November 5, 2024
It might seem like English is a pretty well-established language, but new words are being made up all the time! If a new kind of technology is invented, its name needs to go in the dictionary. When new slang words Read more…
Most words have antonyms, which are “opposite” words. For example, the antonym of good is bad. An antonym of sad is happy. Then there are these super CONFUSING words called contronyms. These words are their OWN antonyms; they mean both Read more…
November 4, 2024
There are some English words that people absolutely HATE, like moist or fester. Other words sound very pretty—even magical—like effervescent. Then there are the very satisfying, perfectly symmetrical words that are so special, they get their own name: palindromes. What Read more…
October 29, 2024
Doesn’t that just title sum up English grammar? “Here’s a rule, but it’s not quite always true…” It’s an unfortunate reality that the rules of English grammar are very much like swiss cheese: full of holes (and possibly a little Read more…
The capitalization question strikes again. We’ve talked about how the “f” in french fries should be lowercase (even though French is usually capitalized in other contexts), but what about words like “mom” and “dad”? What about professional titles like “president”? Read more…
October 28, 2024
You probably know that you’re supposed to capitalize proper nouns, including the names of people, places, and organizations. So it goes without saying that the name of the country France should be capitalized. But what are the rules of capitalization Read more…
October 22, 2024
I’m not the only person who has favorite and least-favorite grammatical rules, right? For example, the Oxford comma is definitely up there as one of my favorites. Unfortunately, the rule we’re talking about right now—the suspended hyphen—is one of my Read more…
October 21, 2024
It might sometimes seem like people just toss hyphens randomly into their writing. And with so many different rules and various situations when you do or don’t need a hyphen (even for the same word!), it’s very possible that some Read more…
Babysit or baby-sit? Common sense or common-sense? First aid, first-aid, or firstaid? There are three different kinds of compound words—open, closed, and hyphenated—and it can be tricky to keep them all straight! Overview: What Is a Compound Word? A compound Read more…
October 18, 2024
If we only had short, simple sentences, our writing would be super boring to read. Every sentence would be like this. There would be no variation. Books would be absolutely unbearable. We would sound like robots. Luckily, we’re not restricted Read more…