July 15, 2024

'Ran Him Over' or 'Ran Over Him'?

With phrasal verbs like "run over," "throw away," "give up" and many others, put the object where it sounds best because you're almost certain to be correct. In many cases, like "ran him over" and "ran over him," both are fine.

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July 8, 2024

A Friend of Joe's or a Friend of Joe?

"Of" shows possession, so technically the apostrophe and S in "a friend of Joe's" contains a logical redundancy. But that doesn't mean it's wrong.

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July 1, 2024

Don't Confuse 'Compliment' and 'Complement'

Think of "compliment" as praise and "complement" as something that goes well with something else. Think of "complimentary" as praising or, in its other meaning, free of charge. Think of "complementary" as going well together.

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June 24, 2024

Can a Sentence Begin with 'But'?

A reader was taught in school that "but" can't begin a sentence — that you either have to connect the clause to the previous sentence, preceded by a comma, or you have to use "however" instead. Unlucky for her but luckily for us, she was taught wrong.

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June 17, 2024

Is 'One of the Only' Illogical?

"The only" seems to refer to just one thing, so "one of the only" would mean "one of the one," which makes no sense. But although one of the definitions of "only" is "alone in a class or category," another of its definitions is "few." So "one of the only" is another, correct way of saying "one of the few."

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June 10, 2024

I Am Good, I Am Well, I'm Doing Well

In "I'm doing well," "well" is an adverb. But in "I am well," it's an adjective with a slightly different meaning. And while both are more proper than "I am good" when talking about your health, "good" is flexible enough to use here, too.

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June 3, 2024

Does 'Biweekly' Mean Every Two Weeks or Twice a Week?

The prefix "bi-" to refer to time periods often means "twice." So why do we use it to mean "every two" in "biweekly"? It's complicated. Here's how to navigate "bi-" and "semi-" as they related to time.

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May 27, 2024

For Conscience Sake? For Goodness Sake?

Style guides disagree on whether to make “for conscience’s sake” and similar terms possessive.

The Chicago manual of style considers these “for blank’s sake” expressions to be possessive, so according to Chicago you would put an apostrophe and S after “conscience” in “conscience’s sake.” But the guide makes an exception for expressions like “for goodness’ sake” where the word before sake ends in an S. here, Chicago feels, you should add just an apostrophe but no additional S because otherwise you’d have too many Ss run together.

The “Associated Press Stylebook,” however, says that for these figures of speech, you add just an apostrophe.

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May 20, 2024

10 Ways Strunk and White Will Let You Down

There's a lot of good advice in "The Elements of Style." Unfortunately, there's a lot of bad information, too. Here are 10 ways Strunk and White's guide will let you down.

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May 13, 2024

Further and Farther

If you want to follow the examples from professional publishing, use "farther" only for physical distances and "further" for senses that don't refer to physical distances.

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