January 20, 2026

A New Year's resolution reset: Learn when it's OK to use 'and me'

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So how’s your New Year’s resolution going so far? Hmm. I see. I was afraid of that.

Would you like me to get you off the hook? Because I can suggest a much easier resolution that, with a little work upfront, will require zero effort for the rest of the year. The rest of your life, even. Here it is: Learn when to say “and me” instead of “and I.”

Trust me, this will put your grammar far ahead of most people’s. And it will achieve your goal of using “and I” in the first place: to speak as correctly as possible.

To say “Thanks for visiting Maria and I” isn’t wrong, exactly. Most people do, and you can continue to do so if you like. But it’s not grammatical. It’s idiomatic, meaning it has become standard and therefore acceptable.

When people say “and I,” it’s usually because they’re trying to be grammatical, proper. People  assume “I” is best because, as kids, we were swiftly corrected for saying something like “Maria and me are going to the movies.” It seemed that every time we chose “me,” an adult told us we should instead use “I.” They weren’t wrong. “Maria and I are going to the movies” is the grammatical alternative to “Maria and me are going to the movies.”

But we took it too far: We got the sense that “me” was always inferior, so we started using “I” in stuff like “Thanks for visiting Maria and I.” That’s not the proper English we’re shooting for.

“Me” and “I” have different functions in a sentence. “I” is a subject: I met Maria. “Me” is an object: Maria met me. Understanding this is crucial to choosing correctly between “I” and “me.”

Luckily, you already know how to get this right every time. You never say, “Me like pizza” or “Tell I.”  Because you already understand subjects and objects, you say instead “I like pizza” and “Tell me.”

Your understanding of object pronouns goes even deeper: You also understand that prepositions — little words like “to,” “with,” “at,” “on” and “in” — also take object pronouns. Instead of “Listen to I” you say “Listen to me.” Instead of “Come with I,” you say “Come with me.”

This doesn’t stop with “I” and “me.” You understand how to use every other pronoun pair including “he” and “him,” “she” and “her” and “we” and “us.” That’s why you use “tell him” instead of “tell he” and “between us” instead of “between we.” Effortless grammatical perfection.

Yet, if you’re like most English speakers, all your deep knowledge of object pronouns goes out the window when you add another person to the sentence. People frequently say things like “You should listen to Sam and I” and “You should come to the movies with Alexis and I” and, the one that even careful speakers say, “Between you and I.”

If you’re aiming for proper speech, these fall short of your goal. But there’s a simple way to get these right in 2026 and beyond: Consider the sentence without the other person.

When you want to say, “You should listen to Sam and I,” consider “You should listen to I.” It sounds wrong because it is wrong. You know it’s “You should listen to me.” Sam doesn’t change that.

Instead of “This is about you and I,” try “This is about I.” You see instantly that you need “me” here. So say, “This is about you and me.”

This trick doesn’t work great for “between you and I,” because “between” requires a pair of things for its object. In this case, you can plug in “we” and “us.” Clearly, “between we” is ungrammatical, which is how you know an object pronoun, like “us” or “me,” is the way to go.

That’s it. Just try your sentence without the other person a couple of times. You’ll soon see when “and me” is better than “and I.”

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January 12, 2026

Danglers aren't easy

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Danglers are easy to spot but can be surprisingly tough to fix.

As a working mom, finding time to get enough sleep is difficult.

Technically, this is a dangler because the modifying phrase — in this case the first four words — isn’t right next to the noun it should be modifying. The whole dangler concept, in fact, is based on the idea that any phrase that functions like an adjective, modifying a noun, should be right next to that noun.

As a working mom, Jane finds it hard to get enough sleep.

Here, the modifying phrase “as a working mom” is right next to the noun it modifies, “Jane.” So this sentence does not contain a dangler. But in the first example, that same phrase is positioned next to the word “finding,” which is clearly not the noun that we’re describing as a working mom. That’s the difference.

This one was easy to fix because we made up a person and rearranged the main clause so that her name would be the first thing to come after the modifying phrase. But what if we don’t want to name a specific working mom?

As a working mom, a woman finds it hard to get enough sleep.

Awful, huh? So here’s another way to go.

