This sentence contains an example of an error I see all too often, including in the work of professional writers: Known as ‘hashtags,’ these keywords are popular in social media. That’s not how single quotation marks work. Yet almost every time I see this punctuation mark, this is how it’s used — a job I call “quotation marks lite.” Regular quotation marks have several jobs. Their main job is to indicate direct quotations or excerpts. They can also indicate irony. Finally, quotation marks can indicate that a certain word is actually a focus of the discussion. Consider this sentence: I know “th ..read more

Think about the sentence: The new healthcare center is a facility where patients can come without an appointment. What’s wrong with that? Well, technically, nothing. It’s grammatical and logical. But if, like me, you’re in the habit of zeroing in on all the clauses in a sentence, you can see why this could be considered not the best writing. The core of the main clause, when stripped down to its bones, says little more than “the center is a facility.” And that’s about as sorry a statement as you can squeeze into a main clause. In the best writing, every word, phrase and clause counts. And if y ..read more

Here’s a word I change a lot when I’m editing: “while.” I see it used like this often: While pedaling along the beachfront sidewalk is delightful, so too is stopping for a snowcone at the beachfront snack bar. A myth out there alleges that this is an outright error. The idea is that “while” means “during,” so you can’t use it to mean “though” or “although.” Not true. while. conjunction: 1. … on the other hand … whereas 2. … in spite of the fact that, although (while respected, he is not liked) 3 … similarly and at the same time that (while the book will be welcomed by scholars, it will make an ..read more

Newspaper style says to assign separate meanings to "insure" and "ensure." "Use ensure to mean guarantee: 'steps were taken to ensure accuracy,'” the Associated Press Stylebook says. “Use 'insure' for references to insurance: 'the policy insures his life.'” But dictionaries aren't as strict. The post Ensure vs. Insure first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande ..read more

“My partner and I’s bikes were stolen,” a woman posted on my local Nextdoor.com recently. Not familiar with Nextdoor? It’s the reason why, some years back, everyone you know in every town from coast to coast started talking about the crime wave hitting their neighborhood. The real crime was social media nudging out local news, siphoning advertising dollars away from professional journalism and toward a barrage of hysterical, context-free anecdotes about porch pirates and noises that sound like gunshots. But I digress. Point is, a lot of folks go on this hyperlocal social media site to tell the ..read more

Danglers, including dangling participles, are phrases that apply to your main clause in a way that doesn't make logical sense, like "Walking down the beach, my shoulders got sunburned," which seems to say your shoulders were walking. Here's how to avoid them. The post Danglers first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande ..read more

Recently, I reread something I wrote years ago about “good things come to he who waits” vs. “good things come to him who waits” and then, when I tried to summarize the lesson, I got it exactly wrong. Not only did I misunderstand the grammar, but I misunderstood what my 2016 self was trying to teach me. I just didn’t get it. But I’ll forgive myself because it’s a tricky issue. The grammatically correct form is “him who waits,” with the object pronoun “him.” That may seem pretty obvious to anyone who understands that “to” is a preposition and that prepositions take object pronouns and not subjec ..read more

One common habit I see in bad writing, especially in amateur fiction, is excessive use of participial phrases to squeeze in information. Consider a passage like: Reaching into her purse, Mary pulled out her phone. She flipped it open, scanning her stored numbers. Realizing she didn’t have John’s cell, she snapped the phone shut. Hurrying home, she decided it was best to postpone the call anyway. Here’s how to make a passage like this better. The post Participial Phrases in Bad Writing first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande ..read more

Can you end a sentence with a preposition? Yes. Can you say so online and not send angry social media users into attack mode? Apparently not. That’s the lesson of a recent Instagram post by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary that stated plainly and accurately: “It is permissible in English for a preposition to be what you end a sentence with. The idea that it should be avoided came from writers who were trying to align the language with Latin, but there’s no reason to suggest ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong.” The denizens of Instagram weren’t having it. “This represents somet ..read more

Some say “bring” can mean only movement toward the speaker and “take” means only movement away from the speaker. The rules aren't quite that rigid, and native speakers shouldn't waste time worrying about this one. The post Bring and Take first appeared on Grammar Underground with June Casagrande ..read more