer’s commentary: […]
The post This headline didn't prove the Oxford comma is superior — it proved it's not first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The only thing harder than plural possessives like kids' is irregular plural possessives like children's. Here's how to put the apostrophe in the right place.
The post Mens, womens, childrens? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Imagine you’re taking an editing test and you come across the following sentence. “Barbara says Jack also is enrolling in classes in libiral arts, algebra, economics and is considering joining the soccer team.” What do you do? You fix the spelling of “liberal,” obviously. Even if your eyes glossed over that, you catch it when […]
The post More thoughts on faulty parallel structure first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In the 1988 film Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman's character said his brother, played by Tom Cruise, "yelled and pulled and hurt my neck," suggesting Cruise's character not only pulled his neck and hurt his neck but also yelled his neck. Here's what you need to know about faulty parallels like this one.
The post Faulty Parallels first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A lot of people get tripped up on suffixes, unsure whether to hyphenate them or whether it’s okay to slap them right on the ends words, thereby forming conglomerations that send spellchecker into panic mode: words like “neighborhoodwide,” “instrumentborne,” and “dismissable.” The alternatives don’t look much better: neighborhood-wide, instrument-borne, dismiss-able neighborhood wide, instrument borne, dismiss […]
The post Suffixes: How to know whether it's systemwide or system-wide first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Whom are you talking to" sound too formal? Good news: the rules on when to use "whom" are even more flexible when it's the first word in the sentence.
The post Who vs. Whom at the Beginning of a Sentence first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you try to use good grammar? That’s great. Chances are your efforts pay off and you’re a better communicator as a result. But if you try too hard, your efforts can backfire. Grammar rules are based on common usage — the way people speak naturally. So it’s a paradox of language that the more […]
The post 5 times when trying too hard makes your grammar worse instead of better first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"An" is what you use instead of "a" when the word that follows starts with a vowel sound. But it's not always eays.
The post Indefinite Articles 'A' and 'An' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I don’t remember much from school (who does?) but I do remember quite clearly being told that “too,” “either,” and “also” are set off with commas in uses like: Greg saw it, too. I’d like some, also. Tina didn’t come, either. The idea is that when one of these adverbs modifies a whole sentence, and […]
The post Should you put a comma before 'too,' 'either,' or 'also'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Is it better to say "He is taller than I" or "He is taller than me"? Both are acceptable, but if you want to stay true to the rules of syntax, "than I" is probably better.
The post 'Than I' or 'Than Me'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A few years back I set out to write a comprehensive punctuation book — one that laid out the rules for proper punctuation in every situation imaginable. How naïve I was. You don’t have to spend a lot of time digging through reference books to know that in some situations, there are no rules. For […]
The post 5 punctuation problems even experts can't agree on first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you loan someone money? Or do you lend it to him? Good news: Either is correct. But lend is considered more proper.
The post Loan and Lend first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Most people have language peeves. Editors’ peeves are different. After years spent laser-focused on writers’ mistakes, we can become hypersensitive to grammar mistakes, word choice errors and reader-unfriendly language that most English speakers may not notice at all. For example: “Among others” with no antecedent for “others.” Consider the sentence: “This includes meals, room charges, […]
The post The airing of peeves ... first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The choice between "He is taller than I" and "He is taller than me" can seem difficult. Traditionalists say there are strict rules. But your options are more flexible than that.
The post 'Than I' or 'Than Me'? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here's a mistake I've seen several times lately; using a semicolon instead of a colon in a sentence like this. Colons can introduce information, sort of like a drumroll. I saw what you were doing: nothing at all. Semicolons separate complete clauses — units that could stand alone as sentences. Joe has many fine qualities; […]
The post A semicolon is not a colon first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Both healthcare and health care are correct, depending on which editing style you're following.
The post Healthcare, Health Care, Health-Care? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
For a tiny word, “of” causes a lot of trouble. It pops up where it doesn’t belong in sentences like “I should of known.” It baffles even word-savvy users in expressions like “too big of a deal.” And it has an uncanny power to promote wordy, inefficient prose. If you grew up speaking English, you […]
The post Of 'of' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Some people believe you can't say "these ones" because "one" is necessarily singular. Not so.
The post These ones? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Kinship names like Mama raise a number of questions, like how to spell them and when to capitalize them. Here's what you need to know. Spoiler alert: mama and momma are both okay.