A working mom finds it hard to get enough sleep.

Here we dispensed with the modifying phrase altogether and pilfered its noun to make it the subject of our single-clause sentence. That’s okay, I suppose. But this sentence now seems lacking.

One option, of course, is to just ignore the fact that our first sentence contained a dangler. After all, the whole point of all this grammar stuff is to ensure clarity. And that sentence was pretty clear from the get-go. Still, it lacks precision, which I value a lot. So I would definitely look for ways to improve the sentence before throwing my hands up.

When a word or phrase that’s dangling is a participle, the error is called a (wait for it) dangling participle. This can either mean progressive participle like "walking," "knowing," "realizing," or "yelling," or a past participle like "surprised," "shaken," "hired," or "thought." And it can mean either a lone participle like “Surprised, Roger jumped sky high,” or a longer participial phrase like, “Surprised by screams of his friends and family, Roger jumped sky high.”

But even noun phrases can dangle:

A man of great courage, the steps John took were impressive.

The steps aren’t a man. So this is a dangler, and it’s definitely one I would fix: John was a man of great courage, and the steps he took were impressive.

But, in my experience, sometimes it's best to let a dangler dangle.

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January 5, 2026

How to write every holiday

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Here comes another year full of holidays — some of them easy to write, others not so much (as anyone who’s wondered where to put the apostrophe in Presidents Day can attest). So as 2025 winds down, here’s how to write all the holidays to come in 2026.

New Year’s, New Year, new year. A new year in the generic sense isn’t capitalized. So you’d say, “Looking forward to seeing you in the new year.” But holidays are almost always proper nouns, so “happy New Year” gets a capital n and y (and note the lowercase h). When you’re making resolutions, that’s usually treated as possessive: a New Year’s resolution.

New Year’s Day, New Year’s Eve. Treat these as distinct holiday names, with “Day” and “Eve” capitalized.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day. There’s no “Rev.” or “Dr.” in the holiday, which falls on the third Monday in January. And according to both the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style, you shouldn’t put commas around “Jr.”

Valentine’s Day. Put an apostrophe and an s after “Valentine” when you’re talking about the holiday, making it singular possessive. The word “valentine” is lowercase when you’re talking about your loved one or a card or gift for that person: He’s my valentine. I’m sending him a valentine. You can also call the holiday Saint Valentine’s Day.

Presidents Day. Every third Monday in February, people are baffled about how to punctuate Presidents. And for good reason: There are several correct ways to write this holiday name. AP style says no apostrophe: Presidents Day. Chicago style writes it as plural possessive, with the apostrophe after the s: Presidents’ Day. It’s also commonly called Washington’s Birthday. All of these are correct.

St. Patrick’s Day. There was just one St. Patrick, so this holiday, which falls on March 17, is singular possessive, meaning the apostrophe goes before the s.

April Fools’ Day. As you can surely attest, there’s more than one fool out there. This day is for all of them, so write it as plural possessive, with the apostrophe after the s: Fools’. If you’re using “fool” in a generic sense, for example if someone falls for a trick, you call them an April fool with a lowercase f.

Mother’s Day. In May, the logic of possessive and singular holidays breaks down completely. Even though the day is for all mothers, we write it as though it’s for just one: Mother. So the holiday is Mother’s Day.

Fourth of July, July Fourth, the Fourth. To follow the style of professional publishers, don’t use a numeral in this holiday name. Spell out Fourth when you write Fourth of July, July Fourth or the Fourth — all are correct. If you don’t care about editing style, there’s nothing wrong with writing July 4th or even 4th of July.

Veterans Day. If you’ve ever noticed that many news outlets use no apostrophe in “farmers market,” you have a basis for understanding why there’s no apostrophe in Veterans Day. The idea is that the words “farmers” and “Veterans” are working more like adjectives in these terms than like true possessives. So just “Veterans Day” is the way to go.

Thanksgiving Day. Thanksgiving is one of the easier holidays to write. But “Thanksgiving Day” isn’t as clear. For the record, the word “Day” gets capitalized when you’re making it part of a holiday nickname. So: Thanksgiving Day.

Hanukkah, Chanukah. Both these spellings are correct, but Merriam-Webster’s dictionary says Hanukkah is more common and AP style prefers the H spelling as well.

