August 29, 2025
I’ve always been taught that hard should only be used as a physical trait. A table is “hard”; a task is not. So imagine my surprise when I scrolled down on Merriam-Webster and found the following definition for hard: “difficult Read more…
July 18, 2025
When you’re naming a number range (as in “pages 6–12” or “about 350–400 people attended”), does it matter how you write it? If you’ve been studying the English language for a little while, you won’t be shocked to hear that Read more…
June 26, 2025
Accept and except sound almost exactly the same when you say them out loud, but they’re actually totally different words. They don’t mean the same thing at all, and mixing them up in your writing is a pretty big mistake. Read more…
If you went to the neighborhood pool yesterday and today you’re telling your friend about it, would you say, “I swam” or “I swum”? Swim is an irregular verb; if it were regular, the past tense would simply be swimmed. Read more…
May 23, 2025
Titles like “Mrs.,” “Ms.,” “Miss,” and “Mr.” are called courtesy titles, and they’re used before someone’s name to show respect to that person. “Mr.” is, of course, the only masculine title on that list, leaving not one, not two, but Read more…
March 17, 2025
I use the dictionary a LOT. When I type “m” into the search bar, my computer automatically fills in “merriam-webster.com.” Most of the time, the words I’m searching are ones that I haven’t heard before or rarely use, but there Read more…
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…
January 21, 2025
Is redundonym a made-up word? The spell-check feature on my computer certainly seems to think so. But it’s a perfectly good word to describe redundant acronyms, plus it’s just super fun to say out loud (it bounces down your tongue Read more…