by Nancy Tuten | Oct 13, 2019
When we refer to the title of a work, how do we know whether to use italics or quotation marks? Italics for Works That Stand Alone With some exceptions, most style books tell us to use italics when we write the title of a work that stands alone as a single entity....
by Nancy Tuten | Sep 30, 2019
This site addresses a number of confusing word pairs, including less and fewer, effect and affect, and lie and lay. Sometimes writers are confused by the difference between the one-word modifiers anymore and everyday and the two-word phrases “any more”...
by Nancy Tuten | Sep 5, 2019
We deal with many confusing word pairs on this site, including lay and lie, I and me, and bad and badly. This article helps us distinguish between effect and affect, two words that cause a great deal of trouble because each of them can serve as a noun or a verb. Which...
by Nancy Tuten | Aug 3, 2019
Semicolons have two functions: First, they are used to separate items in lists when one or more of those items has internal commas. As such, they function more or less like commas on steroids. In their second function, however, they are more like periods because they...
by Nancy Tuten | Aug 3, 2019
This website addresses a number of confusing word pairs, including effect and affect, sit and set, and bad and badly, just to name a few. But none are more confusing than lie and lay. These verbs have traditionally held very different meanings. Simply put, to lie...
