September 1, 2025

Peak vs. Pique

If you say something "peaked your interested," you probably mean "piqued."

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August 25, 2025

Comparatives and Superlatives

Tall has taller and tallest, but statuesque doesn't have statuesquer or statuesquest. Here's a closer look at comparatives and superlatives.

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August 18, 2025

Weak Sentence? Look at the Structure

When you come across a sentence like “Knowing the realities of the cosmic structure of the universe can at times be elusive," pare it down to the main clause: "Knowing can be elusive" is a whole lot of nothing. Once you see that, you can find better ways to get your meaning across.

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August 11, 2025

Literally

Can bad news bring a city "literally to its knees"? Technically, yes. But careful writers avoid "literally" as an intensifier.

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August 4, 2025

Commas in "From X to Y" Constructions

You wouldn't put a comma in the phrase "from soup to nuts," so the same logic applies in longer "from X to Y" constructions. Yet so many writers put them in anyway. Here's when they're actually necessary.

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July 28, 2025

The Five Basic Sentence Structures

Despite all the creativity and variety you see in writing, there are really just five basic structures for single-clause sentences.

1. Subject plus verb: Jason laughed.

2. Subject plus transitive verb plus direct object: Horses eat oats.

3: Subject plus transitive verb plus indirect object plus direct object: Sarah sent Joe a letter.

4: Subject plus copular verb plus complement of the copular verb: Harry is mean.

5: Subject plus transitive verb plus direct object plus object complement: The CEO made Ron treasurer.

Here's a closer look at how these five arrangements create infinite opportunities for expression.

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July 21, 2025

How to Use Ellipses ...

Put spaces around ellipses ... like this. When an ellipsis comes after a complete sentence, and that sentence with a period. ... Then insert the three-dot ellipsis. When an ellipses does not come after a complete sentence ... do not insert a period before it. Here's the full when, why and how of using ellipses.

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July 14, 2025

Mens, Womens and Childrens?

Irregular plurals like "men" and "women" don't use an S to form their plural, but they use an S with an apostrophe to form the possessive. That's why it's easy to confuse "mens," which is wrong, with "men's," which is right (assuming you want the possessive).

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July 7, 2025

'Less' and 'Fewer'

A lot of people think that, in formal English, "less" is for mass nouns, like "music," and "fewer" is for count nouns, like songs. But it's more accurate to say "less" is for singular nouns and "fewer" for plural. So, when you want to be proper, you say the express lane is for 10 items or fewer because "items" is plural, but if you take one item out of your cart you have one less item, not one fewer item.

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June 30, 2025

Firstly and Secondly

People who hate "firstly" and "secondly" have a hard time explaining why they should be replaced with "first" and "second." That's because there's no grammatical reason for shunning these two adverbs.

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