Articles
Commas between Adjectives: How to Recognize Coordinate Adjectives
The comma is perhaps the trickiest mark of punctuation to teach and to learn, largely because we seem to have multiple exceptions for every rule. Elsewhere on this site we have written about the Oxford (serial) comma, a usage issue hotly debated in both linguistic and...
How to Make Last Names Plural
With quite a few big holidays looming, many people are gearing up to send holiday greeting cards, so this is the perfect time to remind everyone how to make last names plural. (Hint: doing so does NOT involve an apostrophe.) If we stop to think about it, most of us...
“Less” or “Fewer”
Other articles on this site address confusing word pairs, including effect and affect, sit and set, lay and lie, and bad and badly. Here we address the confusion that can arise when we have to decide whether to use less or fewer. We need to look no farther than the...
“Which” or “That”? (And Punctuating All Relative Clauses)
Have you ever been stuck trying to decide whether to use which or that? While both pronouns can be used in other constructions, the confusion usually arises when they are being used as relative pronouns to introduce adjective (or relative) clauses. In the examples...
“Bring” and “Take”
Knowing when to use bring and take can be confusing. Can you tell if any of the following sentences use bring correctly? When you go to the meeting next Friday, please bring your department’s current budget report. Since Mary has just moved to town, I will bring her...
Passive Voice and Active Voice
Those of us whose word-processing software includes a grammar checker have probably encountered the green squiggly line of doom wagging an accusatory finger at a passive verb. But what is the passive voice, and why is it considered undesirable? (If you learn better by...
The Oxford (or Serial) Comma: Using a Comma before “and” in a List
Writers frequently wonder whether a comma should go before the conjunction and in a list of three or more items. Despite the fact that not all style books agree on this issue, we recommend using a comma after the next-to-last item in a series—the serial comma, as it...
“You’re Still on My Lawn!”: Our Resident Curmudgeon Bemoans Six Lost Causes
Word confusion and language-related lost causes are no strangers to this site. We have explored the lost distinction between the words nauseous and nauseating, the often-lost letter d in the phrases “used to” and “supposed to,” and lost awareness about the definition...
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 as “rules” are, in fact, matters of style and not necessarily consistent from one style guide to...