Christmas Day, Christmas Eve. Just as we saw with Thanksgiving, the “Day” in “Christmas Day” gets capitalized, and the same logic applies to “Christmas Eve.”

Xmas. Write Xmas with no hyphen. And don’t worry that this is in any way anti-religious. According to Garner’s Modern American Usage, “The X is not a Roman X but a Greek chi — the first letter in Christ’s name.” So this abbreviated holiday name in no way erases its namesake. If do you use it, note that you can use “a” or “an” in front of it, depending on how you believe Xmas is pronounced. If in your mind it sounds like eks-mas, you would write “an Xmas present.” But if you hear it as Christmas, you would write “a Xmas present.”

Spring, summer, fall, autumn, winter. Seasons are all lowercase, “I love the spring.”

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December 29, 2025

Poor headline capitalization: A major tell

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If there’s one thing that can tell me, in a single glance, that a news article was not edited by an experienced pro, it’s the headline capitalization.

Here’s an example from a Yahoo Finance headline I saw a while back:

Stocks Pull Back: Why it Might Not Last

One look at that headline and I know that someone in the organization doesn’t know what they’re doing. The reason: the lowercase I in “it.”

A lot of editing styles capitalize the first letter of most words in a headline, but they make exceptions for some prepositions, articles, and conjunctions — especially short ones of three or fewer letters — unless they come at the beginning or end of the headline.

“Simpson Back in Jail”: Here, the word “in” is lowercase because it’s a short preposition. But if "in" were first or last word, the "i" would be capitalized: “In Jails, Mental Health Suffers” or in “Jones Decries the Mess He’s In.”

These capitalization rules aren’t a matter of right and wrong. This is a style thing. But when you’re making a clear effort to follow this style, you don’t want the world to see that you don’t know how.

In the case of our Yahoo headline, the editor was probably used to seeing “Simpson Back in Jail” and gave “it” the same treatment as “in.” That was a mistake.

"In" is a preposition. "It" is a pronoun.

I see the same mistake with “is.” Just because it’s a two-letter word starting with I doesn’t mean it should be treated like “in.” "Is" is a verb.

Some online publications just skirt the whole issue by capitalizing every single letter, including all the prepositions, articles and conjunctions: “Simpson In Jail And Out Of The Way.” At least in this style you don’t have to test your editors’ knowledge of prepositions, conjunctions and articles. But it sure looks ugly.

The best course is just to learn the basic parts of speech before you publish.

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December 15, 2025

Oxford's Word of the Year: 'rage bait'

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Not long ago, making people angry was a bad idea. Nowadays, rage is a hot commodity.

Time it right and you can build a whole media empire or political machine on some well-cultivated fury. At the very least, you can get a lot of clicks on TikTok or whatever gizmo you use to turn anger into dollars.

But let’s face it, people can only rage at a limited number of things every day. And as more and more enragers compete for a limited pool of enragees’ finite rage resources, the successful anger pusher needs an edge.

And that (I assume) is part of the story of the 2025 Oxford University Press word of the year: rage bait.

If you’re P.O.’d that the word of the year is in fact two words, by all means, send money. But there’s a good explanation. Lexicographers use the word “word” for any term that encompasses a single unit of meaning. So two-word words are words, which lets us have individual dictionary entries for phrasal verbs like “blow up,” nouns like “night owl” and other two-word combos.

“Rage bait” is defined, according to Oxford, as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media account.”

To pick their annual winners, Oxford uses a combination of staff expertise and public input. Their goal is always to zero in on a word or term that best captures the current zeitgeist.

“The fact that the word ‘rage bait’ exists and has seen such a dramatic surge in usage means we’re increasingly aware of the manipulation tactics we can be drawn into online,” writes Casper Grathwol, Oxford’s president of Oxford Languages, on the publisher’s website. “Before, the internet was focused on grabbing our attention by sparking curiosity in exchange for clicks, but now we’ve seen a dramatic shift to it hijacking and influencing our emotions, and how we respond. It feels like the natural progression in an ongoing conversation about what it means to be human in a tech-driven world — and the extremes of online culture.”

