What’s the difference between avenge and revenge? They can be used interchangeably as verbs, though avenge is more common and revenge is used more often as a noun. Both avenge and revenge, which share the Anglo-French root venger, meaning “to avenge” (ultimately from Latin vindicare, whence also vindicate and vindication), mean “to take vengeance, to … Read more
I’m not holding my breath about world peace, and I’m not any more sanguine about consensus on the prefix co-, but here’s an appeal about coming to terms about this term. Generally, no hyphen is required to link this prefix to root words. In the case of many prefixes, the element is initially attached to … Read more
A reader submitted three queries about which verb forms to use to indicate various tenses. Here are the questions and my responses. 1. When do you use have with another verb, and when do you omit it? (For example, “I have said yesterday . . .” vs. “I said yesterday . . . .”) When … Read more
A gerund is a verb that also functions as a noun. For example, one can say one is engaged in the act of writing, but one can also say that what one is doing is a thing called writing. A gerund can be part of the subject of a sentence (“Writing takes a lot of … Read more
The memo may seem like a thing of the past, long ago supplanted by the email message. However, its general format can be applied to electronic communications, and the hard-copy memo still has its place in businesses and other organizations, especially when providing context for a print publication or another physical object being distributed among … Read more
We’ve all heard about one behavioral or scientific effect or another, but perhaps we’re not sure we’re getting the name right, or even that we mean the one we think we do when we name it. Here are the labels of the most ubiquitous of effects and the thesis or the scientific principle underlying each … Read more
The idiomatic idiosyncrasies among references to one’s relationship to geographical or topographical features make selecting the correct preposition a challenge for nonnative speakers, but even those born to English can stumble. This post discusses various classes of phrasing about location. One lives in a town or city, county, state, or nation but on a continent. … Read more
Writers occasionally fall into the trap of inserting too much information between a verb and its object, or introducing a pronoun before the noun it refers to has appeared — in effect, alluding to the point of the sentence before specifying it. This syntactical structure isn’t wrong, but it can be annoying. Take care to … Read more
Some time ago, I wrote about the suitability of profanity in prose. My conclusion was that, depending on the context, it’s up to the producer to decide whether to publish profanity and the reader whether to accept or reject it. But if you, the producer, decide to allow profanity, know that there are degrees of … Read more
Are you in a subjunctive mood? Then you should frame sentences in one of the six following forms. The subjunctive mood is used in cases in which what is expressed is not necessarily real, as opposed to the indicative case, which is applied to factual statements. The key difference is a change in the form … Read more
You can stop holding your breath now. The sixth volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English, the first segment of which was begun in 1975 and published ten years later, is now available. DARE, one of the most ambitious lexicographical projects in publishing history, is the culmination of decades of effort by hundreds of … Read more
A sentence tag is a word or phrase added to the beginning or end of a statement for emphasis or to provide more information. For the following sentences, I discuss the necessity of preceding end-of-sentence tags with a comma. 1. “I shouldn’t have been surprised really.” Without a comma separating really from the rest of … Read more