The post Mama or Momma? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
About a decade ago, I read a blog written by a linguistics student who proclaimed, “Prescriptivism must die!!!” He was talking about the school of thought that believes that textbooks and other language authorities should lay down rules about how to use certain words and grammatical structures. This school of thought, which ruled the day […]
The post Prescriptivist grammar rules that are dying out first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
No matter how long you’ve been speaking English, no matter how hard you’ve worked to perfect your grammar, some past tense verbs can stump you. For example, the day after you decide to grin and bear it, would you say “I grinned and bore it?” Beared? Born? That shiny car you saw yesterday, would you […]
The post Shined or shone? 4 tricky past tenses first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Ever see both numerals and spelled out numbers in the same sentence, like "Between five and 15 people can book a group tour"? That's not an accident. Here's what you need to know about writing numbers.
The post When Should You Spell Out Numbers? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There are a million ways to write badly, from corny dialogue to illogical juxtapositions of facts. But at the sentence level, some problems crop up again and again. And a lot of them are easy to fix, or at least improve. Here are seven tips for fixing some of the most common writing problems I […]
The post 7 tips to take on bad writing first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Hyphen rules are complicated. But a few simple guidelines will get you through most situations. Here's what you need to know.
The post Hyphenation first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.” “When you catch an adjective, kill it.” “Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs.” These three bits of writing advice, from experts Stephen King, Ben Yagoda and the team of Strunk and White, aren’t just their authors’. They’re pervasive in writing and teaching […]
The post A test to decide whether to delete adverbs and adjectives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Brad walked to the library, the post office and drove to the park. Faulty parallels are a very common problem. In the example above, we're erroneously suggesting "Brad walked to drove to the park." Here's how to prevent and fix this parallels gone wrong.
The post Faulty Parallels first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
When you say on the phone "This is she," you're actually employing a very sophisticated grammar concept: the predicate nominative. Here's what you need to know.
The post This Is She or This Is Her? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you ever login to your email? Or do you log in? Either way, do you use your log-in? During the holiday season, do you use gift wrap to gift-wrap gifts? Do you use your pickup to pick up the kids as they hang out at their favorite hangout? If you find these matters […]
The post Login or log in? Water-ski or water ski? Tackling tricky hyphenation issues first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
We modern English speakers don’t use “bate” as a verb. So it’s logical to assume the term is “baited breath.” But in fact, “bated” derives from the verb “abated,” and “bated breath” gets credited to Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”: “Or shall I bend low and in a bondsman’s key, with bated breath and whisp’ring […]
The post 'Baited breath' and other commonly confused expressions first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
How do you know if "majority" takes a singular verb like "is" or a plural verb like "are"?
The post A Majority Is or a Majority Are? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In American English, a period or comma always comes before a closing quotation mark, like "this." That's true regardless of what the quotation marks contain — quoted speech, a noted word, a movie title. But not all punctuation marks have the same relationship with quotation marks. Here's the full story.
The post Where Do You Put Quotation Marks Relative to Other Punctuation? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A while back, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez spent the night in a tent in front of City Hall to get the pulse of the local incarnation of the Occupy Wall Street protests. He learned a lot, he said, but the experience still left some questions unanswered: “Will it grow into a cohesive movement? […]
The post Should you put a question mark after 'who knows?' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Can you share something between three friends? Or Is "between" only for groups of two, with "among" the required term for three or more? Some people will tell you it's the latter. But it's not quite that simple. Here's what you need to know.
The post Among or Between? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A week in the life of a copy editor wouldn’t make for a good movie — a lot of sitting, staring and tapping at the comma key on a computer. But for language nerds and people who’d like to improve their grammar skills, an ultra-condensed week in the life of a copy editor could […]
The post Cache for cachet, an apostrophe without an S to form a possessive and other issues from the week in editing first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I don’t see the contraction ’til much anymore. I used to see it a lot, but I suspect that ever-more-advance spell-checkers on our computers, phones and social media platforms have learned to flag or correct ’til. Don’t see a problem with ’til? Technically, there isn’t one. In general usage, ’til is not an error. […]
The post Why you should choose till over 'til first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Knowing the difference between compliment and complement is the mark of a professional — a must-know for anyone concerned about looking their best in print. Here's how to keep them straight.
The post Compliment and Complement first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
All it takes to keep these homophones straight is a quick overview of the difference. Here it is.
