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...
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...
The difference between 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...
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...
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 grammatical constructions. Do we have, for example, less cases than yesterday or fewer? Do we say that the number of...
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 changes in usage happen slowly, for now we need to understand the difference between the possessive case and the...
