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…
February 4, 2025
I think we all know that words like bam! and pow! are onomatopoeias. But did you know about blimp, cliché, and laugh? Onomatopoeias: A Building Block of Language Onomatopoeia is defined as “the naming of a thing or action by Read more…
No, really. That’s what the theories are actually called. I was researching onomatopoeias and accidentally stumbled upon the bow-wow theory of language origin. I thought that name was pretty funny, and then I glanced at the footnotes, which referenced two 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…
If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between ensure and insure, you’re definitely not alone. And to make things even more confusing, we can also throw in assure, which has a similar sound and meaning. WHY do we need Read more…
January 21, 2025
Acronyms are words formed from the first letter or letters of each word in a compound term. Technically, an acronym must be pronounced as a single word; when you say each letter individually, it’s an initialism. For the purposes of Read more…
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…