The post Palette, pallet, palate first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Does the passive voice lend itself to biased, manipulative writing? A reader named Richard wanted to know after witnessing a discussion about a news article. “Someone criticized an article on politics, implying it was slanted, saying, ‘It was full of passive-voice statements,’” he said. “I have a rudimentary understanding of the passive voice and […]
The post Why passive voice is great for dishonest writers — and everyone else, too first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
"Harsh writing advice" was trending on Twitter the other day, with users offering their thoughts on the craft — everything from the tried-and-true "just write, dammit" mantra to tips on how to create characters. My contributions, naturally, had to do with grammar. And they were based on years of experience reading and fixing […]
The post Harsh writing advice first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Reaching into her purse, Mary pulled out her phone … Participial phrases like "reaching into her purse" are an indispensable part of the English language. But they're also common culprits in bad prose — inserting unnecessary or obvious information or linking ideas in ways that don't quite make sense. Here's how to make sure […]
The post Why You Shouldn't Use Participial Phrases as a Crutch first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
What do you think of the sentence “There’s multiple opportunities for youngsters”? How about “There’s many people who wish to travel”? How about “There’s a lot of students who wish to travel”? If you’re like most English speakers, you’re fine with it. Chances are, you use these forms yourself. Nothing wrong with that. But if […]
The post There's a lot of students or there are a lot of students? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do you bring a friend to the movies or do you take a friend to the movies? The answer isn't always clear.
The post Bring and Take first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do good things come to he who waits? Or do good things come to him who waits? When a pronoun has a relationship with two different clauses, it can be hard to know whether it's a subject or an object. Here's what you need to know.
The post Good Things Come to He or Him Who Waits? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Recently I was reading an article about a study on the efficacy of cloth masks for COVID-19 protection. Researchers tested masks by putting them on mannequins, the article reported. Except the illustration that accompanied the article didn’t call them mannequins. In the images, the dummies were referred to multiple times as “manikins.” I stifled an […]
The post Of mannequins and manikins first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
David John Moore Cornwell, better known by his pen name John Le Carre, passed away in December. The author of “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold” leaves behind a legacy of treasures not just for readers but for any writer who would learn from a master. Take, […]
The post John Le Carre's adverb advice missed the mark first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Most nouns form their plural by adding s or, in some cases, es. But lots of words, especially words adapted from foreign languages, don't follow that pattern. Some of them give you a choice. For example, indexes and indices are both correct in English. But how do you know where to find answers? Here's […]
The post Indexes or Indices? How to Make Plurals of Irregular Nouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Traditionalists have long argued that “healthful” means “promoting good health” while “healthy” means “in good health.” So a person can be healthy but a diet or lifestyle cannot. It must be healthful. If that was ever true, it’s not now. Webster’s New World College Dictionary: healthy. adj. 3. healthful Merriam-Webster’s online. healthy. adj. 3. […]
The post When to use 'healthful' in place of 'healthy' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you think peruse means to casually skim or browse, you're not wrong. But you don't have the full picture. The main definition is practically the opposite of that: to study carefully and closely. Here's the full story.
The post How to Peruse Intensely first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Do book and movie titles go in italics or quotation marks? There’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just a matter of style. Then I pause to watch their faces light up with joy and relief. But that’s not what happens. The inquisitive expressions don’t fade because they didn't want to hear “Don’t sweat it.” […]
The post How to Write Book and Movie Titles first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
With some nouns, it's hard to decide whether you need a plural verb or a singular verb. Here's how to handle plural-seeming, singular-seeming nouns like "variety."
The post A Variety Is or a Variety Are? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Even though I've been editing a long time, I regularly find myself stumped by some language or editing conundrum whose answer I used to know. Here’s an example: “How to know if you or a loved one have coverage.” When I came across a sentence like this recently, I didn’t notice the verb. Nor […]
The post You or a loved one 'has' coverage or 'have' coverage? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Paris is a place that attracts many tourists ... The main clause of any sentence is valuable real estate. Don't waste it on empty statements when you can use it for real information instead: Paris attracts many tourists. Here's how to spot and eradicate empty clauses in your writing.
The post Paris Is a Place ... Clauses That State the Obvious first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
I don’t hear many people saying “for goodness’ sake” these days. “For conscience’ sake” and “for appearance’ sake” are pretty much nonexistent in my world, too. In fact, the only “for … sake” expression I hear lately includes a word I wouldn’t use in this space even if I could. So you might think, […]
The post Avoid too many Ss for appearance’ sake first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
For ... sake expressions are usually considered possessive. But some style guides have a problem with lining up too many s's in a row, as in for goodness's sake. In those cases, drop the possessive s. Here's everything you need to know.
The post For Goodness's Sake? Where to Put the Apostrophe in 'For ... Sake' Expressions first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Christmas cards, holiday video greetings, mailed gifts and business correspondence prove the holidays are a rife with opportunities to show the world you don’t know how to form plurals and possessives of proper names. To avoid embarrassing mistakes on holiday greeting cards and other correspondence, memorize this rule: Never use an apostrophe to form […]
The post How to avoid misplaced apostrophes during the holidays first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Want to use "myself" and other reflexive pronouns in a way that even sticklers can't criticize? Avoid any usage where "myself" could be replaced with "me." So: Not great: He spoke with John and myself. Good: He spoke with John and me. Here's the whole story.
