October 1, 2024
Let’s take it back to the basics and talk about what the heck an apostrophe is and how to use it in your writing. Where Does It Come From? Oh, yeah. I said we’re taking it back, so we’re taking Read more…
September 28, 2024
It’s back! That pesky apostrophe is once again confusing people with two words that sound exactly the same but actually mean COMPLETELY different things. “Your” and “You’re” sound like the same word when we say them out loud, which is Read more…
September 17, 2024
“It’s” and “its” mean two COMPLETELY different things. These two little words get mixed up all. the. time. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the most common errors that I come across while copyediting. About this error, Lynne Truss Read more…
Adjectives are words that describe a noun or pronoun. They might tell you the shape, size, color, weight, material, or various other qualities of the noun. But before you go tossing adjectives all over your writing, it’s important to know Read more…
I recently published an article about adjective order, and one of the types of adjectives that are listed in that article is determiners, which includes words like “our,” “these,” “a/an,” and “the.” While my husband was reading that post, he Read more…
September 12, 2024
Why does “the brick old house” sound weird but “the old brick house” is fine? So many grammar rules are difficult to remember and even trickier to perfect, but this one is pretty much automatic for most native English speakers. Read more…
Anyone who says they don’t use the singular “they” is likely kidding themselves. After all, you probably read that sentence with no trouble or misunderstanding at all, and it has not one but TWO singular “they”s! So why is the Read more…
Have you ever been told that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition? Maybe you don’t know what that really means, which makes the rule all the more frightening. Well, breathe a deep sigh of relief because it turns Read more…
September 6, 2024
Star Trek is an iconic media franchise, bringing audiences legendary characters, exciting storylines, and seemingly endless spin-off shows and movies. But the franchise’s impact goes beyond the entertainment realm: Grammarians have Star Trek to thank for one of the most Read more…
You’ve probably figured out by now that commas have a LOT of different jobs. You might call them the jack-of-all-trades of the punctuation world. They separate items in a list, set off nonrestrictive clauses, follow introductory phrases, and so much Read more…