Grammar Underground - Podcast | Grammar Underground with June Casagrande

January 20, 2026

'Palm Off' vs. 'Pawn Off'

If you're talking about being sneaky to deceive someone, "palm off" is the better term. "Pawn off" means to get rid of something but usually without deceiving someone to do it.

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January 12, 2026

Can You Start a Sentence with 'Hopefully' or 'More Importantly'?

TOPICS: COPY EDITING, GRAMMAR, HOPEFULLY, MORE IMPORTANTLY

People who think adverbs only modify actions argue that "hopefully" and "importantly" can't begin a sentence. But in fact, adverbs can also modify whole sentences, which is why these two sentence adverbs work just fine.

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January 5, 2026

'This Is She' or 'This Is Her'?

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, PREDICATE NOMINATIVE, THIS IS SHE VS THIS IS HER

A little-known dynamic, the "predicate nominative," explains why "This is she" is the more grammatical form.

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December 29, 2025

'While' vs. 'Though' and 'Although'

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, WHILE VS ALTHOUGH, WHILE VS THOUGH

"While" can mean the same thing as "though" or "although." But that doesn't mean you should use them interchangeably. "While" can cause confusion when used carelessly.

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December 22, 2025

You're doing it wrongly?

TOPICS: ADVERBS, GRAMMAR, WRONG VS WRONGLY

A reader named Ed wrote to me with this question:

"In the column that ran this past Sunday ... the following sentence/ phrase appears: "thanks to all the horrible people... who just won't stop using the word 'over' wrong. "

Isn't the last word of that sentence intended as an adverb and shouldn't it then be "wrongly" ?

Just a thought!

Unless Ed travels in some truly unusual circles, I'm guessing he never hears "wrongly" modifying verbs: You're doing it wrongly. I answered the test question wrongly. And so on.

"Wrong" is so standard in these situations it’s nearly universal. Yet while reading a grammar column, taking a moment to focus on all things grammar, we can start to second guess our understanding of our own mother tongue. And of course, when we get the answer to Ed's question, we see once again that, in language, first instincts are usually better than trying to apply the incomplete education on grammar most of us got in school.

Ed learned well that adverbs modify actions, but no one taught him that adverbs aren't just words ending in "ly." Nor did anyone teach him where to find answers to questions like these. All he had to do was open a dictionary and he could have seen that "wrong" isn't just an adjective. It's also an adverb.

Here's what I told Ed:

Actually, "wrong" is an adverb, as well as an adjective and a noun. So is "right." So it's 100% acceptable to say stuff like "You're doing it wrong" and "You're doing it right."

True, “ly" forms are often adverbs and if you drop the "ly" you often end up with an adjective, but that's not universal. Sometimes there's redundancy in the language, giving us "wrong" and "wrongly" both as adverbs. Of course, over time, the uses often sort of differentiate themselves. And nowadays, "wrongly" more commonly modifies adjectives and participles: wrongly accused, wrongly imprisoned. So what you're observing is one of the many interesting quirks of the language!

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December 22, 2025

It Is I Who Am? Or It Is I Who Is?

TOPICS: GRAMMAR, RELATIVE PRONOUN ANTECEDENT AGREEMENT

Relative pronouns like who take the same verb form as the word they represent. So in "It is I who is," the relative pronoun who means I. And because I pairs with am, you would say, "It is I who am." Here's the full explanation.

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December 15, 2025

There's More in the Dictionary Than Definitions

TOPICS: comparatives and superlatives, GRAMMAR, past participles, USING DICTIONARIES

Must you say “I have gotten” or can you say “I have got”? Is it, "She hanged the picture on the wall" or "She hung the picture on the wall"? Why can you turn smart into smarter but you can’t turn intelligent into intelligenter? The answers are all the the dictionary.