The post Myself, Yourself, Himself — Reflexive Pronouns first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
If you’re looking for a reason to avoid using “whom,” the best one I know is illustrated in this sentence from an ESPN blog: “The game will be determined by whomever can pass better.” That was penned by a professional wordsmith who recognized that the sentence structure called for an object. That’s why he used “whomever,” […]
The post 'Whom' is hard, 'whomever' is harder first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Semicolons are less useful than some people think. In fact, you may be able to avoid them entirely. But either way, it's good to know how they work.
The post How to Use—or Better Yet, Not Use—Semicolons first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Hi John, How many emails and other correspondence are punctuated exactly that way, with no comma after “hi” but a comma after “John”? Most, it seems. This form is so common that it’s become acceptable. Use it if you like. But if you want to get really technical, there’s a better way. According to the […]
The post How to punctuate 'Hi, John' as an email greeting first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Did you know that some people consider "try and" an error, as in "Try and guess who's coming for dinner." They're not right, exactly, but there's a logic underlying their objection. Here's what you need to know.
The post 'Try To' vs. 'Try And' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
The holidays are the perfect time to accidentally reveal that you don't know how to make proper names plural, possessive or plural possessive. Here's an annual refresher on why Mr. and Mrs. Thomas are the Thomases and their house is the Thomases' house.
The post Happy Holidays from the Thomas's? Thomas'? Thomases? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Anyone who’s followed the Associated Press Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style has been told there’s an important difference between “that” and “which.” The relative pronoun “that” is for what are called restrictive clauses while “which” is for nonrestrictive clauses. For example, “Hand me the pen which I like” should be “Hand me […]
The post Can You Use 'That' and 'Which' Interchangeably? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Here come the holidays. Or as some might put it, the Holidays. Or, less commonly, the holiday’s. Either way, it’s a great time to make embarrassing errors in social media posts, emails, cards, business correspondence and marketing copy. Happy holidays. Season's greetings. New year, New Year's. Here are some terms you’ll want to write […]
The post Season's, not seasons, greetings: Holiday terms to write right first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
There's people over there. If "there's" means "there is," wouldn't it be wrong to us "is" with a plural? After all, you'd never say People is over there. What if you throw in "a lot," as in There's a lot of people over there? Answer: "There's" before a plural is standard usage, which makes it okay. […]
The post Can You Use 'There's' With a Plural? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Often, people assume they can know punctuation rules without looking them up — relying solely on their sheer powers of deduction. They assume wrong. For instance, the phenomenon I call “quotation marks lite.” Here’s an example: ‘quotation marks lite.’ The single quotation marks in the second example — they’re wrong. Every credible punctuation guide […]
The post With single quotation marks, ampersands and periods, follow the rules, not your instincts first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
We all learned in school that adverbs modify verbs and usually end in "ly": Walk slowly. But that's just part of the story. Adverbs are actually a much bigger class of words that include words you wouldn't expect, like "tomorrow" and "soon." Here's the full story.
The post The Adverbs You Didn't Learn About in School first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
People often insert an "of" into sentences like "Joe is not that big of a sports fan." But the "of" is unneeded and, arguably, a bad call. Here's what you need to know.
The post Intrusive 'Of' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Simple, declarative questions — that’s the best way to get answers from a Supreme Court nominee, a news commentator insisted recently. Just ask declarative questions. I scoffed and filed the term in the corner of my mind home to “jumbo shrimp” and “military intelligence.” An oxymoron. A contradiction in terms. Nonsense. But now, after […]
The post What's a declarative question? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
We're all taught that, when multiple adjectives come before a noun, you put commas between the adjectives. Then how to explain why there's no comma in "a bright red shirt"? The truth is, not all adjectives work the same way. Here's what you need to know about "coordinate adjectives" and "noncoordinate adjectives."
The post When should adjectives have commas between them? first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
A while back, I saw written on a truck something like, “Delivering the best to you everyday.” I see that use of “everyday” a lot, which is unfortunate. The two-word version, “every day,” would have been a better choice. According to a number of dictionaries, including Webster’s New World, the one-word “everyday” is an adjective. Adjectives […]
The post 'Every day' vs. 'everyday' first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
Why is there smarter and smartest but not intelligenter and intelligenist? Because some words have comparative and superlative forms and some don't.
The post Comparatives and Superlatives first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.
In our tricky language, certain words are out to trick you. Sometimes, they succeed. It doesn’t matter how grammar-savvy you are or how many degrees you have in English lit. Some misused words can and will pop up in your writing. Vigilance won’t save you, but it can help. So watch out for these seven […]
The post Lead, sneak peak, reign, eek and other words even smart people get wrong first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande.