If you receive a paycheck on the fifteenth and thirtieth of each month, are you paid bimonthly or semimonthly? If a newspaper is published every two weeks, it is a biweekly or a semimonthly publication? The answer is not simple. If we check Webster’s for definitions...
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...
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...
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...
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...
In a different post we discuss the distinction between lie and lay. It is also helpful to examine sit and set, another pair of potentially troubling verbs that is made even more confusing by a third verb, seat. How Much Do You Know Already? Do you recognize which (if...
