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…
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…
June 20, 2025
You might be looking at that title and thinking, “Wait a second . . . aren’t those the same word?” And your confusion is totally understandable. The only difference is one little space—how much does that space actually matter? It 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…
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 28, 2025
We’re back with another “commonly confused words” pairing! We’ve covered further and farther, that and which, compliment and complement, affect and effect, and a whole lot more. Now, it’s time to dig into much and many. If you’ve already mastered Read more…
After the whole insure vs. ensure vs. assure debacle, I started to question every similar word pairing out there. What about who vs. whom? That vs. which? Affect vs. effect?? There are a lot of word pairings with meanings that Read more…