Should “Next Day” Be Preceded by “the”?
A reader poses a question about a usage that occurs in one of my posts from 2009. Calvin Coolidge was […]
Apposition and Anarthrous Premodifiers
A reader wonders if this sentence containing nouns in apposition has enough commas: As a club, we must extend our […]
The Name Is not the Person
Words as labels The first principle of semantics is that the word is not the thing. Words are labels for […]
Inception and Conception
A reader has asked for a post on the words inception and conception, speculating, “Might they be synonymous?” Conception comes […]
Words of the Year
Since the 1990s–beginning with the American Dialect Society—various entities, including dictionaries and individual lexicographers, have announced Words of the Year […]
Does Past Tense “Turnt” Have a Future?
A reader, commenting on one of my posts about the -ed past ending, suggests that turnt for turned may have […]
We Gotta Use Words
In T.S. Eliot’s play, Sweeney Agonistes, Sweeney complains, “I gotta use words when I talk to you.” Every day, I […]
Data Is and Media Are
Some speakers continue to insist that the noun data must be used only as a plural, but the consensus is […]
Highlighted and Greenlit
A reader encountered the question of what past ending to use with the verb to highlight as in “to mark […]
When S Says Z and F says V
Browsing the comments attached to a previous post, I came across this lament about two changes in pronunciation that seem […]
Dupe, Greenhorn, Sucker, and Easy Mark
A few posts ago, I wrote about the multitude of ways English provides for calling someone “stupid.” Now I’ll address […]
When Only Standard Usage Will Do
When I began writing about English usage, I would label sentences as “correct” and “incorrect.” I don’t do that anymore […]