I take heart in Grathwol’s words. Yes, it’s a bad thing that people out for money and power are dragging us around by the spleen, but at least we’re aware of it and have the vocabulary to talk about it.

For the win, “rage bait” beat out “aura farming,” which Oxford defines as “the cultivation of an impressive, attractive, or charismatic persona or public image by behaving or presenting oneself in a way intended subtly to convey confidence, coolness, or mystique.”

“Rage bait” also beat out “biohack,” a verb meaning “to attempt to improve or optimize one’s physical or mental performance, health, longevity, or wellbeing by altering one’s diet, exercise routine, or lifestyle, or by using other means such as drugs, supplements, or technological devices.”

As you might guess, some of Oxford’s picks stand the test of time, others don’t. For example, 2021’s word of the year was “vax,” which both captured 2021 and seems to be sticking around. But 2022’s winner was “goblin mode” — a slang term that Oxford says is mostly used in the expressions “in goblin mode” or “to go goblin mode” and which is defined as a type of behavior that is “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”

I don’t recall hearing that even once, and I doubt I ever will.

“Rage bait,” however, is big business. And if language can help us better identify it, explain it and ultimately avoid it, the whole world will be better off.

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December 8, 2025

A spelling shortcut

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A lot of the typos I see occur because a writer guessed wrongly that a term was two words instead of one: line up, pick up (as in truck), home owner, and on and on.

These types of mistakes aren’t egregious or shameful by any stretch. But they still require correction. They’re still, in some cases, mistakes. And the often harmless habit of writing a one-word term as two words can sometimes go really bad (titmouse, anyone?).

So here’s a tip: Whenever you’re not sure whether a noun is one word or two, and you’re not inclined (for whatever reason) to take the time to find out, just make it a habit of typing it as one word.

That will improve the odds that spell-check can help you. If you type skincare as one word, a good spellchecker might flag it (though mine, for some reason,  does not). But spell checker would never flag the word skin or the word care. Spellchecker would never flag the word short or the word cut, so choose the one-word shortcut and if it doesn't get flagged as an error, you know it's correct. A compound made of two words squished together is less likely to pass muster with spell-check than the two halves we already know are valid words.

It could tell you that your word needs to be split up, but it will never tell you that two words like over and priced need to be squished together.

Of course, this is just for rushed writing that doesn’t need to be perfect. If you need to meet a higher quality standard, first check the one-word form in the dictionary, where you’ll see that a pickup is a noun meaning a truck or a retrieval of a package or a person. Then also check the root word, in this case pick, where you could see that it’s often paired with up to create a slightly different meaning.

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December 1, 2025

Don't sweat 'Xmas'

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If you’ve ever known someone a little too eager to take offense at the term Xmas, here’s a little gift for you:

Xmas, as a shortened way of writing Christmas, irks some people. Language sticklers have looked down on it as slovenly. And, because slovenliness is in the eye of the beholder, there’s no arguing with them. But the other anti-Xmas camp is easier to deal with. Some pious people consider Xmas to be borderline sacrilegious — taking the “Christ” out of Christmas, some call it.

But the real outrage here is a blatant disregard for the virtue of doing one’s homework. The X in Xmas isn’t, as some might assume, a crossing off of the holiday’s namesake. Instead, the X is actually a direct reference to Christ.

According to Garner’s Modern American Usage, X represents the Greek letter chi – the first letter in Christ. Garner’s cites poet and language commentator John Ciardi as pointing out that” X has ancient antecedents as the symbol of Christ and the cross.” How pervasive was this symbolism? “So much so that illiterate Jews atEllis Island refused to sign with an X.”

In other words, Xmas is as much a reference to Jesus as Christmas itself. So there’s no need for anyone to get in a tizzy about it.

On the other hand, trying to figure out how to write it correctly can be upsetting. Though a lot of people aren’t sure whether to put a hyphen in it, major style guides agree you should not hyphenate it. It’s just Xmas. But whether you should put “a” or “an” in front of it isn’t as simple.

According to “Garner’s,” it depends on your “mind’s ear.” If, to you, Xmas would be pronounced “eks-mas,” then it would be preceded by “an.” But if you see Xmas and hear in your mind “Christmas,” then Garner’s says it makes sense to use “a.”

