Style Manuals vs. Dictionaries
While there are certainly some hard-and-fast grammar rules (verbs must agree in number with their subjects, for example), many of the guidelines that people regard...
Uncharted vs. Unchartered
The corona-virus disease pandemic, which started late in 2019 (thus the name COVID-19), has given rise to increased use of a few confusing phrases and...
Verb Errors: Can Hardly vs. Can’t Hardly; Suppose To vs. Supposed To; Use To vs. Used to; Could Care Less vs. Couldn’t Care Less
In this article we examine four common verb errors. Can you spot the problem phrase in each of these sentences? We can’t hardly wait for...
Possessives and Attributive Nouns: When Do We Need an Apostrophe (and Where?)
If the dearth of apostrophes in text messages, emails, and social media posts is any indication, we may be witnessing their demise. But since such...
The Five-Paragraph Essay Myth
In our educational journey, we likely learned some myths about writing. One pernicious myth is the bane of many college English professors’ existence: the belief...
