February 27, 2025
May and might are pretty similar words: they both have to do with possibility and probability. However, these words have their differences. So what ARE those differences, and when do you need to be careful to not mix up the Read more…
February 25, 2025
There are plenty of English words that get mixed up all the time, like lay and lie, ensure and insure, compliment and complement, etc. Now, it’s time to talk about compose and comprise! Both compose and comprise have to do Read more…
If you ever feel the need to short-circuit a grammarian, just ask them to explain the difference between lay and lie. The technical difference between these two words is simple enough; however, once we get into the weeds about what Read more…
February 18, 2025
Have you ever thought about where punctuation came from? The Birth of Punctuation You might think that periods, commas, semicolons, and dashes are as old as written language, but actually, for a long time, people would just write things down Read more…
The world of punctuation marks is a kind of soap opera. Some of the characters include the stoic, dependable period; the excitable and somewhat controversial exclamation mark; the overworked, flustered comma; the overlooked and under-appreciated semicolon; etc. Sometimes, those characters Read more…
Question marks might seem fairly straightforward: they come after a question. Easy enough! 😅 However, a few complications might pop up when it comes to punctuating indirect questions, deciding how question marks interact with other punctuation marks, and—heaven forbid—dealing with Read more…
February 4, 2025
I think we all know that words like bam! and pow! are onomatopoeias. But did you know about blimp, cliché, and laugh? Onomatopoeias: A Building Block of Language Onomatopoeia is defined as “the naming of a thing or action by Read more…
No, really. That’s what the theories are actually called. I was researching onomatopoeias and accidentally stumbled upon the bow-wow theory of language origin. I thought that name was pretty funny, and then I glanced at the footnotes, which referenced two Read more…
While researching for another article, I came across this entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage, which explains the word munch: “Copperud 1970, 1980 does not like munch when it is used of eating something that does not crunch.” Read more…