Bottom line: You can use it however you like without fear.

 Merry Xmas!

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November 24, 2025

Appositives: How to choose between 'the author, John Doe' and 'the author John Doe'

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Here’s something I see a lot in my copy editing work:  He’ll interview author Rob Peters and an accountant Jane Farrell.  

Or sometimes it will look like this: He’ll interview author, Rob Peters, and an accountant, Jane Farrell.

But almost never will it look like this: He’ll interview author Rob Peters and an accountant, Jane Farrell.

As you may have guessed, that’s unfortunate because the last one is actually correct.

Knowing when to use commas in these situations lies in understanding appositives. And the easiest way to think of an appositive is as a renaming of something just said:

… my husband, Ted …

… the teacher, a great person ...

... your car, a 2021 Honda …

An appositive is a noun phrase that stands in apposition to another, where “apposition” means “a grammatical construction in which two usually adjacent nouns having the same referent stand in the same syntactical relation to the rest of a sentence.”


Simply put, if you’re just throwing in a name or a noun that repeats another noun, that's an appositive. An aside. An extra parenthetical bit thrown in. And once we understand that, the Chicago Manual of Style’s advice is clear: “A word, abbreviation, phrase, or clause that is in apposition to a noun is set off by commas if it is nonrestrictive — that is, omittable, containing supplementary rather than essential information. If it is restrictive — essential to the noun it belongs to — no comma should appear.”

The committee chair, Gloria Ruffolo, called for a resolution.

Stanley Groat, president of the corporation, spoke first.

My older sister, Betty, taught me the alphabet.

but

My sister Enid lets me hold her doll. (I have two sisters.)

See how in the first sister example the lack of commas tells us that the speaker only has one older sister? And see how in the second sister example the lack of commas tells us that Enid is just one of two or more sisters?

Now think about “the baker Rob Peters” vs. “the baker, Rob Peters. “In the first, you’re using the name to make clear which baker you’re talking about. In the second, you’re implying that the reader already knows that you’re talking about one specific baker and that, by the way, his name is Rob Peters.

Ditto that for:

“I read the book, ‘Blue Moon” vs. “I read the book “Blue Moon.’”

In the first one, it’s clear you’ve already established with the reader that you’re talking about a single, specific book, even if you haven’t named it yet: “I went to the store. I thumbed through a book I couldn’t put down. I bought it, along with a music CD. When I read the book, “Blue Moon,” it changed my life.”

But in the second one, you’re probably referencing the book for the first time.

Again, it all boils down to whether the second noun phrase is a mere repeat of the first or whether they’re working together in a way that makes them inseparable.

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November 17, 2025

Is 'lain' on the wane?

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I came across “lain” the other day in a book I’m reading. Here’s the sentence from the 1968 dystopian novel “The Wall” by Marlen Haushofer: “Bella had lain down and gone to sleep.”

It struck me as odd. Not because it was wrong. On the contrary, the translator who worked from the original German got it exactly right. The reason it struck me as odd was, well, how often do you see “lain” these days? If my experience is any indication, “lain” is fading away along with “swum” and “drunk” (the verb participle, not the adjective — that form of “drunk” remains in high demand).

I figured that “lain” had everything to do with the book’s publication date. Surely, back in the middle of the last century — the heyday of grammar prescriptivism — people were still keen on past participles like “lain.” To confirm my suspicion, I checked Google’s Ngram Viewer, which shows the frequency with which words show up in print over the years. To my great surprise, “lain” is about twice as popular now as it was in the late ’60s — at least in published writing.

This is more than just a mildly interesting factoid. It’s a clue about how to use the language well today. Had Ngram Viewer shown that “lain” was on the decline, there would be little need to worry about it. Language changes, and when people stop using, for example, “forsooth,” this adverb meaning “in truth” does not belong at the top of your to-learn list. But Ngram Viewer shows “lain” is still relevant, which means it’s worth learning.

“Lain” is the past participle of “lie” in the meaning of “to recline” (not to speak untruth). A past participle is different from a simple past tense. I find it easiest to think of the past participle as the one that goes with some form of “have,” as in, “She has lain under the veranda for hours” and “She had lain there all day yesterday, too.”

