by Nancy Tuten | Aug 14, 2022
The following sentences offer a choice between anxious and eager. Which word is more accurate in each case? Our children are (anxious/eager) to go to Disney World, but my husband and I are (anxious/eager) about the cost of the trip. Having heard on the morning news...
by Nancy Tuten | Jul 12, 2022
When we’re feeling healthy and happy, should we say we feel good or we feel well? The short answer is that either is fine, but we need to take a deeper dive if we want to use good and well appropriately in other contexts, too. Many of us were taught the partial truth...
by Nancy Tuten | Jun 29, 2022
Editors at Merriam-Webster (M-W) caused quite a stir when they tweeted on September 17, 2019, that the nonbinary pronoun they had been added to the dictionary. Their tweet addresses a question I still hear frequently, even three years later: can they (or them or...
by Nancy Tuten | Jun 4, 2022
Three issues often arise during graduation season. One concerns the verb to graduate. Another concerns the need for apostrophes in the expressions associate’s degree, master’s degree, and bachelor’s degree. And the third issue concerns which programs...
by Nancy Tuten | Apr 7, 2022
Collective nouns are words that refer to—you guessed it—a collection of individuals (people or animals) or things taken as a whole. Though these words appear singular, they represent a group; examples include team, jury, faculty, class, choir, family, and committee....
