January 21, 2025
Is it “a LED display” or “an LED display”? And would you say “a URL” or “an URL”? Choosing between a or an is one of those grammatical things that native English speakers might have an instinct for, but it’s 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…
September 17, 2024
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…
August 5, 2024
A common query in English is whether that first little vowel in further/farther really makes any difference. If you’re running a longer distance than someone else, are you going further or farther than them? And if you’re expounding on an Read more…
August 2, 2024
If you’re feeling sorry for someone, do you feel “bad” for them? Or should you feel “badly” instead? I’m writing about these two because I hear them get mixed up ALL THE TIME. I never judge people who mix them Read more…