10 Pairs of Words with Dissolving Distinctions
Erosion of distinctions between senses for words with similar or related meanings is a natural process, but careful writers resist […]
Identifying Clauses
A reader has asked for help in distinguishing noun, adjective, and adverb clauses. First, what is a clause? A clause […]
Words from Greek “Theos”
Most people are acquainted with the word theology and its offshoots, theologian and theological. The words are formed from Greek […]
Bureaucrats and Politicians
A reader has asked for a discussion of the words, bureaucrats vs officials, and lawmakers vs politicians. [I’d] like to […]
Misbehaving Memes: thou, with, and went
Since Richard Dawkins coined the word in 1976, meme has become familiar to social media users as a captioned graphic […]
3 Sentences in Which Semicolons Are Superfluous
Many writers—even professional ones—are wary about employing semicolons, at best because the punctuation mark carries a hint of excessive formality […]
From Mercury to Hermeneutics
One of the most popular of the Roman gods was Mercury, patron of merchants and thieves. Mercury had other associations. […]
Discomfiture Is Worse Than Discomfort
I’ve noticed the two nouns, discomfort and discomfiture, being used interchangeably, as if both meant simply, “the condition of being […]
5 Cases of Faulty Parenthesis
When a sentence includes a form of parenthesis—a word, phrase, or clause framed by a pair of commas, dashes, or […]
Naming a Character
The most unforgettable fictional characters begin as a glimmer in the author’s mind. Only in writing the novel does the […]
“Painstaking” Does Not Mean “Painful” and a “Perk” is not a “Prerequisite”
Uses of the word painstaking that I’ve noticed recently suggest that some speakers may think it’s a synonym for painful […]
Common Errors in Vertical Lists
Employing vertical lists, which display related sets of words, phrases, or sentences entered on separate lines and marked with bullets […]