The technical terms for these verb tenses can add to the confusion. “She has lain” is an example of the present perfect tense — even though it happened in the past. But “has” is in the present, hence the name present perfect. On the other hand, “she had lain” is in the past perfect tense, indicated by the past-tense “had.” In either case, the word “perfect” means the action is completed.

There’s also a future perfect tense, “She will have lain,” which means the action will be completed at a point in the future.

All these use the past participle form of the verb. For many verbs, the past participle and the simple past tense are identical: Yesterday he walked, in the past he has walked. But irregular verbs like “lie” go their own way. For “lie,” the past participle is “lain” and the simple past tense is “lay.” So yesterday he lay, in the past he has lain.

This of course makes it easy to confuse the past tense of “lie” with the verb “lay,” which is another word entirely. Unlike “lie,” which is an intransitive verb, “lay” is transitive, meaning you do it to an object, like a book: Lay the book on the table.

“Lay” has its own past forms. Yesterday he laid the book on the table and in the past he has laid the book on the table.” Notice that for “lay,” the past tense and past participle are identical: laid.

If you forget all this, you can always find it in a dictionary. Just look up the main verb, like “lie,” and next to it you’ll see the past tense and, if the past participle is different, that immediately follows: lie, lay, lain. If you want to do like they did in the ’60s, it’s that easy.

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November 10, 2025

Here's why you should never feel insecure in your grammar knowledge

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A student posting in the grammar forum on Reddit recently made me sad:  “I’m a college student majoring in a scientific field and am interested in conducting my own research. One thing that’s stopping me is my lack of vocabulary and not being great with grammar. Grammar has always been a problem and I don’t know where to even start. I also want to improve my vocabulary so my papers can sound more professional. I can comprehend scientific journal articles, make lit reviews and understand the statistics. I just don’t feel confident in my writing. I’m looking for an app or website that’s almost like Duolingo so I can enjoy learning between classes and work. Any help would be appreciated!”

Notice that this student used not one, not two, but eight perfectly grammatical sentences to say that their grammar is bad — so bad that it’s standing in the way of pursuing dreams in a scientific field. It’s as if this poor student thinks there’s some secret body of knowledge required to write well and that this knowledge is hard to access.

Grammar has this effect on a lot of people. Decades of misinformation about what it means to speak and write “properly” have terrified the bejesus out of generations of students. But the truth is, if you’re fluent in English, you don’t need to know terms like dangling participle and predicate nominative. Here are four reasons you’re already great at grammar.

1. You understand subject-verb agreement. If the Reddit poster had written “I be a college student” or “I are a college student” or “I is a college student,” your grammar alarm would have gone off. That’s because, instinctively, you know that verbs agree with their subjects. Singular first-person “I” goes with “am,” whereas second-person “you” goes with “are,” and so on. More impressive: You have no problem with how the poster wrote “one thing that’s stopping me is,” even though not one but two things were listed afterward. That may be illogical, but it’s perfectly grammatical, which is why you would have balked at “one thing that’s stopping me are.”

2. You know that “ing” verbs can be nouns, too. You might even know these are called gerunds. For example, you understood “I can enjoy learning” as easily as you understand “I enjoy books.” A thing you enjoy is a noun, and that can be a physical thing like books or a gerund like learning. The fact that gerunds look identical to verbs in their progressive participle form, “I am learning,” didn’t trip you up even for a second.

3. You’re a master of coordinate verb phrases. The poster’s first sentence has just one subject, “I,” but it uses “am” twice (the first time in its contracted form ’m). I am a student and am interested. Because you know that verbs and even whole predicates can share a single subject when they’re coordinated with “and,” you had no confusion about who was interested.

4. You get that adverbs can move around sometimes. When you read “I don’t know where to even start,” you 100% got the poster’s meaning. And if they had written, “I don’t even know where to start,” you would have been just as clear. But at the same time, you know that “even I don’t know where to start” would have completely changed the meaning of the sentence and that “I even don’t know” would have been nonsensical. That’s because you know that adverbs like “even” can move around. When they do, sometimes the meaning changes drastically, and sometimes it changes not at all. And, amazingly, you can understand their meaning or lack thereof at any location in the sentence.

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